Detachment from One’s Greatness

When a well-known person dies, magazines and journals sometimes publish articles about them, full of praise. Big functions are organized in their memory, where the deceased’s supposed achievements and virtues are extolled. But this can be very misleading.

When someone dies, he suddenly leaves behind all the symbols of his supposed greatness. Death takes him into a world where he is totally alone, without any support. That is the state he is actually in after he has died. But people who write and speak about a recently-deceased person don’t refer to—or even know about—this present condition of his. They only recount his past greatness, even though the deceased person has been completely separated from his supposed laurels.

Death is synonymous with total detachment from this world. Death means that a person has lost his first and only chance of life here. He is not going to get a second chance to come into this world. Every dead person should remind us of this aspect of life. But, strangely, people who extol a deceased person don’t mention this fact. Reading or hearing about the supposed greatness of a dead person, the misleading impression is created that he still possesses this greatness, while it may well be that at present he is actually in a state of total despair and helplessness.