Life and Death
by Mandalesvara dasa

What is life? ... A child is born. You can see his natural luster, feel the warmth of his body, hear his crying. All his vital functions are in order. Sometimes he is awake, sometimes asleep; he drinks his mother's milk and digests it. For the past nine months he has been in the womb of his mother, developing his small body. And now he is born. He will continue to grow, day by day. He will become larger and heavier. His features will change. He will grow stronger, more proportioned and coordinated. And one day his mother will say, "Why, he's so big! He's not a baby any more."
Living beings are born, and they die. And in the interim they grow, stay for some time, produce offspring, then dwindle—and the whole process ends in death.

And what is death? ... Last night at 11:31 P.M., Mr. Gerald Smith died. His pulse and heartbeat stopped, his lungs collapsed, and his body temperature dropped. The on-duty physician did all he could. But, understanding that the patient's vital functions had ceased, he pronounced Mr. Smith dead. "Living beings are born, and they die." What could be a more profound philosophical statement. Many years ago I was a college sophomore taking an introductory philosophy course. When I heard that statement from my professor, I was struck by its gravity and truth. For the first time in my life, I plainly saw: I am a living being, and I will soon die.

Some important questions came into my mind at that time—questions about death and about the purpose of life. Now, after studying Bhagavad-gita (the philosophy course taught by the original teacher, Lord Krishna), I'm finding the answers to these big questions. These questions and their answers must be just as important to you as they are to me, because they deal with something we have in common. We are all living beings destined to die.

I'd like to present here the essential facts about life and death as I have understood them from the Bhagavad-gita, under the guidance of my spiritual master, His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. Of course there's been scientific research and philosophical inquiry about life and death, but apparently no one really knows very much.

Suppose we open a dictionary to find out what "life" is. According to Webster's, it's "the principle or force by which animals and plants are maintained in the performance of their functions and which distinguishes by its presence animate from inanimate matter." But just what is that "principle or force"? The encyclopedias offer all kinds of scholarly definitions, but most of these simply acknowledge that life is hard to define. "The chemical composition of protoplasm is known," notes one encyclopedia, "but what gives it the qualities of life is not known." Or sometimes the encyclopedias try to define life by listing its external symptoms: if a thing grows, reproduces, and so on, it's alive.

But again, what is that principle that brings about these characteristics like growth and reproduction? What is that force without which a living body becomes a dead body? That's the thing the experts can't quite put their finger on. They talk about life; they study its symptoms. But they can't figure out what it is. And if you or I were to ask a university professor, we would probably get the same sort of answer—one that hedges on the real issue. And we'd probably get lost in biochemical, metabolic, thermodynamic, or genetic jargon.