10. Blessed is he who has attended his own funeral!

Man turns up for his own funeral
PTI, August 17, 2006 15:51 IST

A 36-year-old man, believed to be dead and whose 'body' was being flown home from Lucknow, returned on Thursday morning, just as his family busy arranging for his last rites.

According to police, Mohammad Ashraf, a father of five children, had recently gone to Jeddah in search of a job and was deported by Saudi authorities to Lucknow on August 13, after he was found to be overstaying there. When Ashraf reached Lucknow by an Air India flight, he soon found that his passport was missing and decided to reach Malappuram by train, the sources said.

Meanwhile, mistaking the body of an unidentified person at the airport to be that of Ashraf after his passport was traced in the premises, Lucknow passport authorities rang up Ashraf's house to inform them of his 'demise'. They also arranged for the body to be flown to Malappuram.

However, before the flight could arrive at Karipur airport at the scheduled time of 6.15 am, Ashraf reached home by 5.30 am, taking everyone by shock and surprise.

Ashraf's father had even made arrangements through a notary to receive his son's body on its arrival at the airport while his family members were busy arranging Ashraf's burial.

After Lucknow passport officials were informed that Ashaf had returned home, arrangements were made to take the unidentified person's body back, to Lucknow, the sources added.

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Quotes from the Masters
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Nisargadatta Maharaj

You may die a hundred deaths without a break in the mental turmoil. Or you may keep your body and die only in the mind. The death of the mind is the birth of wisdom.

I am dead already. Physical death will make no difference in my case. I am timeless being. I am free of desire or fear, because I do not remember the past, or imagine the future. Where there are no names and shapes, how can there be desires and fear? With desirelessness comes timelessness. I am safe, because what is not cannot touch what is. You feel unsafe, because you imagine danger. Of course, your body as such is complex and vulnerable and needs protection. But not you. Once you realize your own unassailable being, you will be at peace.

What is birth and death but the beginning and the ending of a stream of events in consciousness?

[When an ordinary man dies] according to his belief it happens. As life before death is but imagination, so is life after. The dream continues. The gnani does not die because he was never born.

In reality there is no killing and no dying. The real does not die, the unreal never lived.

[If I heard that you had died,] I would be very happy to have you back home. Really glad to see you out of this foolishness, of thinking that you were born and will die, that you are a body displaying a mind and all such nonsense. In my world, nobody is born and nobody dies. Some people go on a journey and come back, some never leave. What difference does it make since they travel in dreamlands, each wrapped up in his own dream. Only the waking is important. It is enough to know the "I am" as reality and also love.

Ramana Maharshi

If a man considers he is born he cannot avoid the fear of death. Let him find out if he has been born or if the Self has any birth. He will discover that the Self always exists, that the body which is born resolves itself into thought and that the emergence of thought is the root of all mischief. Find where from thoughts emerge. Then you will abide in the ever-present inmost Self and be free from the idea of birth or the fear of death.

Osho

It is always somebody else who dies; you never die. It means death has always been seen from the outside, it is the outsider's view. Those who have seen their inner world are unanimous in saying that there is no death. Because you don't know what constitutes your consciousness; it is not constituted of breathing, it is not constituted of heartbeats, it is not constituted of blood circulation. So when the doctor says that a man is dead, it is an outsider's conclusion; all that he is saying is, "This man is no longer breathing, his pulse has stopped, his heart is not beating." Are these three things equivalent to death? They are not.

So when a person dies, he dies for you, not for himself. For himself he simply changes the house, perhaps moves into a better apartment. But because the old apartment is left, and you are searching for him in the old apartment and you don't find him there, you think the poor guy is dead. All that you should say is, "The poor guy escaped. Now where he has gone, we don't know."

... you can see only death. The river can only see that she will dissolve, she cannot see that she will become the ocean. How can she see? That oceanic existence will be only when the river is no more, so the river cannot see. When your ego is no more, only then will you know who you are.

The secret of knowing death, of understanding death, is not in death itself. You will have to go deeper into the existence of the ego. You will have to look, watch, observe, be aware of what this ego is. And the day you have found that there is no ego, that there has never been -- it appeared only because you were not aware, it appeared only because you were keeping your own existence in darkness -- the day it is understood that the ego is a creation of an unconscious mind, the ego disappears and simultaneously death disappears.

Zen Masters

The Emperor asked Master Gudo,
"What happens to a man of enlightenment after death?"
"How should I know?" replied Gudo.
"Because you are a master," answered the Emperor.
"Yes sir," said Gudo, "but not a dead one."


Tanzan wrote sixty postal cards on the last day of his life,
and asked an attendent to mail them.
Then he passed away.
The cards read:
I am departing from this world.
This is my last announcement.
Tanzan
July 27, 1892