death and sorrow

(Extract from an old e-mail sent on the sudden death of Sudhir) We cannot take the matter of weeping lightly. It is beyond reasoning or philosophizing. Yet we do both in an attempt to escape from the sorrow. Sorrow is an emotion which is there in human system, often accumulated enough, waiting for a trigger to release it. Death of near and dear ones is perhaps just one of the triggers. If there is no event triggering the mechanism, the human mind will invent something, even an absurdity to release the welled up emotion of sorrow. Lewis Carroll brings it out in a light vein when he says that the Walrus and the Carpenter wept like anything to see such quantities of sand! 'If only some seven maids with seven mops swept the beach, could it be cleared of the sands?' They doubted it, felt sad and cried! The beautiful nonsense and its absurdity bring out the profound Truth of the fact of sorrow! A spiritual leader in Rishikesh wept and cried like anything because his favorate tree was on the other side of the Ganges! This is not to treat lightly the anguish in the sense of loss felt or the love and compassion for the near and dear one lost. The anguish arises partly from self pity and partly from Love. The self pity is painful and the love gives relief from the pain. The tendency is therefore not to avoid the sorrow but to indulge in it with a feeling that one is somehow paying back a debt to the departed.
Death is of course going out of THIS existence. Whether there is any other existence, we do not know. There seems no way of knowing because even if one feels inclined to believe what some great spiritual masters say from a direct perception by them, it may not be true and could be just a trick of their mind. We do not remember from where we have come. It stands to reason that we cannot know where we are going to also. May be that any possible existence after life may be much better than that in this life.
For quite some time now I had been feeling like a passenger at the fag end of a long railway journey nearing his destination. I don't know where I am to alight and what is in store for me there. I remember the things that I saw and happened to me after boarding the train, but nothing earlier than that.
And I have only one thing of which I am absolutely sure. That is the awareness within me.