Suicide ("Jump" the Cartoon)

A Buddhist Perspective on Suicide

Dharmachari (for Wisdom Quarterly)

The Buddhist teaching on suicide is very clear. It is killing. It is karma with heavy and unpleasant consequences. Even when life is unbearable, and it will be, there are options that are far better and available to everyone. The Petavatthu (Tales of Hungry Ghosts) has surprising tales of the consequences.

Suicide is not possible through killing oneself: All that is really happening is transitioning from a bad situation to a worse situation. One is still in a situation, still stuck in Samsara, still existing. What kind of "suicide" is that?

Craving is the root of suffering. There are, in this sense, three forms craving may take. First, there is the obvious and that is craving for sensual pleasure. Second, there is craving for continued existence (wanting to live on eternally). Third, and most relevant here, is the craving for annihilation.

Nirvana is the quenching of all thirst, craving, and desire. The world is not the problem; craving is. Life is not a problem but how one approaches it. The solution is enlightenment. The solution is redirecting the mind to what uplifts it, away from what is bringing on dejection.

Esther and Jerry Hicks in their books and workshops on the law of attraction explain an amazing thing. With a chart, they illustrate the need to move up an emotional ladder step by step, rung by rung. One cannot jump. It is not possible to go from depressed and hopeless to cheerful and optimistic in one step. Instead, one passes through intermediate stages. So very negative things like anger might be relatively good -- in that it is moving away from hopeless to angry, from angry to vengeful, from vengeful to relieved, and so on. One shifts. It doesn't become a physical action, and one doesn't remain angry. One goes to a better feeling state. One follows a bliss that actually leads to a better feeling state. One can reach "the end of all suffering" (nirvana).

Suicide "hotlines" and outreach call centers are all around (911). Assisted suicide falls into the karma of killing as well. It may not seem fair, but if a Buddhist monk or nun were to counsel or even suggest to someone to take his or her own life by saying something like, "What is this life for you? It wouldn't be much of a loss!" that is enough to permanently banish the monastic from the Sangha. They would be forfeiting their ordination. Like suggesting or recommending abortion, it is considered killing -- one of four grave offenses that cannot be corrected (parajika).

That being the case -- that the monastic did not do the killing, did not see the killing, but only thought it and said it as a suggestion -- how much more grave for the person who engages in the actual act? The person who commits suicide would bear that additional karmic burden, not only losing the great and rare opportunity of being human, as woeful as it is in this world, but inheriting a more painful, more desperate situation as a result. Shift. Happiness awaits right here in this world.

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"You are the vibrational writers of the script of your life, and everyone else in the Universe is playing the part that you have assigned to them" -- Abraham (excerpted from a workshop in San Francisco, 3/2/97, see previous quote; subscribe to daily quotes).