Can we pray to Lord Krishna to award us death when we are hale and hearty?

From Bhuvana subramoniam [Bhuvanapujita radhika dd]

Also, thank you question from Bhuvana Poojit Radhika Mataji based on the article on how to understand the premature departure of devotees if we pray to lord Krishna to avoid us death when we are hale and hearty, is it alright? answer as devotees we are interested primarily in serving Krishna and we are not interested in ensuring the right consciousness at the moment of death, as our primary or foremost concern yes sometimes to increase our seriousness in devotional service we are told that we should always think of death and think that throughout our life we have to prepare so that if we are remembering Krishna throughout our life then we will remember at the time of death that is fine, but at one level if we see even trying to remember Krishna at the time of death, so that we can transcend the misery of death and transcend the suffering of birth and death that is not the noblest or the most selfless motivation so our primary motivation is to serve Krishna and please Krishna and for the service and pleasure of Krishna, whatever is required we will accept that so therefore as devotees instead of praying to Krishna let me die when I am hale and hearty we can pray to Krishna Krishna when I am hale and hearty let me serve you wholeheartedly without getting distracted and we can try our best to engage in service because to some extent if we are hale and hearty in this world, we can do so much for Krishna and Krishna's mission and attract so many people to Krishna's lotus feet if we are alive so as devotees, we do not want to either run away from service or even miss the opportunity for service certainly if we are pure enough and we remember Krishna at the time of death, we will go back to the spiritual world but as devotees, our primary interest, even after we go back to the spiritual world is to serve Krishna and that is what we can do even in this world so in general a death is not something which is very pleasant, even if we are devotees that can be quite disorienting and horrifying and who knows we may pray to Krishna that please give me death when I am hale and hearty but actually if we get some terminal disease or if some life-threatening situation which involves a lot of pain and agony comes up in our life whether we will be able to take that it is easy to offer the prayer in a state of sentimental ecstasy or inspiration that please award me death when I am hale and hearty but whether we will be able to actually endure the experience of death and be able to remember Krishna at that time we cannot be sure because even when we are hale and hearty there is no guarantee that we will be able to remember Krishna if death comes to us at that time because if we look at ourselves in this life very often when we are hale and hearty we start thinking that yes, life is not so bad and I need not be so fanatical about my bhakti let me do a little bhakti, let me do a little of my material life and sense enjoyment also, let me have a balance so certainly we need to have a balance between material life and spiritual life but that is not the same as the balance between remembrance of Krishna and sense gratification even when we are doing our material life we need to remember Krishna so I mentioned two reasons over here first is that if we die prematurely if we pray like that and Krishna fulfills our prayer and we die prematurely we will lose the opportunity to do service to Krishna which can please Krishna and benefit so many people secondly, even if Krishna fulfills our prayers and gives us death in a premature way we might not be able to endure it and the pain and the horror of it may cause us to lose our faith in Krishna and become resentful of Krishna and that may doubly backfire on us because we lost the opportunity to practice service to Krishna in the life in our life and we lost the opportunity to remember Krishna at the time of death because of our resentful attitude so therefore as devotees when Srila Prabhupada was asked what is the best prayer Srila Prabhupada said my dear lord please give me the strength to serve you that is the best prayer that we can offer to the lord and if you offer this prayer regularly then we will find that Krishna will slowly help us to become purified it may be slow, it may be fast according to what Krishna's will is we try to make it as intense and fast as possible by rendering wholehearted devotional service and that is anukund for us so in general if we can conceive of our life in terms of three zones there is a comfort zone there is a stress zone and a panic zone so comfort zone means we are basically practicing devotional service according to what our comfortable level and capacity is so panic zone means our burden becomes so much that our brain stops working and we start either crumbling under pressure or exploding under pressure crumbling means we start feeling self pity and we start feeling sorry for ourselves and we don't become non-functional and exploding means we start shouting at others because we feel so much burden so among these three zones we tend to stay in the comfort zone and we practice only as much as devotional service as is comfortable for us as is comfortable for us we stop practicing devotional service as soon as things become uncomfortable for us and panic zone means that it is completely unbearable for us so the point is that praying to Krishna for death is like placing ourselves in panic zone and death itself is not the begetter of bhakti because if death were the begetter of bhakti, all the people who die would become bhaktas or even if premature death was the begetter of bhakti then that would also mean that all those people who die prematurely would get bhakti even if we are praying to remember Krishna and so we pray for premature death still that is not approved by Chaitanya Mahaprabhu in his interactions with Sanatana Goswami because Sanatana Goswami had had boils all over his body and Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu was embracing him and the pus from his boils was staining the golden body of Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu Sanatana Goswami felt that my life is worthless and he was thinking that I should end my life by throwing my body under the wheels of Lord Jagannath in the Jagannath Yatra at that time Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu came and told him Sanatana Sanatana you are you are a thief you surrendered to me so your body is my property and through your body there are so many things I want to achieve but instead of doing what I want to do through you, you want to destroy your own property destroy your body as if it were your own property whereas it is now my property because you surrendered to me Sanatana Goswami feels both ashamed and astonished and overwhelmed when he hears this he is amazed to know that the Lord knows his heart about his intention to commit suicide and also he is overwhelmed that the Lord has accepted him in such a disheartening and endearing way he is saying that your body is my property Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu told Sanatana Goswami that I want to do so many things through you so why are you destroying that which is meant to be an instrument for my service, that's your body so even if we have a devotional desire and even if there is the possibility that we may remember Krishna at the time of death still that is not approved as seen by the example of Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and Sanatana Goswami so therefore to conclude my point I was talking about this comfort zone, stress zone and panic zone so as devotees instead of praying to Krishna to give us death we can pray to Krishna to give us more and more service so that we can come out of our comfort zone and we place ourselves in stress zone not panic zone and as we place ourselves in stress zone our capacity for doing service to Krishna and our capacity for absorbing ourselves in remembrance of Krishna increases progressively and this is how we make spiritual advancement so putting ourselves in stress zone is like lifting weight if somebody is trying to do body building by lifting weight lifting weight slightly beyond one's capacity if I can lift 10 kg weight and if I keep lifting 7 kg my muscles will never grow but if I can lift 10 kg and if I try to lift 100 kg I will break my bones so but if I can lift 10 kg I lift 11 or 12 kg then slowly my muscles build so like that so lifting within 10 kg would be our comfort zone lifting something like 100 kg would be panic zone and lifting slightly above our capacity 11, 12, 13 kg would be stress zone so therefore praying to Krishna let me die is like lifting 100 kg weight it may put us in panic so we need to pray to Krishna please give me the strength to serve you and please help me to increase my service to you and thereby increase my remembrance of you so that is the prayer that we should offer to the lord Kulashekhar maharaj does pray my dear lord when I am healthy let me die at that time so that I can remember you but it's not described in Mukund Malas Totha that after offering this prayer he dies or the lord gives him a gives him some terrible disease or some instantaneous death after that that prayer is expressing a sentiment and we need to understand and appreciate and imbibe the sentiment not imitate it literally that sentiment is that trust no future how good it is grab on the present he is saying my dear lord I don't know whether I will be able to remember you in future when I have to die therefore he is not saying let me die right now let me absorb my mind in your eyes what he prays is that is a very beautiful prayer he is saying that let the swan of my mind be absorbed in the lotus of your feet so he is actually not asking for death he is praying for absorption in remembrance of Krishna so he is praying Krishna in your lotus feet so your lotus feet are like a network and let my get entangled in it right now so my mind which is like a lotus which is like a swan, swans like to get to the root of the lotus and bring the nectar there so similarly let my mind get absorbed in remembrance of Krishna right now why? because at the time of death when the Kapha Vata Pitta are imbalanced and my throat is choked I don't know whether I will be able to remember you so the essential translation is that let me remember you right now when I have the opportunity and in this way let me practice remembrance of you so if I can become practiced and habituated to remembering you then even when it is very difficult to remember you at the time of death I will be able to remember you at that time also so therefore it is not even that prayer of Kulshetra Maharaj sometimes it is represented as if he is praying for death actually he is praying for the death of all possible distractions in his Krishna consciousness he is not praying for bodily death he is recognizing that when bodily death comes remembrance of Krishna will be very difficult likely to be very difficult therefore what should be the solution the solution is if something very difficult is going to come in the future the solution is to start preparing for it right away just like a student knows that the exam is very tough then the idea is not that let me die and skip the exam the idea is that let me study very seriously so that I can pass the exam so Kulshetra Maharaj is also praying that let me become very serious let my mind become absorbed even entangled in your remembrance in tasting the nectar of your lotus feet so we can follow in the steps of Kulshetra Maharaj and also pray to Krishna that we can also absorb ourselves in his remembrance and in his service and we can do the best that we can to put ourselves in stretch zone and absorb ourselves in remembrance of Krishna this is the prayer that we can honestly and realistically offer at our level of Krishna consciousness and thereby make steady spiritual advancement and prepare for the final exam of death when we can remember Krishna.