Recently the day our spring semester ended, I started walking back home happily from my office. On the way, I met my neighbor who was taking his dog on their daily walk. Whenever I see him, I love to talk with him on any number of issues, everything from our general lives to politics. I mentioned to him that I hadn’t seen an elderly gentlemen who I used to speak with on my way to campus in the mornings. My neighbor informed me the elderly man died a couple of months back.
A couple of years back, another neighbor of ours, with whom I used to talk, died.
Both deaths happened quietly. I didn’t even notice.
I told my neighbor that in our country as well as in our culture, dying doesn’t go quietly. There is so much crying around the dead person, even if they are elderly. My neighbor concluded by saying, “our lives also hang in the balance.” I agreed, adding, “Always.”
I am a chemist, but because of my age, I think about life after death too. Hinduism and Buddhism believe in reincarnation. Hinduism is an age-old religion. Ancient people would take destructive things in nature and worship them. To me, the Hindu simply worships nature.
A well-known saint of the modern era, Swami Vivekananda explained that Hindus worship different gods and goddesses to reach to the supreme authority.
It’s like the letter goes to the recipient after traveling through different post offices.
I find similarity with many other religions. The Christians’ prayer goes to God via Jesus, Buddhist via Lord Goutam Buddu and Islam via Prophet Mohammed.
Another Saint, born in 1838, Sri Ramakrishna, the Guru of Swami Vivekananda said, “many minds many paths” but everything ends up in one supreme.
In science that’s what we refer to as state function. In a way, God is a state function. The path doesn’t matter. Reaching to the top of the mountain by climbing or dropping from the helicopter, doesn’t matter.
The concept of reincarnation is thousands of years old, dating back to nature worshipers. They used to believe the soul is immortal energy form but body is very much mortal. So, the souls look for and enter into another body depending on the previous life activities. To me, it’s like recycling.
No doubt, modern medical science and technology can prolong our lives. Longevity is increasing everywhere in the world. My father- in-law in Bangladesh, at the age of 90 was nearly on his death bed a couple of months back. He remained in ICU for a week and now is walking.
CNN reported a story about a Oregon mother who had been diagnosed with colon cancer. After her insurance company denied covering a new life-saving liver for her, she wrote a personal letter to the CEO of the company, appealing to him for help. In the story, the mother said she just wanted to be able to go to the playground with her 4-year-old.
I see a ray of hope for conquering cancer within a decade. A technique which is known as CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats), a simple technique to manipulate DNA, will be able to replace cancer genes with suitable good genes.
David Liu born to an immigrant family from Taiwan, is considered a father of CRISPR technology and is 44 years old.
Namaste, Dr. Liu.
Jiben Roy, a native of Bangladesh, teaches chemistry and pharmaceutical sciences at Mississippi University for Women. His email address is [email protected].
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