Many people do of each the activity of their life according to auspicious moment; they check where Rahu is, where Ketu is and how the other planetary motions are. Having checked, they identify the most suitable good muhurat. Only after that they go about doing the task. This task can range from daily life such as starting from home to office, doing Pooja to marriage, taking admission into a playschool. Thus every facet of life is guided, controlled by an enigma called auspicious moment!
The senile old man whose character is grandly named Bhishma Pitamaha, took the craze of auspicious moment to its peak. If you recall, in the battlefield Kurukshetra with his entire body pierced with hundreds of arrows, immobile, he said I would wait for Uttarayana – the auspicious moment to come to die. Death and auspicious moment – look contradictory. This apparent contradiction was answered by the writer of Mahabharat itself – Bhishma Pitamaha is blessed, given a boon by the god called ‘Iccha Mrityu’ i.e., whenever he wants, he can die.
Anybody can die whenever they want. I can simply go up the building and jump. I wanted it. Or stand before a running train. Everybody is blessed with this boon. And our dharmashastras say, if you die in a battlefield fighting, you directly go to heaven. There is no need for you to wait for the auspicious moment! Something that unsettles, something that disturbs – an auspicious moment to die? After being pierced by hundreds of arrows, wringing in pain, seeing hell, how can this situation demand auspicious moment to die? In the modern era the nine holes of a human body are attached to various medical tubes in a hospital, the man on bed blankly staring at the ceiling; the sound of every foot step he moves his eyes to check whether if the god of death is coming. Can we say this man is waiting for the auspicious moment to die??
Every moment of death is an auspicious moment. Every moment of birth is an auspicious moment. Ever moment of our life is an auspicious moment. Probably, the writer may have run out of his imagination while depicting the character of the senile old man called Bhishma in Mahabharat.
About the Author
Dr. K. Raja Gopal Reddy is a seasoned internationally qualified Insurance professional.
What you are reading here, may not answer all the questions we have, but has the absolute power of asking unsettling questions which increase the interest in the strange world, and show the contradictory wonders lying just below the surface of the commonest things of life. Look at this disturbing but beautiful thought of Friedrich Nietzsche “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him”.
Dr. Reddy can be reached at: raja66gopal@gmail.com
