Everyone at the gathering that day, held in the quiet hall at the center, came to talk about the afterlife.
“What happens when we die?”
“Do we meet our loved ones again?”
“Is heaven real?”
A room full of people, old and young, searching for something—comfort, certainty, a reason.
The master, the one they came to hear, listened. He smiled. He even laughed. But he didn’t answer.
Not one word.
Later, when the crowd had gone and the sun was falling low, his students asked why he stayed silent.
“They came for answers,” said one.
“No,” the master said. “They came for reassurance. There’s a difference.”
Then he added something quietly, almost like thinking out loud: “Have you noticed it’s usually those who don’t know what to do with this life who most want another one that lasts forever?”
Still, one student asked the question again. “But is there life after death or not?”
And the master just looked at him—gently—and said:
“Is there life before death? That is the question.”
That question lodged itself in one of the students—John—and stayed with him for the rest of his life. The very next day, he left the center. Not in defiance, but in search of his own answer.
He moved to the city. Baked bread. Fell in love. Raised a family. Grew old.
And one day, sitting with his granddaughter on a quiet evening, she asked him the same thing:
“Grandpa, is there life after death?”
John smiled, touched her cheek, and said, “I don’t know. But I know this: there is life before death. And it's ours to live—fully, while we can.”
She leaned into him. The sun dipped behind the rooftops.
Sometimes the deepest answers don’t sound like answers at all. They sound like questions we’re meant to live into.
So, what are you doing with the life you’ve got?
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