Source Text
The answer lies in full joyful surrender before death. Adi Da Samraj’s “easy death” is a willing, conscious giving back of life. You surrender not because there is nothing left in the end and you are obliterated and extinguished anyway, but because there is nothing to keep and the law that has given you life in the beginning requires surrender at its end. In this way, death becomes a necessary experience, “a radical fast,” Adi Da Samraj calls it, since it purifies us of our elemental aspect, our gross self.
Death is the transformation of the knower… . Death is a process in which the knower is transformed, and all previous or conditional knowing is scrambled or confounded… . To ‘consider’ death is fruitless, since the knower is what is changed by death.”‡
Traditional Approaches to Death and the Dual Sensitivity That Transcends Them
But we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead. [2Cor. 1:9] And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. [Rev. 21:4]
The following quotations are from the Qur’an on the same subject: Every soul will taste death and you will be paid in full only on the Day of Resurrection. Whoever is kept away from the Fire and admitted to the Garden will have triumphed. The present world is only an illusory pleasure. [The Family of Imran (3).185] [I]t is He who gives life and death; the alternation of night and day depends on Him; will you not use your minds? [The Believers (23).80] Look, then, at the imprints of God’s mercy, how He restores the earth to life after death: this same God is the one who will return people to life after death—He has power over all things. [The Byzantines (30).50]
The second human approach to death is to escape from the patterns of suffering evident in human existence.
The most intensive practitioners of such religions desire to escape bondage to this perpetual and helpless sequence through devotional and mystical union with the Divine, asceticism, and/or extreme inversion away from what is perceived as the illusory world. These traditions are more apt to “purify” or eliminate the body after death—via fire or exposure—than to memorialize bodily remains.
Meditating on all [these] disadvantages of samsāra, you should develop renunciation or the state of mind that wishes to be completely free of all suffering. This is the Hinayāna motivation and with it an understanding of Voidness brings you Liberation. [From the commentary, by Beru Khyentze Rinpoche, to The Mahamudra: Eliminating the Darkness of Ignorance, by the Ninth Karmapa, Wang-ch’ug dor-je, trans. by Alexander Berzin (Dharamsala: Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, 1978), 23 and 29–30.]
For True Liberation, there must be both the full acknowledgement of mortality and the recognition of the impulse to Perfect and Eternal Happiness. I Say to you: Always remember that this world (and conditional existence altogether) is not paradise, that this is “mortality-land”, that every one and every thing passes, and that True Happiness is not about (and does not require) the perfecting or eternalizing of this condition (or of any condition at all), and that True Happiness is not (Itself) a matter of staying here, or clinging to here, or leaving here (or of going, or staying, or leaving any “where” at all). I also Say to you: Always be devotionally responsive from the heart—and (thus) always remember that your inherent (and inherently great) heart-disposition wants and needs (and cannot—in any moment, or even now—be satisfied with anything less than) Infinite, Absolute, True, Eternal Happiness (or Most Perfect Divine Self-Realization).
I Say to you: Always remember that this world (and conditional existence altogether) is not paradise, that this is “mortality-land”, that every one and every thing passes, and that True Happiness is not about (and does not require) the perfecting or eternalizing of this condition (or of any condition at all), and that True Happiness is not (Itself) a matter of staying here, or clinging to here, or leaving here (or of going, or staying, or leaving any “where” at all). I also Say to you: Always be devotionally responsive from the heart—and (thus) always remember that your inherent (and inherently great) heart-disposition wants and needs (and cannot—in any moment, or even now—be satisfied with anything less than) Infinite, Absolute, True, Eternal Happiness (or Most Perfect Divine Self-Realization).
AI Summary
Easy Death by Avatar Adi Da Samraj presents key insights from the Adi Da tradition. The 10 passages above capture the essential teachings.
Core Themes:
- [To be expanded]
Key Passages: Highlights 1, 3, and 10 are particularly representative.
This entry was generated from Readwise highlights. Expand with additional context as appropriate.