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We too are in the same position. If at the moment of death one wants
something to eat, that is the conclusive proof that all our lives we
have trained ourselves but to please the palate. All that we have
laid up in a long life is a taste for eating and drinking - this is
the vasana we carry over. If a mother at the moment of death thinks
of her child, we may take it that her strongest samskaras is love of
her child; all her other innumerable actions, it is clear, are
secondary. In arithmetic we are familiar with problems in proper
fractions; but however big the figures, when we reduce them the
result approximates to zero or one. In the same way, a single
powerful samskara alone remains at last as the essential thing.
This is the answer to the problem of
life. The thought arising in the final moment is the fruit of the
whole of one's life. All the efforts of life should be guided by the
idea that this final fruit should be full of sweetness, that the
last moment should be blissful. When the end is sweet, all else is
sweet. We should fix the mind on this final answer while solving the
problems of life. Plan the whole of life with this ideal in view. In
arriving at the answer to a problem, we should keep the main issue
in mind. We should direct the current of our lives in such a way
that we strengthen the samskara in which we wish to be firm at the
last moment of our lives. Our whole attention should be turned in
that direction, day and night.
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