Life and Death

The unit opens with four pictures and a question: how do you respond to people in these situations?

Picture	What it seems to show	What you might say or do
a sketch of a few men at the stone steps of a riverbank	a ghat, where many Hindu families in Nepal take the body of someone who has died for cremation (burning the body)	Stand quietly with the family; say I’m so sorry for your loss; help with what needs doing.
a man sitting alone by a window, his head down	someone sad, lonely or worried	Sit with him and ask gently, You look sad. What’s the matter?, then listen.
monks in orange robes and people in white, kneeling in prayer before an altar with flowers	a prayer for someone who has died: in many places, white is the color of mourning	Join the prayer quietly, or say Please accept my deepest sympathy to the family.
a smiling older woman holding a cup	someone happy and well, enjoying her life	Share her happiness: You look so happy today!

So life brings us both: sorrow and joy, the end of one life and the everyday pleasures of another. When someone is sad, we show sympathy: we tell them we understand and share their sadness, and we offer to help.

Before you read

What kind of text it is

Death is a Fiction is an excerpt from Life and Death in One Breath, a book by Sadhguru (Jaggi Vasudev), an Indian yoga teacher born in 1957 who founded the Isha Foundation in 1992. It reads like a talk: he speaks straight to his listeners and keeps asking them isn’t it? and isn’t it so?, as if they were in the room.

It is an opinion, one spiritual teacher’s way of seeing death, written to make us think, not a scientific report. Read it the way you would listen to a speaker you may or may not agree with: what is he saying, and what are his reasons?

The text, part by part

1. Nobody has come back

He begins with a challenge: have you ever seen someone who really died and came back? No. Some people have a near-death experience (they nearly die, and recover), but near is not good enough: being near water is not the same as being in water. So none of us has experienced death or heard about it first-hand (from someone who went through it).

2. “There is only life”

So where did we get the idea that there is a thing called death? He answers boldly: death is a fiction (something imagined), made up by people who live in unawareness (without paying attention to what life really is). For him there is only life, moving from one dimension (one form or level) to another.

3. Living is dying

What we call living, he says, we could just as well call dying. From the day you are born, you are slowly dying, and one day the process will be complete. You may travel to many places, but your body is going straight to the grave, nowhere else.

4. One breath

Is death okay or not? He calls the question silly: whatever you answer, you will die. Every moment we move between life and death, in our breath. In yoga, he says, breathing in is life and breathing out is death: breathe out and never breathe in again, and you are dislodged (forced out) from your body. Life rests on something so fragile (easily broken); death walks beside us all the time.

5. A death sentence for everyone

There is nothing wrong with death: it has to happen, and only because there is death, there is life. The moment you are born, he says, you have a death sentence: you are on death row (like a prisoner waiting to be executed). We don’t know if you will be educated, married, happy or miserable, but we know one thing for certain: you will die. Only when, where and how are unknown.

6. Why we fear it

We fear death, he says, simply because we have no idea what it is. We have ideas about everything, but when we are confronted with (forced to face) the moment of death, we know nothing. Death is the one part of life the human mind hasn’t corrupted (spoiled), as it has twisted love, relationships and God to suit itself.

7. Ideas to comfort ourselves

Many people talk about death as if they were experts. Some are dead sure they will go to heaven. He jokes: if they were so sure of a better place, why wait? Because they are not sure. We create such ideas to solace ourselves (make ourselves feel better), to handle life. The very idea of death, he says, comes from people talking about it without knowing about it. If nobody had spoken of it, we would simply know that our present existence (our life as it is now) is not permanent (lasting forever), and have no other ideas about it.

Words from the text

Words linked here open in English Vocabulary, where you can see an example and practice them in the word game. The meanings below are the ones the words have in this text.

