Terrifying Result

In this world, we have many things that enable us to survive and flourish. We have physical bodies, for instance. We have friends and relatives. We have opportunities for work. We have money. There is an amazing life-support system all around us that is finely tuned to support life. And so on.

All these things are available to us in this world. Consciously or otherwise, we think that we own such things, or that they belong to us. We imagine that they will remain with us forever. But after a limited span of time, each of us dies, and we are forced to leave all these things behind. We now have to travel, all alone, to an entirely different world. We are confronted with eternity before us, for which we will find that we possess absolutely nothing at all.

Besides the material things of this world, there is something else that we have—our personal status. Each of us makes efforts in whatever way we can to establish a certain position for ourselves. We acquire a status in society. We create a unique ‘history’ for ourselves, which comes to be seen as part of our personality.

This status or position that we establish for ourselves in this world with great effort is also only temporary. Death will suddenly steal this away as well. After we die, we will enter the next world totally bereft of our material possessions as well as the worldly stature that we had so carefully sought to cultivate while on earth.

How many of us care to be mindful of this?