Nov 2, 2012

Mummy, Mother and Nirvana

Life is actually a mirage. I mean, I am not trying to imitate any big shots or big thoughts. It is just that I was reading up on some chinese monks who mummified themsleves. May be a masochistic practice or just a practice they feel is right to reach Nirvana. But, somehow it made me all depressed. I kinda went 'into' their shoes and wondered how they felt, for some time. May be, they did it because it was a norm. Or for fame when they are dead. Or just to do that last experiment that might take them to enlightenment. I am kinda depressed. Some people are so selfless that they can harm themselves to death. Or I dont know if I should say they are so selfish that they harm themselves to death to attain the status of Buddha.

And it also made me think - Whatever a person does, be it working asses off in a corporate world, or just meditate in the expectation of attaining nirvana, finally everyone dies.

I have no clue what happens to us after death. May be we have another life and world waiting for us. Or may be we just stop existing. The sense of 'self' makes me feel there is a 'soul'. But that too, I am not really sure if it can travel beyond death. Whether you stop feeling the sense of self when you die.

People die. We mourn. And then, we forget and move on. They are remembered only when things/ people/ matters they affected during their life and after their death by some kind of actions or inactions come to surface. Otherwise, like the billions that lived and died till date, we also live and just die out.

The need to do something outstanding, outlasting or remembered and used for ever, might be considered selfish or selfless. But I somehow feel that by any person on earth, any volountary action performed by a sane person has a selfish reason behind it. Even Mother Teresa. She must have done it for seemingly selfless reasons for us. But for her, it brought her closer to her God. It brought her happiness and satisfaction at what she was doing. I still applaud what she did for humanity. I am just saying, it was selfish in some way.

Anyway, these Chinese monks have a peculiar way of bringing realizations. Dont they? :)
They did. At least to me.

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