Word	Meaning here
fiction	something imagined, not true or real
first-hand	from your own experience, or from someone who experienced it
dimension	one side, form or level of something; a way of looking at it
grave	the place in the ground where a dead person is buried
dislodge	to force something or someone out of its place
fragile	easily broken or harmed
death row	the cells in a prison for people waiting to be put to death
confront	to face something difficult that you can’t avoid
corrupt	to spoil something good, or make it dishonest
solace	(verb) to comfort someone; (noun) comfort in sadness
permanent	lasting forever, never changing

A. Find the words

B. Fill in the blanks

C. Answer the questions

D. Your view

English spelling keeps many letters that are written but not said: they are silent letters. Knee is said “nee”, doubt “dowt”, island “eye-land”. Here are the unit’s words, the silent letters in bold:

Word	Said	Silent
autumn	AW-tum	n
condemn	con-DEM	n
solemn	SOL-um	n
limb	LIM	b
thumb	THUM	b
ascend	a-SEND	c
descent	de-SENT	c
evening	EEV-ning	the second e
design	de-ZINE	g
honest	ON-ist	h
architect	AR-ki-tect	h
knee	NEE	k
pneumonia	nyoo-MOH-nee-a	p
receipt	re-SEET	p
doubt	DOWT	b
debt	DET	b
subtle	SUT-l	b
scissors	SIZ-erz	c
interesting	IN-tres-ting	the first e (usually)
foreign	FOR-in	g
stomach	STUM-uk	h
where	WAIR	h
whisper	WIS-per	h
calm	KAHM	l
salmon	SAM-un	l
psychiatrist	sy-KY-a-trist	p, h
psychology	sy-KOL-o-jee	p, h
pseudonym	SOO-do-nim	p
island	EYE-land	s
castle	KAH-sl	t
hustle	HUS-l	t
whistle	WIS-l	h, t
honor (British honour)	ON-er	h

Sympathy is the feeling of being sorry for someone’s trouble or sadness, and expressing sympathy is showing it in words. In English, the most common way is with sorry, which here is not an apology: I’m sorry to hear that means “I feel sad for you”, not “It was my fault.”

A. Three conversations

The task’s three short conversations show three troubles, from serious to small, and three ways of answering:

• Conversation I: A notices that B looks sad and asks What’s the matter? B’s father is very ill. A answers Is he? (showing surprise and interest) and I’m really sorry to hear that.
• Conversation II: A has lost a new mobile phone. B answers Have you? and So sad to hear that.
• Conversation III: A has spilt milk over the textbooks. B answers What a pity!

Notice the short echo questions, Is he? and Have you?: they repeat the helping verb of what the other person said, to show you are listening. My father is very ill. → Is he? I lost my phone (past simple) → Did you? (Have you? answers I’ve lost my new mobile phone, which means the same here.)

B. Expressions of sympathy

Match the strength of your words to the trouble. Kind but light words for small things; deeper, more formal words for serious illness and death:

For	Expressions
small troubles (a lost match, spilt milk, bad luck)	What a pity! That’s too bad. What bad luck! Oh no! My goodness!
bigger troubles (a failed exam, a lost job, an accident)	I’m sorry to hear that. That’s so sad. Oh, that’s terrible. You must be very upset about it. I know how it feels. I know how you must be feeling.
illness	I hope you feel better soon. I hope things get better soon.
a death (formal)	Please accept my deepest sympathy. I’m so sorry for your loss.

C. Sympathy from clues

We use the present simple for things that are true in general or happen again and again:

Use	Example
facts that are always true, including science	Water boils at 100 °C at sea level. Plants need sunlight.
habits and routines	He earns a salary every month. I brush my teeth twice a day.
things that are true now and for a long time	Arati and her husband live in Singapore.
feelings, likes and states	My grandfather adores his dog. Do you like chocolate milk?
timetables	The bus leaves at seven.

The form. The verb is the base form (live, need), except after he, she, it or one person or thing, where it takes -s:

Ending of the verb	Add	Examples
most verbs	-s	earns, makes, follows, consists
-s, -sh, -ch, -x, -o	-es	misses, washes, watches, fixes, goes, does
consonant + y	-y → -ies	studies, carries (but play → plays)
have	has	He has a big apartment.

Negatives and questions use do or does with the base form: the -s moves to does, so the main verb loses it.

	I / you / we / they	he / she / it
positive	I live in Bhaktapur.	She lives in Bhaktapur.
negative	I don’t (do not) live there.	She doesn’t (does not) live there.
yes/no question	Do you live there?	Does she live there?
wh- question	Where do you live?	Where does she live?

A. The correct form

B. Statements and questions from prompts

C. Negatives and questions

Condolence is sympathy for someone whose relative or friend has died. A message of condolence is a short, formal message to the bereaved family (the family who have lost someone). In Nepal such messages are often printed in newspapers, with the person’s photo, by an office, a school, a club or a family.

