Certainties and doubts in life

by S. N. Arseculeratne

A cynic would say that there are only two certainties in life, income tax and death. With my being without even a penny to spare, the income tax boys have left me alone to think about this riddle of life. I have heaps of more trivial problems to deal with. Those who are in the queue to enter Heaven might benefit from reading this essay and visit their psychiatrist for advice.

But I need to think about life and death which have written about by philosophers, religionists, poets, those quibbling with the mysterious events of the paranormal world, by those engrossed in these phenomena and by sentient humans in general; it is such a complex and fascinating subject and I see no end to discussions on it. Wise people will tell me that it is a futile quandary and it is best left to the quibblers to deal with it.

The futility of thinking about it derives from the inevitability of death. The famous Indian palm leaf horoscopes (Naaadi Vakyam) which have been carbon-dated to 1,400 years by the German Thomas Ritter will predict the time of your death.. My father’s Indian leaf said when he was a young man that his death will be at the age of 71 and he did die at that age. I had two readers of my leaves in India and one in Colombo. All were startlingly accurate.

My readings of the paranormal literature have astounded me with the predictability of death. It also seems that we can do nothing about it; there is the “Hand of Destiny” that determines what happens to it. Professor Ramakrishna Rao, the Chairman of the Indian Council of Philosophical Research and Prof. Jean Borel (the Swiss scientist who developed cyclosporine that inhibits transplanted graft rejection) in his Florence Lecture are two prominent people who have used this phrase which implies predestination. It is implied by what the Buddhists term Karmic consequences of one’s previous actions, and there is absolutely nothing that we can do about it now; we have to just grin and bear it

Death, be not proud

was the title of John Gunther’s book, that he wrote after the death of his much beloved son. Gunther, an American journalist, was trying to reconcile himself to the inevitability of death. It is as inevitable as the sun , the moon, and the rain. All animals and plants and even human constructions, ultimately die; even the planets in universe undergo change. So let us, including me, face it. Gunther was trying as we all thinking people do, to come to terms with the inevitable. This dilemma of death was also portrayed in an excellent film, A matter of Life and Death by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, in the 1950s. It relates the pleading of people in Heaven to bring up a man on earth on the verge of death while his friends on earth pleaded to let him remain on earth.

Buddhists believe that death is an inevitable part, a consequence of life. It is embedded in their word Anicca (pronounced anichcha), that means impermanence. Death is followed by rebirth. I prefer the word ‘rebirth’ to reincarnation as the latter implies a soul which Buddhism denies. When St. Peter the Guardian at the Gates of Heaven waves my visa-application to heaven at my face, I will say to Him Yes, but I have no wish to be reborn on this wretched world.

My last thought on earth, Chuti Chitta before I die, will be that I must not be reborn, given the apparent reality of Rebirth as shown by the world authority Prof. Ian Stevenson, in his book Twenty cases suggestive of Reincarnation. Every night before falling asleep I plead to who ever is up there who controls this wretched world, that I do not wish to be reborn. But St. Peter continues to wave my karmic record at my face. The final word is apparently with the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer who said that rebirth, the term I prefer to reincarnation, is caused by the will to live; I have no will at all, to live in the wretched world.

Some readers might consider my comments as depressing, but my plea is that much of life itself is depressing, wars, violence, diseases, or deprivation and income tax ; the best antidote to this state is to accept as inevitable it and recompose one’s mind to cope with it.

(The writer is Emeritus Professor of Microbiology of the Peradeniya

University)