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Divine Kala
07 April 2012, 12:44 AM
I have encountered many texts that say that suicide is a no-no in Hinduism. Particularly the Saiva Siddhanta Church and the Spiritual Research Foundation and the Forum for Hindu Awakening all say that it accumulates severe demerits.

But... as someone who has suffered intense depression and who knows people suffering from untreatable (by current standards) depression, I often wonder if, for these people, it is really such a sin. Clearly karma is impacting them and could it be possible that it is part of their present life that they kill themselves?

If you have not suffered the misery of depression, can you really stand there and say that suicide is an absolute no-no? Yes, it hurts the friends and families of the victim but the suffering that they are going through is immense. They literally cannot see any other way out and in the case of treatment resistant depression (which isn't that rare, actually) there often isn't any way out. You can't pull yourself up out of it, you are stuck. There is no light at the end of the tunnel because depression is so dark, so all consuming that it smothers all light around you.

The only light, the only relief, is the escape of death and with it the end of the torment. Can we really tell these people 'you must suffer'?

I have a friend who, unfortunately, suffers from treatment resistant depression. She is so sick that she cannot live alone so she lives with her parents still and is under pretty much constant watch. She is on a cocktail of drugs which make no difference and she has pretty much lost count of the times she's tried to kill herself. Would it really be so terrible, for her and those around her, if she succeeded? The emotional trauma she is inflicting on her friends and family every time she tries to kill herself is immense and that trauma she suffers from not succeeding is only compounded by each failed attempt.

So... is it really that bad?

Mana
07 April 2012, 02:50 AM
Namaste DK,

What does it mean to desire mokSa (http://spokensanskrit.de/index.php?tinput=mokSa&direction=SE&script=HK&link=yes&beginning=0) with all one's heart?

I was told that I suffer incurably from manic depression; having desired mokSa with all of my heart, by ignoring the doctors and following my path towards sanAtana dharma, I have miraculously changed my diagnosis from Manic depression, to hypersensitiveness; I prefer to call it my intuition.

If you repeat the mantra given by a Western Doctor; you become that which they tell you that you are ...

Their prediction and prescription define your future.

Release from rebirth and death can be found; through knowledge of the Self.


The whole point is to make life worth living by finding ones place and path free from bondage; Suicide is the complete opposite of this.


praNAma

mana

devotee
07 April 2012, 10:33 AM
Namaste DK,

The suicide is discouraged because :

One, we cannot escape our fruits of Karma so either in this body or in another body we have to go through it. The body is the vehicle for working out our Karma and also accrue some good Karma which could offset the past bad karma. This body can also become vehicle to burn all Karma if Self-realisation occurs.

When you destroy your body, this Karma denies you having another body soon. So, you go through pains all without a body. Please remember that pain is a matter of mind and mind is enough to make you suffer the hellish experience even without a body. Moreover, the "life" of a disembodied JeevA is many times more than a human body & so the pain to be suffered is compounded many times over.

So, if we take a broad picture of the whole thing, killing oneself is a business of loss. You lose the body by which you could have accumulated good Karmas to offset the Karma you are suffering from and you go through it in disembodied form many times over. So, it is a very very bad bargain.

Whatever condition we are in is due to our own Karma and we can get out of it with our own Karma alone. So, do good Karma as long as you live, as this chance is not available once this body is gone.

My advice is :

a) Take her to some true great saint. These saints can help to mitigate the effects of Karma with their powers.
b) Ask her to read Bhagwad Gita one chapter everyday. If she is unable to do that herself, let someone read it out to her.
c) Pray for her in all your prayers

By God's grace, the sufferings would get alleviated.

OM

Divine Kala
07 April 2012, 11:12 AM
Ah, Devotee... if I could take her to see a saint I would but she is a staunch atheist and would not be happy! As a result there's no way she's going to read any of the Gitas.

The real question I'm trying to get at, I suppose, is what if it is your destiny due to past karma to commit suicide? How can we, who are not realised souls, judge?

With treatment resistant depression there really is no way out. Doing good acts won't make you feel better and in most cases you can barely even drag yourself out of bed to do anything.

Also, Mana! I suffer from bipolar and went through a phase of 'psychosis' at one point that brought me so close to God I miss it every day. Before that period, however, I was very sick. Very, very sick and my way of expressing that internal illness was to make myself physically sick. Every time I did it I could have killed myself and I am very lucky it never went that far.

Just because we're 'sick', doesn't always mean we're sick.

