I’m 72 years old, and so the matter of what happens next, at the end of this life--what I should expect and work for in that regard--has become particularly relevant for me at my age.
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I was going to ask this question at the beginners’ forum, but it closely relates to another question that was asked here: Is worldly life a curse? Certainly, as one of the answerers pointed out, everything we want or would like has to be strived for, in a dog-eat-dog world, full of risks, dangers and hardships, largely due to routine ongoing predation and harm done by people to eachother. Consequently, there are many tragic instances in which someone never really gets to have life. It’s as if being born guarantees only that someone has a theoretical chance of maybe getting to live.
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My question:
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Is release from (the appearance of) reincarnation available to everyone? Is enlightenment, whatever it is, accessible to everyone in this lifetime, if only they find out what they need to find out? And would exemption from rebirth even be desirable for everyone even if it were possible?
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Can everyone (including me), if they want to and make the effort, be done with worldly lives at the end of this lifetime, and should everyone want to and make it a goal for the end of this lifetime?
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I’m interested in what traditional Hindu Vedanta says about that.
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My impression was that the traditional view was that only a rare few people will be done with lifetimes at the end of this life. Isn’t that true? (My feeling now is that that’s how it is)
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This question, it seems to me, strongly relates to dharma, for me, because:
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If I spend the rest of this life counting on worldly life ending for me at the end of this life, with an attitude of rejection and renunciation of continuing worldly life, that couldn’t be very good for my next life, if I’m reborn in spite of my expectations, wishes and attitude of renunciation and rejection.
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But my question is more specific than that: What I really am asking is:
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If a person completely misses their youth, if their early life consisted only of missing-out on life, due to being cowed by their parents, and other bullies, into actually giving up on life at an early age (I mean completely giving up), long before starting school, so early that they don’t even remember any details of what was going on…Would it make any sense at all for that person to expect to be done with worldly life at the end of this lifetime? That’s my question, and it’s about me.
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Sure, this a most unusual situation, and a most unusual life. That’s why I can’t find my question being answered anywhere.
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I’m not saying that I was unusually unfortunate. Obviously many are much more unfortunate. Of course loss of life isn’t at all unusual in this world. It’s just that the manner in which it happened for me was unusual.
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So: Would it make any sense for me to expect to be done with worldly lifetimes at the end of this life? Could that be possible, or even desirable, given my background?
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Can such an outrageously, ridiculously, missed life be someone’s last lifetime? Would that make any sense?
Roger
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