Live the Bhāgavatam · SB 7.2.57
Nirodha· Winding upRemember Your Own Mortality
“Thus Yamarāja, in the guise of a small boy, told all the queens: You are all so foolish that you lament but do not see your own death. Afflicted by a poor fund of knowledge, you do not know that even if you lament for your dead husband for hundreds of years, you will never get him back alive, and in the meantime your lives will be finished.”
What the purport teaches
- Yamarāja explained that even hundreds of years of lamentation could not bring the queens’ husband back to life. Meanwhile, their own lives would pass away.
- Living entities meet death at every moment, yet people think themselves deathless and do not prepare for death.
- Everyone is under the control of material nature, though people imagine themselves independent. Plans to live forever do not prevent death from arriving.
Try this today
Write down one way that accepting your mortality could change how you use today.
Ask yourself
Am I living as though death happens only to others?
Carry the question through the day, then answer it in your own words before sleep.
The study points, practice and question are short summaries drawn from Śrīla Prabhupāda's translation and purport. Read the full purport to go deeper.