Mana
07 April 2012, 12:00 PM
she is a staunch atheist and would not be happy! As a result there's no way she's going to read any of the Gitas.

Namaste DK,

Therein lies her problem!

With no dharma, this force becomes very destructive and unpredictable. In essence adharma. Yet it can be so very creative to; When given a channel.

I am so sorry to hear that you battle with this energy, the art, I find is in not fighting but running with it. Turning that which is negative in to a positive, above all by not trying to block it out. So that it can find a natural balance and thus you your path.

If this energy has little ego to grab a hold of; it really is a different thing all together. It is the ego which dances uncontrollably to its every whim but not the Self. The dance its self is not a problem when properly channelled; but can be come very destructive when it is misguided.

Careful on that motorbike! You could be revealing a left handed mishap to us right now ;) I don't know the details.

You are in excellent hands upon the path of sanAtana dharma; this does not make it easy, but as you know, it can be more an obligation than a choice when we feel manipura pushing and pulling so.
Remember that you have nothing to prove, that dharma is handed down from elders, weather or not that person has had a similar path to yours or not, is irrelevant. You have everything to gain by listening and nothing to lose. The nature of this knowledge is in its realisation and not in its words or fine details. They are the elements which allow it to pass so lovingly through time.

I should be interested to hear of how the mania grabbed or grabbs you?
Do you take any medication?

No obligation of course, these matters are so very personnel.


praNAma

mana

Arjuni
07 April 2012, 12:04 PM
Namasté,

DK, it is very understandable to search for an end to intense pain, and also to have great compassion for those who are drowning in sorrow. The difference between having suicidal feelings, and actually attempting or committing suicide, is that the feelings are reasonable; the action, on the other hand - as Devotee has pointed out - is guaranteed to leave you in worse condition than before. It could well be your karma to commit such a deed, but better to overcome that karma and change it, the same as you would if you learned that were "fated" to kill a bunch of schoolchildren or something: you would adamantly fight to do better, rather than commit such violence, and it makes no difference whether the victim is one person (yourself) or many.

The Hindu way is not a forced continuation of suffering; it is the knowledge that every minute of life is an opportunity, to do something good and alleviate future suffering, for this lifetime and future lives too. It is as if I broke my hand, and to take my attention away from that pain, I deliberately broke every other bone in my body. In the short term, it would certainly be a distraction. But as the pain from those other injuries grew, I would realise and regret my error. A better choice would be to simply seek therapy for my hand. (The analogy is imperfect, because there are some for whom the "therapy" doesn't work; it would be as if my hand never healed, and the pain always stayed.)

The hardest part, mentally, is that the insidious, continuous-loop nature of depression makes it near-impossible to see a way out, or to stick with any routine which would ameliorate the suffering.

From a Hindu perspective, simply know that what you do is noted. Every single time you call God's name, Beloved hears. The effects may not be instantly obvious, but Beloved hears. Call. You become upset with friends who suffer alone and don't tell you that they need help - because you love them and want them to ask - so, please do not cut that greatest Friend out of your troubles. In Ayurveda we learn that the greatest healing is to return to the universal Source of health, and that all sickness is ultimately the agony of separation from That.

However, since your friend is an atheist, I will offer some practical, non-God-related advice as well, some ideas that may help improve things even a little.

A wise doctor once explained this condition to me as such: "Think of general contentedness, will, motivation, and joy, as a scale from 1 to 10, with 10 being the greatest possible elation and 1 being the lowest of the lows. Many people have a baseline emotional state of 5, average, an ordinary day. But your baseline is more like a 2 or 3. You wake up feeling bad before anything has even happened yet. And events that would send most people into an 8 or 9 - dancing in the streets - serve just to pull you up to a 5 or 6, 'okay' or maybe a little more.
But it's not that you're cursed or that there's anything 'broken' in you. You're just wired differently. You think a lot, you're sensitive; you still feel and react to things like other people, including really difficult pain. What you need is help in moving that baseline number up, as much as you can."

Some of the pain of depression comes from hearing, from all quarters, that you are pathetic, broken, that you suffer a disease and that, like alcoholism or addiction, you will never get well and will struggle with it all your life. I'm not saying that mental illness isn't real, but it's difficult to ever feel well when "sick person" becomes hammered into your identity, when you are sick rather than have a sickness. How difficult it is, to labour under condemnation and failure, to carry that load around before you even get a chance to try. And how awful and rotten about yourself, how abnormal and isolated and outcast, you feel. You pointed that out very well in your reply post.

