Monday Morning Greetings 2025 #21 – Some Somber Quotes on Death

May 25th, 2026

“What is death but a change of body?”

 

I woke up to a startling message. Śrīla Prabhupāda was suddenly returning from Hrishikesh where he had been trying to recover his health. He was coming today to Vrindavan to leave the world.

 

We soon sat somberly in his room at the feet of our master

 

Due to his health, Śrīla Prabhupāda sat in a chair to the left of where he usually sat cross-legged in front of his desk. It seemed all the residents of the project were there, about thirty at the time.

 

His spoke solemnly. What struck me was not just what he said, but the conviction with which he said it.

 

“If one is to leave world, let him come to Vrindavan. Everything is here, the Yamunā, the white sands of Ramaṇa-reti… but what is death, but a change of body?” He then quoted the Gītā:

 

“As the embodied soul continually passes, in this body, from boyhood to youth to old age, the soul similarly passes into another body at death. The self-realized soul is not bewildered by such a change.” (Bhagavad-gītā 2.13)

 

We were there months later in the same room witnessing his passing. It was obvious to those who were there: he was not bewildered by such a change!

 

“Don’t think this won’t happen to you!”

 

Śrīla Prabhupāda’s disciples surrounded his bed during his last days. Lying on his back, he turned his head to them slowly and relayed an important message: “Don’t think this won’t happen to you!”

 

I don’t think many of us took heed of his warning then. How could we? Hardly one of us was more than thirty. Fear of death leads to our avoidance of thoughts of mortality. This tendency is just too ingrained in human psychology for the spiritually immature to avoid.

 

But now?! Are we foolish enough to maintain that illusion in the face of the fact that most of those who stood by his bed are now gone? And every week another spiritual brother or sister seems to leave.

 

“The pain of death is not the physical pain, for either the body goes into a coma, or one is given drugs to dull the pain. The real pain of death is losing one’s attachments.”

 

About thirty years ago, I was having a philosophical discussion with a Vaiṣṇava scholar in Vrindavan. I don’t remember specifically what our discussion was about, but when he said the above it struck me deeply.

 

Even now, if I lost the smallest thing, say my cell phone, I would be in anxiety. Imagine, however, the pain of losing everything at once, including your material identity and everyone you know and love. Indeed, the real pain of death is losing all one’s attachments at once.

 

“The more you transform your life from the material to the spiritual domain, the less you become afraid of death. A person who lives a truly spiritual life has no fear of death.”

 

This quote from Tolstoy hit me. It fits perfectly after the previous quotation.

 

When we perform activities of devotion such as chanting the holy names of God, because they are activities of the soul, they give us the realization that the activities we are doing and the identity in which they are done do not end with the body. We become fearless.

 

In contrast, when we perform material activities solely based on bodily identification, the activities we are doing, and the identity in which we are doing them, end at death. We become filled with duality and fear.

 

“Death is the illusion of material existence.”

 

Years ago, I began to deeply study the Yoga-sūtra and teach this text in yoga studios around New York. One important point I gleaned from the study was that all our problems are perceptual — how we see things — and not actual, how they are. I thought the best example of this was our apparently biggest problem, death. I searched for a good way to express my realization to my audience. I composed the above statement.

 

“What is death but another birthday?”

 

I seem to recall Śrīla Prabhupāda saying this, but I am not certain of its origins. Śrīla Prabhupāda could have said it. It perfectly combines his depth of realization with his sense of humor. And it’s also not an idea foreign to great spiritual teachings:

 

“The day which we fear as our last is but the birthday of eternity.” (Seneca)