Fear of Death

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அழித்துப் பிறக்கவொட் டாஅயில் வேலன் கவியையன்பால்
எழுத்துப் பிழையறக் கற்கின்றி லீரெரி மூண்டதென்ன
விழித்துப் புகையெழப் பொங்கு வெங் கூற்றன் விடுங் கயிற்றாற்
கழுத்திற் சுருக்கிட் டிழுக்குமன் றோகவி கற்கின்றதே.

Azhithu pirakkavotta: That which saves from destruction and creation.

Ramana Maharishi states, "If you understand waking and sleep properly you will understand life and death".  

Waking and sleep are more like attention and inattention. It is in attention that we come to know of this world, and inattention, ignorance, takes us to destruction of knowledge, sleep, death. 

For, Bhagavan also states, "If you ask who has the birth and whether birth and death are for you or for somebody distinct from you, then you realize the truth and the truth burns up all karma and frees you from all births."

What Bhagavan asks us to do is to be aware of the conscious being that is us; it is our inattention, our easy assent to apparent realities that burdens us with birth and death.

We actually do not have any knowledge of our birth and of our death, not to speak of our past multiple lives. We have to take the word of scriptures and saints to believe in the concept of rebirth. As such, we don't have any urgency to get out of the cycle of births.

But we do know that people die, and this knowledge fills us with fear. If we have seen someone in the throes of a heart-attack, or the problems associated with kidney failure, or even the destruction of our motor responses as in Parkinsons, it definitely has an impact on us.

Surely we want to be freed of suffering, disease, death? And of the fear of death?