Reflections on Life and Death

As you can imagine, the man was really taken aback! Later, my friend explained to the man that offering funeral prayers on the occasion of someone’s death is not a mere ritual. Rather, it is a reminder of a very serious reality—of the fact that just as the person who has died has encountered death, one day, we, too, will meet the same fate. To say funeral prayers in congregation is actually a reminder of this fact. A truly meaningful funeral prayer is one in which someone else’s death provokes you to remember your own impending death. It leads you to realize that whatever has happened with the deceased is bound to happen with you as well. If this is how you think when you see a dead person, when you attend a funeral prayer you will feel that you are praying at your own funeral. We should be constantly aware of death. We must think of it often. A person who is so heedless that someone else’s death does not provoke him to think of his own impending death is a cold, unfeeling stone. To remember death often is an attribute of a truly sensitive person. Not to remember death is a sign of extreme insensitivity.

Marking Someone’s Death T hese days, it has become a common practice that if some “big” person dies, a large function is organized