Up sluggard, and waste not life;
in the grave will be sleeping enough.
Benjamin Franklin
Who will argue with the above? However, Hindus burn their dead and believe that the soul is immortal. So the idea of sleep in the coffin is alien to Hindus.
The above quote about the peace of death reminded me of a famous 'shloka' by the Sanskrit poet Bhartruhari. He uses exaggeration to make the point of indignities of poverty being worse than death.
The shloka has a poor man requesting a dead body in a burning ground for the dead to get up and exchange their places. Allow me to lie down and enjoy your peace for just a little while as poverty has robbed me of it, he says. The dead person listens, ponders and says that poverty is a fate worse than death and so it does not respond; continues to lie down as before.
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