We wait for many things in life. While waiting, we're aware that something is going to happen. We feel sure of life and keep fighting the idea of death, thoughts of which may seem inauspicious and pessimistic. In a sequence of Akira Kurosawa's film, "Dreams," the characters confront the inevitability of their deaths when the nuclear reactors explode. There is no way to escape, yet they feel compelled to run anyway. The scientist of the group tells the others, "Waiting to die is not living." The teachings of Vedanta bring insight to this statement. The key is to discriminate between the changing and unchanging aspects of human existence: Every moment brings change that indicates death, while the unchanging aspect (the elusive part of the person that always stays "the same") never dies. Swami Vivekananda once gave the young Duke of Richelieu the "Love of Death," which he explained to the confused young man meant that he would transcend the fear of death. As a soldier in WWII, the Duke witnessed many deaths and remembered Swami Vivekananda's words. Then later, he crossed paths with Swami Nikhilananda, as they were both traveling together by boat. The Duke told the Swami that throughout this experience, he had felt the sense of Eternal Life around him and that he indeed did not fear death. Dying to a life of the senses and of names and forms, the fear of death goes away, but if we are identified with the body, then we are certainly just "waiting to die." If we know that we are not the body, then death has no meaning for us. It is thus most important that we shift the focus of our awareness from that which is changing to that which is unchanging (God; the true Self). Then we truly have Eternal Life.
