Where is chithappa?

A young girl, all of 5 years and extraordinarily precocious, asked this question today - as she was staring intently at the photograph of a person that was decked with flowers, a person whom she spoke to about a month ago. There was a certain fear in her eyes - the look we have on our faces when something inexplicable has happened and when we have a gut feeling that its most probably not good. Everyone hushed. No one knew what answer to give the kid. The mother, in all her motherly affection, came there and said, he was gone out and will be back soon. The mother then quickly changed the topic and the kid immediately forgot her chithappa.

The question now is that, is she the one who is caught in fear or is it the adults around her! Yes, the girl is extraordinarily precocious. Without exaggeration, she can easily fit into a class that is two grades above the one she is at. So, giving her the 'truth', at this point, might scare her more than what she can handle. But, the reason death remains unknown to her and that it is something that she has to be scared of is certainly something that she has picked up from the adults around her. This clearly shows how a defective software, aka the conditioned mind, gets passed on from generation to generation.

When death is such an absolute certainty, we constantly live in total denial of that - of ours and of dear ones near us. Buddha says of all meditations, the greatest one is the one done on ones own death. Trying to understand it and overcoming the fear of our own death is without doubt one of the best ways to awakening. And then, one need not look like an ass in front of a five year old when she asks 'Where is chithappa?'