That wise doctor's thinking changed the way I thought about myself. I began to give myself credit for things I did, using that scale in my head sometimes. "I felt like a 2 when I woke up. Getting out of bed today might not have seemed like an accomplishment, but many people only reach '2' when somebody dies or when they have a horrible case of the flu. I did something right even though I feel awful." And instead of thinking, I will only be a sick person, forever, I started thinking that all of the moments I didn't feel bad, or the moments when I acted beyond sickness, counted for something in my character, and my life, too.

We also live in a profoundly sick world, in which things are radically different environmentally, culturally, and socially than they were at the times of the scriptural texts. One example is food: how this basic building block of our bodies - the formative ingredient for every inch of our physical being - has been tampered and bred to the point of unrecognisable.

That's why I suggest to look very closely at diet. If either of you are vegetarian, know that vitamin B12 is available in almost no non-animal foods. Excess B12 is stored in your liver over the years, but when you stop consuming it, it takes anywhere from 1 to 7 years to use up all you have stored. When it's all gone, you experience one hell of an emotional crash. (Ever hear a former vegetarian or vegan say, "Yeah, I tried that diet for a few years, but then just crashed and had to stop..."?)

Wise Therapist put me on Solaray brand vitamin B12, 50,000 mcg per day, for a while. That mega-dose of B12 has helped some people, and It certainly aided me. So did the advice in the book 7 Weeks to Emotional Healing, by Joan Larson. (Yes, the title is amazingly stupid, and the book looks gimmicky and lame. It's worth the read anyway.) Her advice on essential fatty acids, amino acids, etc. - particularly l-tyrosine and vitamin D - also improved my existence, a lot.

Wise Therapist also told me that suicide is the anger and rage of homicide, turned inward, and is a path sometimes taken by those who are outraged by injustices that they feel powerless to remedy. Such people are gentle and cannot stand the idea of harming someone else - but the urge to harm, to lash out, is nonetheless there. A therapist can help to uncover and allow expression of this anger, if one can't safely do this with a roomful of punching-pillows, or a pen and paper, or any other constructive tool. But finding a voice to speak, rather than silencing that voice or turning it against yourself, can sometimes be the key to stopping that pain - a key to a better life that actually feels worthwhile.

Please know that I'm giving advice not from a detached medical perspective, but as someone who has been there and hopes that even a single sentence of this post will help with the pain. Best wishes and love to you both.

Indraneela
===
Oṁ Indrāya Namaḥ.
Oṁ Namaḥ Śivāya.

Eastern Mind
07 April 2012, 06:01 PM
Vannakkam DK: I can't add much to these posts, other that to wish your friend recovery.

The depths of depression are difficult to relate to unless you've been close or there yourself, and postulating about eventual outcomes, turning to books or philosophy, even talking to someone or getting up, can all be extremely arduous tasks.

Best wishes with aiding in some relief of the pain this soul must be under.

Aum Namasivaya

charitra
07 April 2012, 06:50 PM
Modern medicine has a longway to go in treating suffering human mind, sorry about the situation you are in. Though I support euthanasia in some exceptionally deserving cases, the one your friend going through is not one in my list. I know the question is about suicide, but the line between the two systems is very thin.Anyway euthanasia is a wrong word in this context.
i jsut expanded the discussion.

If one is aware that ending ones own life will prove to be very hurtful to others, say friends and family, then yes one accrues additional karma. In case the mind cant comprehend the above potential suffering of others, then i am not so sure. The atman, mind and body clearly lost the much needed cohesion in the latter setting. Finally, whenever an individual ends his life, it is a sad and sobering situation, we all will experience a collective guilt, a twinge, a stab. Namaste.

rainbowlotus
10 April 2012, 06:51 PM
I can truly connect to this story because I have bipolar disorder. Personally I cannot judge someone who was in so much paint hat they couldn't take it anymore, because I've been very close to that point before. Practicing Hinduism has definitely helped with my bipolar disorder, but before I had that my medicine. Without my medicine I could not focus in this society. I try to find balance between the medicine taking care of the biochemical aspect but my religion and therapy is taking care of everything else.