A. Key expressions

The model message is from the Nepal Mountain Academy, Kathmandu, for one of its members, Namgyal Sherpa, a ten-time Everest summiteer who died on 16 May 2013 while coming down from the summit to Base Camp. It has a heading, his photo, his dates of birth and death, and one paragraph.

Every message of condolence has the same parts, in the same order. Try them on a message of our own:

B. Subhadra Adhikari

Subhadra Adhikari (1946–2019) was a veteran actress of Nepali films. The task gives the clues; the model below uses only them.

How to write a message of condolence

1. Heading: Heartfelt Condolences, Deepest Condolences or Heartfelt Tribute.
2. The name with Late and the dates of birth and death (a photo in a newspaper).
3. The news: who has died, where and when, sometimes how. We are deeply saddened by the news of the passing of…
4. Who they were: their work and their good qualities. He was well known for his kindness and hard work.
5. Condolences to the bereaved family: At this time of grief, we express our sincere condolences to…
6. A promise to remember: We will always cherish his memory.
7. A prayer: May the departed soul rest in eternal peace. (Use words that suit the person’s faith or the family’s wishes, or a simple We share your sorrow.)
8. Who sends it: the name and address of the person, family or organization.

Keep it short (about 100 words), formal and kind: no jokes, no long life story, no details of the illness beyond a word.

In your final exam, a message of condolence (or of congratulations) is a Guided writing II task: about 100 words from given clues, 5 marks.

Before you read

What kind of text it is

Crossing the Bar is a short poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892), one of the best-known English poets. He wrote it in 1889, when he was eighty and had just recovered from a serious illness, and before he died he asked his son to put it at the end of every collection of his poems. So it is the poet’s farewell to life.

The whole poem is one extended metaphor: death is described as a ship leaving its harbor at evening and sailing out over the bar into the open sea.

What is “the bar”?

At the mouth of many harbors and rivers, the sea piles up a long ridge of sand under the water: a sandbar, or bar for short. A ship leaving the safe, calm harbor has to cross it to reach the open sea. At low tide it can run aground there, and when the sea is rough, the waves break over the bar with a loud, low roar, which the poet calls the moaning of the bar. At a full, high tide, though, the water covers the bar so deeply that a ship glides over it in silence. In the poem:

In the poem	What it means
the harbor, “our bourne of Time and Place”	our life on earth, with its limits of time and place
the bar	the line between life and death
putting out to sea, embarking	dying, setting out on the last journey
the boundless deep	the endless unknown, after death, where the soul came from
sunset, evening star, twilight, evening bell, the dark	the end of the day: the end of life
the full, quiet tide	a calm, peaceful death
the Pilot	God, who guides the voyager

The poem, stanza by stanza

The poem has four stanzas of four lines each (quatrains). In each, the second and fourth lines are short and set in, while the first and third are mostly longer, so the lines rise and fall like waves coming in and going out; and they rhyme ABAB (star–me–bar–sea).

Stanza 1: the call

It is sunset, and the evening star is out. The speaker hears one clear call for him: it is time to go. He hopes there will be no moaning of the bar when he sets out to sea: no roaring waves, and no crying and complaining by the people he leaves.

Stanza 2: the quiet tide

Instead he wants a tide so full that, though it moves, it seems asleep: too full to make any sound or foam. On such a tide he will return to the boundless deep he came from: the soul that came out of the endless unknown at birth now turns again home.

Stanza 3: no sad goodbyes

Twilight (the dim light after sunset) and the evening bell, and after them the dark: the end of the day, of life. He hopes there will be no sadness of farewell when he embarks (goes on board).

Stanza 4: the Pilot

Though the flood (the high tide) may carry him far beyond our bourne (boundary) of Time and Place, he hopes to see his Pilot face to face when he has crost (crossed) the bar. A real pilot comes on board only to steer a ship over the bar, and then leaves it; Tennyson’s Pilot has been guiding him unseen all along, and he hopes to see Him at last, face to face, once the bar is crossed. Tennyson himself explained that the Pilot is “that Divine and Unseen Who is always guiding us”: God.

Its mood is calm, gentle and hopeful. The poet doesn’t fear death: he sees it as going home, and asks those he leaves not to mourn.

