So a celebrity has died, along with his young daughter

Why are people surprised? Isn’t death awaiting absolutely each and everyone of us?

Why are they so saddened at these deaths? What about the other passengers on the same helicopter? What about the more than 100 people dying every single minute around the world, many of them young children in countries in Africa and the Middle East from the ravages of famine, disease and war – much of these being directly related to poverty and politics motivated by greed?

What is so especially terrible about the death of someone whose outstanding talent and contribution to society revolved around throwing a ball in a net?

The obsession with celebrities whose contribution to the true welfare, emancipation and enlightenment of people in general is almost nil, is a far greater tragedy than anyone’s death.

Death occurs as a tragedy by those who are materially attached. It’s a source of very great unhappiness, to be sure. I have also lost loved ones, and experienced grief. The tragedy is not death itself; but that we have become subject to it.

Death is a fact of materially conditioned, or illusioned, life. The real tragedy is ignorance. We are ignorant that we have become imprisoned in this realm of birth and death, repeatedly. We are ignorant as to the reality of our predicament – and completely unaware that our ingrained resistance to death is because it’s completely against our nature to die.

We are ignorant that we’re actually eternal spiritual beings that have forgotten our true nature and home. We are ignorant that all beings are our own dear family members, and in our ignorance happily consume and exploit untold billions of others, via every decision we make to secure and enjoy our position here.

Death is Krsna’s reminder as to the true nature of material life, that everything is ultimately sorrow and suffering; and is an invitation to seek a far higher and most blissful reality. The tragedy is to ignore the actual opportunity death is offering, and lament or try to ‘sensitively’ and ‘tactfully’ ignore its actual invitation, so as to stubbornly maintain our mundane vision, values and goals.

The tragedy is that souls are receiving the special opportunity of this human birth, but are living and dying in ignorance of what this is. That this is the opportunity to begin to understand I am not of this world, I am not actually the owner and enjoyer in constant competition with so many other would-be owners and enjoyers …but we are all parts and parcels of the Supreme Lord, and meant to participate in His loving service and therefore eternal pleasure.

The tragedy is not only that the eternal soul has fallen asleep and so into a nightmare of forming and then being forced to lose so many relationships due to the endless cycle of repeated birth and death; but in complete ignorance, not only wasting this human birth, but eating and behaving in so many thoughtless ways as to ensure much suffering in the next lives.

Foolish materialists are sadly mourning this one celebrity and his young daughter – and offering the impotent blessing “rest in peace.” There is no rest! Everything is in constant motion here, with each action producing so many reactions.

His was not an auspicious life. Simply a material life engaged in work suitable for an overgrown child, throwing a ball in a hoop for obscene amounts of money, while the life of a calf or a baby in Yemen is valued at pennies, if that! And enjoying so much celebrity and wealth simply as a consequence of past good karma.

It is tragic enough when completely illusioned materialists lament over such a one’s passing; but far more so when devotees, trained to understand something of the actual reality, also join in the public lamentation and repeat the ignorant absurdity to ‘rest in peace.’

The compassion of the devotees, as fully distinct from impotent mundane sentiment, is to assist in the transcendental movement to share kirtan and hari-katha and mahaprasad all over the world. This alone can counteract the tragedy of material life.