Tomorrow is death -- YOU ARE LIKE THE YELLOW LEAF -- next moment is death: WHAT WILL YOU TAKE WITH YOU? Have you earned anything that you can take with you? If you have not earned anything, then your life has been a sheer wastage. You may have accumulated much wealth, you may have become very famous, but all that is futile. You cannot take it with you. Your degrees, your titles, your awards, all will be left behind. You will be going utterly alone. Is there something which you can take with you?
There is only one thing which you can take with you, and that is true wealth. Buddha calls it meditation, awareness, watchfulness, mindfulness, consciousness. If you become more and more conscious, you can take that consciousness with you. But you are living a very very unconscious life. Your whole life is mechanical, you simply go on repeating. You are not really living, you are being lived by unconscious desires.
Buddha says: Meditation is the only wealth, because you can take it beyond death. In fact he says this is the criterion: if something can be taken beyond death it is true wealth. If it cannot be taken beyond death, it is untrue wealth, it is a deception. And not only that you are deceiving others, you are deceiving yourself. And when death will knock at your door, you will weep, you will cry, but then nothing can be done.
It is said of Alexander the Great that when he was dying, tears were rolling down his cheeks, because the physicians had told him that he had only twenty-four hours at the most; his death was absolutely certain within twenty-four hours. His physician asked, "Why are you crying? You are a brave man."
Alexander said, "I had promised my mother that I would come back home. In twenty-four hours I cannot reach there. At least forty-eight hours are needed, and I am ready to give my whole kingdom to you if you can manage twenty-four hours more for me. I would like to fulfill my promise. I have given my word, and my mother will be waiting for me."
The physician said, "It is impossible. Nothing can be done. In fact twenty-four hours is also too optimistic a hope. As I see it, things are going down the drain. Within two or three hours you will be gone. Twenty-four hours is the most, more than that is not possible."
And Alexander died within six hours. Before he died, he asked for one thing only.
He said, "When you take me towards the cemetery, let my hands hang outside the casket."
"Why?" asked his generals. "It has never been done, it is not conventional. Why this eccentric idea?"
Alexander said, "For a simple reason. I would like people to know that I am going empty-handed. I am dying like a dog. Let people know. I lived with the idea that I am great, that I am the world conqueror. But all that I have managed to do is waste my life. My whole kingdom is not capable of purchasing even a few minutes for me."
Death is so powerful, but one thing it cannot take away from you, that is meditation. If you can become rooted in your being, alert, conscious, watchful, you will see that you are not the body, and you are not the mind, and you are not the heart. You are simply the witnessing soul, and that witnessing will go with you. Then you can witness even death. That witnessing is the source of all religion. Those who have attained to that source are the enlightened ones, are the buddhas.
- Osho, "The Dhammapada - The Way of the Buddha, Vol 7, #1"