First of all you catch me. . .

[Guest guest]

Please accept my humble obeisances.

All glories to Srila Prabhupada.

 

 

A few times Srila Prabhupada quotes Socrates making the point that it's only

the body, not the soul, that dies and is in need of being buried. Here's one

of those instances and the reference in Plato:

 

 

1. Bhagavad-gita lecture, 7.15-18 -- New York, October 9, 1966

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“ ‘This designation, this honor, or this insult, they are pertaining to my

body, but I am not this body.’ Just like Socrates. Socrates was condemned to

death because he believed in the..., an immortality of the soul. So he was

condemned to death, and he was asked to take hemlock or something like that,

poison. And the judge wanted: ‘Well, Socrates, how do you want to be put

into the grave?’ He replied, ‘First of all, you catch me. Then you put me

into the grave. (laughter) You are dealing with my body, nonsense. I am out

of this. So you kill me or you put me into the grave or whatever you like, I

don't mind. First of all, you catch me. Then you put me into the grave.’ ”

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2. Phaedo 115c-d*

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“We shall be eager to follow your [socrates’, RV] advice, said Crito, but

how shall we bury you?

In any way you like, said Socrates, if you can catch me and I do not

escape you. And laughing quietly, looking at us, he said: I do not convince

Crito that I am this Socrates talking to you here and ordering all I say,

but he thinks that I am the thing which he will soon be looking at as a

corpse, and so he asks how he shall bury me. I have been saying for some

time and at some length that after I have drunk the poison I shall no longer

be with you but will leave you to go and enjoy some good fortunes of the

blessed, but it seems that I have said all this to him in vain in an attempt

to reassure you and myself too.”

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Hare Krishna. Your humble servant,

Rogier.

 

 

* J.M. Cooper, ed. (1997). “Plato — Complete Works”. Hackett Publishing

Company: Indianapolis/Cambridge. p. 98.