THE SPEAKING TREE

No Fear Of Dying
Bhagavan Shree Prasannaji

Death is powerless before the person who has depth of feeling for life. I have come across people who are not afraid of death, and they are from different walks of life. They include those in public life, householders and also convicted criminals. They seem to be ready for the ultimate act without feeling any remorse. But can we say that death is powerless before them and that they have depth in them as evidence of this? Perhaps not. Perhaps they are being seen as the strongest of people who have depth of knowledge that enables them to encounter death without fear. It is very easy to end life or to say life ends you, regardless of your likes and dislikes. Every one of us on earth has to accept this fact and be prepared to leave the body at a given point of time. But where does depth come into the picture if everyone is leaving the body lovingly and without fear? Can we live life with the trauma of the other who is dying? Can we live life without the fear of death haunting us? Can we live life with utmost freedom and happiness without being negative about living? Can we live life with full knowledge of life and its workings? Without knowing life we can never challenge death and make it feel its powerlessness. You can never ever know life without being with death and feeling it first-hand. Death can never ever be logically explained as you have to know death to explain it. You have to die to know deathbut you cannot explain without being alive. The nearest that you can get to death is to be with the dying and experience the trauma or otherwise, so as to feel the experience as best as possible, without actually dying and this might help increase your depth of knowledge of death. Once you understand death and are ready to live with it life nourishes you so that you feel life to the fullest which in itself increases your depth of life. Only when you feel death can you feel life, which opens the sublime qualities of intelligence, fearlessness, wisdom, love, happiness, joy, creativity, expression, truthfulness and life itself. If any of these is lacking in you then you cannot feel depth of yourself. You will be floating in life waiting for the tides to take you over and leave you on the shore. But the shore never appears unless you dive deep inside yourself without waiting for anyones help to reach within. You have to overcome all the hurdles of negativities which hinder you in the form of greed, fear, attachment, dependency, ignorance and of course death, to reach your Self. You dont need to prove your depth to the other but certainly need to question yourself about what you know and be comfortable with the answer. You will find the true answer only in silence. And true silence can be felt only when all answers lose their depth. No one in the world can reveal the secret for you but the secret reveals itself once you are

ready to know it. You are the only one who can challenge yourself to know whether you have depth in you to know death. Nishane School of Spiritual Sciences. www.speakingtree.in Join the worlds first spiritual networking site to interact directly with masters and seekers.

Its The Right To Dignity

Put an end to discrimination against people with life-limiting and chronic ailments

Harmala Gupta

Misfortunes have a way of bringing out the best in people and the worst in institutions. Thalassemia struck Sukhsohit Singh, but he challenged himself to overcome the odds and qualified to be an IAS officer. No favours asked or given: he did it all on his own. Obviously, his medical condition was not insurmountable and he showed how adversity can be fought with dignity and determination. That is when the institution struck back and did its best to wreck Sukhsohits dream. According to current government rules, Sukhsohit cannot join the services because he has thalassemia. But why should that matter? Thalassemia is troublesome, but it is not a crippling ailment. It does not stop one from performing at superior levels, and Sukhsohit Singh just proved that. Sukhsohit, however, is not done yet. He has raised his performance level even higher by challenging the decree and taking the fight to the courts. Fortunately, he is not alone, nor is thalassemia the only medical condition that is wronged by the Indian government. The present Persons and Disabilities Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation Act, 1995, in India only offers protection to those who have suffered a permanent disability, like loss of sight or a limb, or have HIV/AIDS. This leaves a big gap as it ignores the plight of those who are not technically disabled but are burdened by the stigma of not being normal. Not just those with thalassemia, but a growing number of cancer survivors as well come under this category. They, too, suffer from needless discrimination because of the present employment policies of the government and fall between two stools. It is really a case of adding insult to injury. Far from helping people with chronic ailments, the administration actually sets out to hunt them down and rob them of their rights as ordinary citizens. Thanks to persistent pressure from civil society networks, the US in 1990 passed four federal laws to provide some job protection to cancer survivors. These Acts offer protection to cancer survivors who face employment discrimination because of a disability, a record of a disability, or those regarded as having a disability. The latter is particularly significant for, to quote from a judgment handed out by the United States Supreme Court Justice William Brennan in a case related to discrimination at the workplace in 1987, Societys accumulated myths and fears about disability and

disease are as handicapping as are the physical limitations that flow from actual impairment. What makes the Americans with Disabilities Act stand out is that not only does it offer protection to the person diagnosed with cancer but also to members of the family. The Act requires an employer to provide reasonable accommodation by letting the employee work flexible hours until the treatment, if it is a child or spouse, is over. The fear that cancer survivors and those with life-limiting and chronic conditions will ask for more leave and will be an extra cost to the company is also not borne out. Research studies and experience have shown that when given a chance such people outperform their colleagues, perhaps because they have something to prove. Records also show that their attendance rates are higher than the normal population. The pressure exerted by civil society in the US also resulted in the right of people seeking employment to refuse to answer questions that pertain to their health status if this is not directly pertinent to the requirements of the job at hand. The employer, too, may not demand this information on the same basis. Getting health insurance cover, leave alone life insurance, is another bugbear. This is particularly unfair on childhood survivors of cancer who though considered cured will not be provided a safety net as they grow older and their risk of getting cancer begins to approximate that of the general population. In the US, group insurance is one way the risk has been shared so that people with pre-existing conditions can get covered. The latest health Bill proposed by President Barack Obama has gone even further and made it illegal to deny anyone in the US health insurance on the grounds that they have a pre-existing condition or illness. We must follow suit. Is it not high time, therefore, for the government of India to spell out a policy that seeks to protect the right to livelihood and dignity of people with lifelimiting and chronic conditions who currently face widespread discrimination? They are not asking for special privileges or for separate quotas. All they want is the right to be treated as equals and as people who still have something worthwhile to contribute to society. Our Disabilities Act must be amended so that people like Sukhsohit are given the support they need and the chance they deserve. It is also time we began to heed what the WHO and other international health agencies have been saying for some time. They have alerted us to the fact that changing lifestyles and longer life spans are going to see non-communicable diseases like diabetes, chronic respiratory and cardio-vascular conditions, depression, as well as diseases like cancer, Alzheimers, etc, fight for attention with infectious diseases. Are we going to shut off a whole chunk of our population because they are deemed not normal by some archaic standard? The writer is founder-president of CanSupport, a non-profit organisation that runs a home care programme for people with advanced cancer in Delhi.

Sukhsohit Singh: Where theres a will, theres a way