Lamentation!

Meanwhile, back in Hastinapura, Sanjaya urged aggrieved Dhritarashtra to perform the funeral ceremonies for the departed souls of his slain relatives, but he simply continued to lament, repeatedly crying out: Oh! Because I ignored the good advice given to me by Sri Krsna, Bhisma, Vidura & so many others, I have lost all of my sons, as well as my kingdom!

When Dhritarashtra suddenly fell to the floor, Vidura caught hold of him & urged: Dear King, please get up & stop lamenting like this. Death is the inevitable end of all that have been born. Indeed, all living entities in this material world are traveling in the same great caravan proceeding toward the destination of death

My dear brother, you cannot diminish misery by obsessively dwelling upon it. In fact, such indulgence only serves to magnify one's grief. The eternal souls are always coming & going, birth after birth, and by doing so they create transitory relationships with one another. Because of the flickering nature of family & friendship in this world, a wise man never laments for the living or the dead. That which is universal & unavoidable should not be grieved for

O King, for a Kshatriya to die upon the battlefield is to make the best use of a bad bargain, because it is the quickest means for attaining a heavenly destination. Therefore, you should not lament for the death of your sons

Dhritarashtra felt some relief by hearing Vidura's words of wisdom. Indeed, the old, blind king became convinced that the reception of true knowledge is the only means for permanently dispelling grief, and so he begged his younger brother to continue speaking

Vidura said: After death, when all that is left of the body is a pile of bones & ashes, there ceases to be any distinction between those who were rich & those who were poor. The same is true for the beautiful & the ugly. For this reason, no one should rejoice nor lament over such ephemeral conditions

Dhritarashtra continued to inquire about the science of self-realization. Such knowledge gives one an understanding of how the eternal soul becomes entangled in fruitive activities under the control of the three modes of material nature. In reply, Vidura described in detail the processes of birth & death, just as Lord Kapila had formerly explained the subject to his mother, Devahuti

 

Sri Krsna tells Arjuna in Bhagvad Gita

dehino 'smin yatha dehe kaumaram yauvanam jara
tatha dehantara-praptir dhiras tatra na muhyati

 

As the embodied soul continually passes, in this body, from boyhood to youth to old age, the soul similarly passes into another body at death. The self-realized soul is not bewildered by such a change

 

Since every living entity is an individual soul, each is changing his body every moment, manifesting sometimes as a child, sometimes as a youth, and sometimes as an old man. Yet the same spirit soul is there & it does not undergo any change. This individual soul finally changes the body at death & transmigrates to another body; and since it is sure to have another body in the next birth-either material or spiritual-there was no cause for lamentation by Arjuna on account of death, neither for Bhisma nor for Drona, for whom he was so much concerned. Rather, he should rejoice for their changing bodies from old to new ones, thereby rejuvenating their energy. Such changes of body account for varieties of enjoyment or suffering, according to one's work in life

 

This knowledge that our real self is the soul & not this body, takes away so much of our bewilderment and establishes us in truth

 

Thoughts? #gameoflife