Shloka 21
Dehānta (Cyavana) and Upapatti: Kāśyapa’s Questions and the Siddha’s Account of Death, Pain, and Karmic Re-embodiment
यथा पज्चसु भूतेषु सम्भूतत्वं नियच्छति । शैत्यात् प्रकुपित: काये तीव्रवायुसमीरित:
yathā pañcasu bhūteṣu sambhūtatvaṃ niyacchati | śaityāt prakupitaḥ kāye tīvravāyusamīritaḥ |
The Siddha said: “Just as, among the five elements, a certain force governs the condition of embodied existence, so too the vital wind—agitated in the body by cold and driven by a fierce current—destroys the aggregate of the five elements (the bodily compound). Then, abandoning the embodied being with great distress, it departs upward to the higher worlds.”
सिद्ध उवाच
Educational Q&A
The verse presents a physiological-cosmological account of death: the body is an aggregate of the five elements, and when the vital wind (vāyu) becomes violently disturbed—here linked with cold—it can break down that elemental compound. The teaching underscores impermanence of the body and the decisive role of prāṇic forces in the departure of the embodied self toward higher realms.
A Siddha is explaining to the listener how the embodied condition is maintained and how it collapses at death. He describes the vital wind, stirred by cold and driven intensely, as destroying the bodily conglomerate of the five elements and then departing upward, leaving the body with great suffering.