"Consider a deer wandering in the garden. It has found a mate and the garden is full of green grass on which it can live for its entire lifetime. The flowers growing there and the gentle breeze wafting across the garden make the deer so happy that the thinks there is nothing which can ever spoil his bliss and his contented life there. But all the while, the dread wolf which is bent in eating it up, is standing there, in front of it. In its preoccupation with its mate and the beauty of the garden, the heavenly taste of grass, and the wonderful breeze which is blowing across the garden, the poor deer does not see the wolf. Nor is it aware of a hunter who is even now aiming his dread arrows at it from behind. Man's life on earth is even like that of the unfortunate, careless deer.
"The pleasures of the world are as evanescent as the scent of the flowers in the garden. Man and woman wander around in this little garden in search of the fleeting pleasure found in each other. All the while, Time, in the form of a wolf, is waiting there in front of him and he does not notice it. Behind him is Death with a thousand diseases in the form of arrows. He sends the arrows one by one and yet man does not understand the message - does not heed the warning."
-Narad, in the Srimad Bhagavatam
If this is about being aware of death but not afraid of it, that's hard to achieve! But perhaps I'm missing the point.
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ReplyDeleteNarad continues, "The karmas you have been performing will only give you the things of this world and you should try not to get involved in them. You should strive for something higher. Pleasing the Lord and trying to reach him are the only things a man should do....forget this path which you have been pursuing and devote the rest of your life to the meditation on the Lord"
Well, I was distracted by the fact that there are deer wandering around the beach house and my familiarity with the countless ways to die (occupational hazard) and missed the point, then.
ReplyDeleteI had the wackiest dream last night! A bunch of yoga teachers came to talk to me about God while I was visiting my parents, and I was supposed to get rid of them. It didn't work, and then one of them drove her car into the back of my new Mazda.
Maybe my subconscious was processing the quote. Or perhaps it was just a goofy (but amusing) dream.