In a perfect world no one would feel the need to commit suicide. I can't judge, but I would hope anyone I know close to hurting themselves would contact me for help.

yajvan
10 April 2012, 09:27 PM
hariḥ oṁ
~~~~~~

namasté



For some suicide is where one grows weary of the world (nirveda¹);
for others who are in full control of their faculties they too can come to the finishing use of the body, often called the chariot.

The ending is called utkrānti - it is defined as stepping up or going out. One has finished with the śarīra¹ it is time to move on. The difference between suicide and utkrānti is suicide is done under duress, of pressure from the world of diversity. This is not the case with utkrānti. It is done with yogic competence. One is done in ignorance, the other is done within the fullness of Being. Yet both intersect at the road-way of choice.


Yet too there is another action that some might see as choice-driven death and that is anugamana. This is ' going after in life or death' i.e. the following of a wife after the husband has passed on and chooses the same.


Yet we are told by the wise to 'save the breath'. This infers save life, do not squander this gift. Yet in the human condition there are multiple points of view.

praṇām

nirveda - loathing and disgust.
śarīra - that which is easily destroyed i.e. the body.
anugamana - going forth ; following , going after in life or death

Mana
11 April 2012, 12:36 PM
I can truly connect to this story because I have bipolar disorder. Personally I cannot judge someone who was in so much paint hat they couldn't take it anymore, because I've been very close to that point before. Practicing Hinduism has definitely helped with my bipolar disorder, but before I had that my medicine. Without my medicine I could not focus in this society. I try to find balance between the medicine taking care of the biochemical aspect but my religion and therapy is taking care of everything else.

In a perfect world no one would feel the need to commit suicide. I can't judge, but I would hope anyone I know close to hurting themselves would contact me for help.


Namaste rainbowlotus,

In in an unbalanced world it is those who feel with the most profound depth; that manifest the will to make change; what is this shakti?

You are very young to be taking drugs for bi-polarity, If I might be so bold, might I ask how it has manifest in you? Did you experience a prolonged elated highs, were you driven by delusions/visions?

Sorry for my inquisitive questions, I am happy to hear that you have found balance, but intrigued as one who has already been through the same situation or at least similar.


praNAma

mana

rainbowlotus
11 April 2012, 01:26 PM
Namaste rainbowlotus,

In in an unbalanced world it is those who feel with the most profound depth; that manifest the will to make change; what is this shakti?

You are very young to be taking drugs for bi-polarity, If I might be so bold, might I ask how it has manifest in you? Did you experience a prolonged elated highs, were you driven by delusions/visions?

Sorry for my inquisitive questions, I am happy to hear that you have found balance, but intrigued as one who has already been through the same situation or at least similar.


praNAma

mana

My bipolar being untreated was horrible. My doctor believed the Prozac I was taking during the time I had a nervous breakdown became a catalyist for my bipolar disorder. When I was younger I had audio hallucinations. When I'm going through a manic episode I develop addictive personality traits, I can't focus on any work, and I constantly involve myself in risky behavior. I hope that has answered your question!

Mana
11 April 2012, 02:16 PM
Namaste rainbowlotus,

Thank you for your honesty. Mine is just a point of view, I have 18 years of experience of dealing with this but I chose not to medicate, in my mind and experience this is not an illness. It pains me to hear you speak as you do as it reminds me of the early days for me.

Yes it is quite horrible; You are young, believe me it does get easier.
On several occasions I remember the transition during depression when the desire for release transforms into, a complete loss of the fear of death. This its self can be even more dangerous than depression.

I had similar, but I've always refused the drugs being rather strong willed and rebellious; sorry to hear of your difficulty, prozac has a known side effect of causing psychosis. Many of the assorted cocktail of drugs which are given out are proving to have many side effects.
I firmly believe that this is a symptom of adharma (in society) and as such is manageable with dharma, so you are defiantly on the right track with sanAtana dharma!

I have had audio hallucinations in the past when I'm very tired, this is for me a simple symptom of sleep deprivation, when I got my sleeping sorted this helped immensely, for a shot period we lived near some railway tracks, I did suffered greatly then. I have always linked this artefact to my sensitivity of ear which also aides me greatly with my music.

Do you play any instruments? You know those addictive personality traits can be very beneficial once harnessed, put in to a practise ...

I found relief through travel my self, getting away from my family and the culture which had triggered or at least reflected my sentiment.


The mania has effectively burnt off as my life situation has changed, if and when it is present, I normal know why, and can deal with it with much more ease, maybe one day I'll put it to some use.

I would highly recommend that you read both, "Kundalini evolutionary energy in man" by Gopi Krishna, and also Ashtanga yoga.

It is always good to hear different view points when regarding a subject such as this. I have always found that it helps me to talk openly about it, as I am now.
This has been the base of my spiritual experience, bringing always knowledge of sorts with visions.

With love and heart felt warmth to you on your path!


praNAma

mana

Aum Namaḥ Śivāya