Words from the poem

Word	Meaning here
moaning	a long, low sound of pain or complaint; here, the roar of waves on the bar
foam	the white bubbles on breaking waves
boundless	with no limit; endless
the deep	the sea (in poems)
twilight	the dim light just after the sun sets; dusk
farewell	goodbye
embark	to go on board a ship; to start a journey
tho’	though (shortened for the poem’s rhythm)
bourne	(old word) a boundary or limit
flood	here, the tide coming in and rising high
crost	(old spelling) crossed
pilot	a sailor who guides ships in and out of a harbor

A. Match the words

B. Complete the paraphrase

A paraphrase says the same thing in plain words.

C. Answer the questions

D. Life after death

In the listening, Tim phones his friend Heather to tell her that his father has died, and to talk about the funeral. CDC’s own recording is below (on CDC’s YouTube channel it is labelled Unit 5): read the words in A and the questions in B and C first, then listen, as many times as you need.

A. Before you listen

B. The textbook’s audio: answers

C. Short answers

These answers follow CDC’s teachers’ guide; those in B have been checked against the recording.

D. Extending condolences

Adverbs of frequency

Adverbs of frequency say how often something happens. They go with the present simple, because it is the tense of habits:

always → usually → often → sometimes → occasionally → rarely / seldom → never

They are not exact numbers: often can mean six or eight times in ten. But their order never changes.

Where they go:

• before the main verb: Maria always eats cereal. They usually go fishing.
• after am, is, are, was, were: She is never late.
• after the first helping verb: I have never seen snow. You can always call me.
• Sometimes, usually and often can also start a sentence: Sometimes we walk home.

A. Choose the adverb

Subject–verb agreement

A verb in the present (and was/were) must agree with its subject: a singular subject takes a singular verb (is, has, was, offers), a plural subject a plural verb (are, have, were, offer). That is easy when the subject sits right before the verb. These cases trick people:

Case	Rule	Example
words between subject and verb	find the head noun; ignore phrases with of, with, in, a shelter for…	The list of names is on the door. Hamilton Family Center, a shelter for teenage runaways, offers many services.
one of + plural	the subject is one	One of my friends is a doctor.
two subjects joined by and	plural	Your friendship and your support have meant a lot.
either… or, neither… nor, or	the verb agrees with the nearer subject	Neither the professor nor his assistants were there. Neither the assistants nor the professor was there.
there is / there are	agrees with the noun after it	There was a card on the fridge. There were two cards.
the subject after the verb	find it, then agree	Discovered in the soil was a button. On the hill stand two temples.
each, every, everyone, nobody	singular	Each of the students has a book.
an amount taken as one whole	singular	Five hundred rupees is too much for a pen.

B. The correct alternative

In the email, Asmita Praja writes to her classmate Salina. She has had an accident and hurt her back, so she can’t come to class for two weeks and will miss the unit tests. She has told the principal and the class teacher. She has medicine for the pain, but must stay in bed, which makes reading hard; after a week she may be able to read and write a little in bed. She asks Salina a favor: could she record the lectures and class notes so that Asmita can listen at home? The principal has given permission. She will miss her friends and teachers, but sees it as a short setback (a problem that delays you for a while), and thanks Salina for understanding.

How to write a reply with sympathy

1. To and Subject lines (the subject short and clear: Re: Can’t attend class or Get well soon!).
2. Greeting: Dear Asmita,
3. Sympathy first: I was so sorry to hear about…, It must be very painful…
4. Answer every request in her email, clearly: what you will do and when.
5. Encourage: Please don’t worry about…, It’s only a short setback.
6. A wish: I hope you feel better soon. Get well soon!
7. Closing: With love, / Best wishes, / Regards, and your name.

In your final exam, an email is a Free writing II task (about 200 words, 8 marks), marked on its content, organization, language and layout.

Every sentence does one of four jobs, and its end mark usually shows which:

Type	What it does	Ends with	Examples
declarative	makes a statement or gives an opinion	full stop .	My mother’s name is Laxmi. I’m not watching a football match now.
interrogative	asks a question; often begins with a wh- word or a helping verb	question mark ?	Why are you late today? Have you booked the hall for tomorrow’s program?
imperative	gives a command or makes a request; no subject (the subject is you, understood)	usually a full stop .	Complete the homework by tomorrow. Be polite to the customers. Don’t make a noise.
exclamatory	shows strong feeling: excitement, surprise, joy, anger	exclamation mark !	Oh! I forgot about the meeting. Wow! I can’t believe it.

Practice on this unit in the style of the final exam (Grade 9’s exam follows the SEE’s kind of chart). Try each one as in the exam, then open the answer.