this is happening all around us...

Sometimes I think we are too cloistered from the real world like a world inside another world. We have our gadgets, car, home, insurance, etc. We get information sanitized by vested interests. Our education system is rigged towards science. So like this, the real world which is operating on its’ own terms is not visible or at best tainted to our understanding.

As I was taking a break and casually looking out through the window, I saw a small tiny bird mercilessly following an insect and slowly devouring it. Yet the insect is trying to get away. At that point, if you think about it, a soul just left an insect body to take another one. This all happened in one or two seconds tops. So yes death and birth is happening ubiquitously and yet we are not in-tune to see this part of reality. But somehow when a human or when a person we know dies, we suddenly feel the surge of loss or feel how this world is temporary etc.

Factually speaking, it is happening every second all around us. Unfortunately, we are just too preoccupied with our own thoughts about success and failure and joy and fear. This reminds me of a verse from the Bhagavatam;

samāśritā ye pada-pallava-plavaṁ
mahat-padaṁ puṇya-yaśo murāreḥ
bhavāmbudhir vatsa-padaṁ paraṁ padaṁ
padaṁ padaṁ yad vipadāṁ na teṣām

For those who have accepted the boat of the lotus feet of the Lord, who is the shelter of the cosmic manifestation and is famous as Murāri, the enemy of the Mura demon, the ocean of the material world is like the water contained in a calf’s hoof-print. Their goal is paraṁ padam, Vaikuṇṭha, the place where there are no material miseries, not the place where there is danger at every step. 

- SB 10.14.58

Certainly, the insect took its dangerous step and perished. I pray that when my dangerous step arrives, that I am able to focus my internal mind at the lotus feet of the Supreme Lord Murari!

Hare Krishna