A few days ago, in our Coaching WhatsApp group, there was a conversation about writing a will. Many wise and practical suggestions were shared, mostly focused on financial assets—how to ensure they are passed on smoothly to loved ones. In a way, our will reflects what we owned while alive, even after we have stopped living.
Soon after, Thara and I were visiting my sister in Bangalore. During the course of conversation, she shared the sad fate of a distant relative. On the eve of his housewarming, he met with a freak bike accident and has since remained in a coma, tube-fed in a hospital bed. It was heartbreaking to hear.
Seventeen years ago, my father passed away without writing a will. He was a generous man and did not have much to leave behind. The small house he built, he ensured was registered in my mother’s name, along with his family pension. That was his quiet foresight. Last year, my Zen master shared the draft of his will with me, and I was touched to see my name in it.
When I moved to the Zendo last year, I had already given away what little I had of financial worth. Today, I live on a modest four-digit pension. For a while, I felt there was nothing left worth writing a will for. But the question lingered: other than money, what do I truly own that is worthy? This was on my mind as I took the night bus back from Bangalore to the Zendo.
What is rightfully, legally, and morally mine—and more importantly, what am I, legally and spiritually? These are deep questions. In the natural world, animals do exhibit an instinct of “myness”—my prey, my food, my territory. Yet once their life is done, there are no personal claims. They cannot leave behind a will. Nature has no concern for their mortal remains, their cave, or the trees they nested in.
Much later, Marx observed that many human problems began when we started dividing the Earth and creating ownership: of land, water, air, trees, food. In The Communist Manifesto, he wrote:
“The theory of Communism may be summed up in one sentence: Abolish all private property.”
His point was not about denying people shelter or livelihood, but about how the very act of carving up the Earth into mine and yours created alienation and conflict. Even today, our ownership is often nominal. If gold, diamonds, or petroleum are found beneath the land we “own,” the government claims it.
If this is true of material assets, what about the products of the mind? Many of us claim ownership of those too, and make them part of our will. Yet there are exceptions. U. G. Krishnamurti, for instance, refused to claim ownership of his words. On the front page of his books, he wrote:
“You are free to reproduce, distribute, interpret, misinterpret, distort, garble, do what you like, even claim authorship without my consent or the permission of anybody.”
When I added a similar note to my first published book, The Fallen Flower, Fragrant Grass, the publisher told me they would not allow it. I may have to go to a printer directly and get it printed. In contrast, Jiddu Krishnamurti fought a long, drawn-out court battle with Rajagopal over the rights to his teachings and writings.
And then there are inventions like the three-point seat belt, the internet, and the polio vaccine—gifts to humanity, not possessions to be hoarded.
This reminds me also of Kahlil Gibran. In The Prophet, he wrote of eating fruit with reverence:
“When you crush an apple with your teeth, say to it in your heart, Your seeds shall live in my body, And the buds of your tomorrow shall blossom in my heart."
And echoing this spirit, an old proverb says: “We enjoy the shade of trees we did not plant; we eat the fruit of trees we did not sow.” Both remind us that what we inherit and what we pass on are rarely ours alone.
Hearing about my distant relative’s tragedy—much like Michael Schumacher’s accident—brought another thought to the surface. I do not want a medically prolonged life. For two reasons: first, because the most important hope is for a dignified death. And second, because I once read that 95% of one’s lifetime medical expenditure is spent in the last four or five days of life. That struck me as both sobering and unnecessary.
This reflection deepened as I skimmed Paul Kalanithi’s When Breath Becomes Air.
He writes:
“At those critical junctures, the question is not simply whether to live or die but what kind of life is worth living… Because the brain mediates our experience of the world, any neurosurgical problem forces a patient and family… to answer this question: What makes life meaningful enough to go on living?”
That question lingers with me.
And here, again, Gibran’s words return with force (On Giving, The Prophet):
“You give but little when you give of your possessions.
It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.
For what are your possessions but things you keep and guard for fear you may need them tomorrow?
And tomorrow, what shall tomorrow bring to the over prudent dog burying bones in the trackless sand as he follows the pilgrims to the holy city?
And what is fear of need but need itself? Is not dread of thirst when your well is full, the thirst that is unquenchable?
There are those who give little of the much which they have—and they give it for recognition and their hidden desire makes their gifts unwholesome.
And there are those who have little and give it all. These are the believers in life and the bounty of life, and their coffer is never empty.
There are those who give with joy, and that joy is their reward. And there are those who give with pain, and that pain is their baptism.
And there are those who give and know not pain in giving, nor do they seek joy, nor give with mindfulness of virtue;
They give as in yonder valley the myrtle breathes its fragrance into space.
Through the hands of such as these God speaks, and from behind their eyes He smiles upon the earth.
It is well to give when asked, but it is better to give unasked, through understanding; And to the open-handed the search for one who shall receive is joy greater than giving.
And is there aught you would withhold?
All you have shall some day be given; Therefore give now, that the season of giving may be yours and not your inheritors’. You often say, ‘I would give, but only to the deserving.’
The trees in your orchard say not so, nor the flocks in your pasture. They give that they may live, for to withhold is to perish. Surely he who is worthy to receive his days and his nights, is worthy of all else from you.
And he who has deserved to drink from the ocean of life deserves to fill his cup from your little stream. And what desert greater shall there be, than that which lies in the courage and the confidence, nay the charity, of receiving?
And who are you that men should rend their bosom and unveil their pride, that you may see their worth naked and their pride unabashed?
See first that you yourself deserve to be a giver, and an instrument of giving.
For in truth it is life that gives unto life—while you, who deem yourself a giver, are but a witness.
And you receivers—and you are all receivers—assume no weight of gratitude, lest you lay a yoke upon yourself and upon him who gives.
Rather rise together with the giver on his gifts as on wings; For to be over mindful of your debt, is to doubt his generosity who has the freehearted earth for mother, and God for father.”
Perhaps, then, the real will we leave behind is not a document of assets, but a testament of choices—how we wish to live, how we wish to die, and what we wish to pass on that cannot be measured in currency.
For me, it is the dignity of a simple life, the freedom of a simple death, and the hope that my words, my friendships, and my small acts of belonging may outlive me.
My late father was an ordinary man who lived an ordinary life of extraordinariness. Even after seventeen years, when my siblings and I speak of him, and when those who once knew him remember him, I realise this truth: in the end, a will is not measured in possessions, but in the meaning we leave behind.
Truly, it is not our assets that matter, but the essence we bequeath.
