Verse 6
यावत्पवनो निवसति देहे तावत्पृच्छति कुशलं गेहे ।
गतवति वायौ देहापाये भार्या बिभ्यति तस्मिन्काये ॥ ६॥
Yāvatpavano nivasati dehe
tāvatpr̥cchati kuśalaṁ gehe,
gatavati vāyau dehāpāye
bhāryā bibhyati tasminkāye.
[When one is alive, his family members
enquire kindly about his welfare. But when the soul departs from the body, even
his wife runs away in fear of the corpse.]
Worldly man’s attraction for his family has a tinge of madness.
Till the time one gets married / one meets the girl whom he gets married
later on, there is no remote connection with that girl.
Once he falls in love with her or marries her, man develops so much
affection for her and she develops so much affection for him, as if they have
been together ever since this creation emerged!!
Same affection then spreads to their children who are born out of their
intimacy.
Suppose it is possible somehow to succeed in being a breadwinner
throughout one’s life; i.e. no disease and no infirmity. Does that nullify the
truth that selfishness is at the core of all human relationships? No. For there
is yet one event – that of Death – which proves beyond doubt that all human
dependencies have to come to an end.
When death comes, it ends all dependency that others have for us. At
that moment, even one’s wife shudders to remain close to her husband’s dead
body!
Dear Brothers and sisters,
We may love someone in our family / circle and they may be very near and
dear to us. But when they pass away and are to be cremated, it becomes
difficult to stand very near to the body of that person, to bear the smell of
that dead body!!
When the author was in 7th standard, he used to maintain a
spiritual diary which was between him and Swami only.
In that, he remembers to have written a line - “When it is raining
heavily and someone wants to leave his slipper at someone’s home, they
would not object to it at all. But when a dead body is being carried for
cremation and it rains heavily and if you want to keep that dead body at some
one’s home, will that person allow that dead body to be kept at his house?”
Death is something which every one fears so much that no one wants to
ever discuss about death.
We close our eyes to the reality that is certain to overtake us one day.
To a Vedantin / a spiritually evolved person, there is no fear of death. He is
quite comfortable seeing things face to face. Death does not scare him.
Sankaracharya, as a Vedantin, would not have any convulsive feelings
when writing about death. Death is frightening to very worldly-minded persons
who have strong attachments to people. This verse is designed to make us see
the futility of human relationships at the time of death.
Coming back to the essence of this verse, the reality of the selfishness
of human nature should help all of us to turn our mind from over indulgence in
social life, from excessive affection for family and relations and to turn our
mind towards God and to start adoring and worshipping.
When we are obsessed with affection for our near ones, then what
happens? We expect them to behave, to move with us, to understand our feelings,
our personality, our expectations in a particular way which will gratify our senses,
our individuality, our ego.
But when we understand the impermanence of all relationships and
understand the same in correct perspective as explained by Sankara, it does not
mean that we have to develop aversion towards them and to draw away from them.
It is just that we start viewing all our relationship with a new,
wonderful glass, the glass of Lord’s love or our Love for God.
When we view this entire world, sporting (filled with) the glass of
Love, then the attachment goes, expectation goes, our ego goes and we are able
to pour our selfless love more and more, which is pure and desire free.
The art of detaching from the world to attach to the Lord is explained
in detail in the blog post given below, with reference to a quote by Swami Chinmaya.
Love.
