‘Most of us choose to live in ignorance’

BENGALURU: I believe that our lives on this earth are exactly that: we are mere participants in a play or many small acts of a play. While we go through the trials, tribulations and joyful moments of life, our only goal is to live with the human qualities of kindness and compassion and be in a state of love; living in the moment and being of service to others. I am doing this today after twenty-five years of following a technique that Siddhartha Gautam Buddha introduced to India 2500 years ago (and I say this with no attachment to ego). But I am proud of the technique that helps us to come out of negativity (suffering and misery).

Let’s not forget the fact that it can also help you to come out of the cycle of birth and death (you can choose to believe it or not, but do read on) and that it exists right here. However, most of us choose to live in ignorance.There are many disciplines that teach us how to make our lives more meaningful in order to live a better-quality, more healthy, stress-free, productive and content life.

Without sounding pessimistic, death is a constant and the same for everyone. To quote Shahzeb Afzal, ‘Death is a great leveller; time brings all luxuries of life to an end. All feelings of superiority in man are only an illusion and self-deception.’1 The great question of life is not, ‘How do we face life and live in this world?’ It is, ‘How will I face death and where will I live in the next world?’

There is no institution, except perhaps the technique of Vipassana, that teaches us how to have a ‘quality death’.What do I mean by this? I simply mean that, at the time of our death, we should be able to look at our life and say to ourselves that we have truly lived a life, rising above our own negativities, to teach us the true meaning of dying peacefully and not fear what lies beyond death.

There is a fear attached to death because of the unknown. Many philosophical systems question what happens to us after dying. For this—with all the reading and studying that I have done on the subject—we must first experience our own ‘life force’ in order to know what happens to us after we exit the earth. I don’t want to take a stand at this point—till you read through on what happens to us after we exit the earth—yet. But it will become clear as you read on.

​Iremember a hot sunny day, sitting at the Otters Club pool (Mumbai) with my school friend Preeti. She asked me, ‘So Shunnu, what are your future plans? Where do you see yourself in twenty years?’ And my answer was so spontaneous, ‘I see myself serving or perhaps running a Vipassana centre and meditating.’

She asked me, ‘How come?’ And to that I said, ‘I am truly tied to checking out of these lives that I keep coming back to replay my dramas’. She started laughing. Preeti reminds me of the comedian and actor Jerry Lewis. She looks like him (could pass off as his daughter), so she gestured to me with her hands and eyes while saying, ‘Really, Shunnu? I mean, seriously, check out. That’s your plan?’ I said, ‘Yes, that’s my future.’ I didn’t mean it in an escapist way. I meant it in a very tied-to-a-larger-purpose-of-my-life way. I live my life thinking this way all the time.

‘It is not in our hands to outdo death, but it is in our bodies to create the best version of ourselves so that we leave behind a legacy wherein our spirit is cherished, not because of the fame that we have amassed, but because of who we have become.

(Excerpted with permission from Vipassana The Timeless Secret to Meditate and Be Calm by Shonali Sabherwal, Penguin India)