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Suicide

5/11/2017

4 Comments

 
Picture
​The abbot and I were waiting for the funeral procession to come to the cremation grounds.  The deceased had committed suicide and we were discussing various views about the matter.  I asked the venerable Buddhist whether the deceased could be reincarnated into another life. 
 
“Definitely not,” he said.  “She committed a great sin by killing a human being.”
 
“Herself,” I said, in order to be sure we were still talking about the same being, because in a sense her suicide had destroyed some parts of the lives of her husband and children, as well.
 
“Yes,” the abbot agreed.  “The Lord Buddha was quite clear about it.  A person who kills a human being will be consigned to hell – นรก – for sure.”
 
“Can merit be transferred to her?” I wondered, since her son had entered the novitiate at the abbot’s own temple that morning to do that very thing.  His 9-days of ordination were understood by everyone in the family to be efficacious in his mother’s behalf.  Her son told me he certainly would have felt derelict not to have done at least a 9-day term.
 
“There are 5 realms of existence,” the abbot had explained in his sermon earlier in the morning.  As we waited, I asked him to talk about them because I thought I understood the first four: the realm of divinities and angels, and the realm of human beings, as well as the realm of animals.  Hell, the fourth realm, is a popular subject in Buddhist mythology, although there is quite a bit of variation about the details, such as whether one’s residence in hell can come to an end or whether it’s eternal.  The abbot explained to me that one might be reincarnated as another life-form, an animal or insect, for example.  And one’s soul might also be transformed into the most horrible realm as a demon.  That realm is replete with terrible hunger that cannot be satisfied.  He went on to explain that merit cannot be transferred to one who is consigned to the lowest realms.  There is nothing we can do for them.  “But we cannot know how a person’s soul will migrate,” as it does according to its merit – karma.  Then the abbot talked about how special services are held for up to 7 days during which time the transmigration will be complete to one of the realms.  That very evening the first service was held back at the house, designed to prevent the woman’s spirit from trying to come back home now that the body in which it has resided in the house was being cremated; the spirit-soul needs to find its destiny. 
 
I had a lot more questions about this, such as whether there are any exceptions as when a murderer (or a warrior) seriously repents. The abbot touched on one familiar exception as the funeral procession was coming, but we had to suspend the discussion.  He began a story of a famous suicide (by a disciple of the Buddha, Channa) who apparently got an exoneration from the Buddha, “A person who commits murder has no future except hell,” the abbot reiterated.
 
This ‘hard line” is far from a consensus point of view in Thailand.  But it reminded me of “Hellfire and Damnation” sermons I have grown up with in Christian America. The “hard line” defends traditional morality, insisting that some actions are over the line.  They are both unforgiveable and identifiable.  One can make a list of them and know them when they are seen.  The point, initially, is cautionary.  This list of hell-bent infractions is designed to warn people not to do them, and to insist that these unforgiveable actions are indelibly imprinted on human consciousness, although failure to exercise wisdom and yielding to emotion can override one’s conscience and render one temporarily confused.  The down-side of the “hard line” is that a type of finger-pointing judgmentalism is almost inevitable.  Absolutism is socially destructive even as it tries to protect society.
 
The alternative is subjectivism.  Damien Keown explains it this way [https://www.urbandharma.org/udharma/suicide.html]:
 
Subjectivism holds that right and wrong are simply a function of the actor's mental states, and that moral standards are a matter of personal opinion or feelings. For the subjectivist, nothing is objectively morally good or morally bad, and actions in themselves do not possess significant moral features. 
 
Then Keown rejects the notion that it might be OK for enlightened disciples to commit suicide, as Chenna did, but not for someone not yet enlightened.
 
To say that suicide is wrong because motivated by desire, moreover, is really only to say that desire is wrong. It would follow from this that someone who murders without desire does nothing wrong. The absurdity of this conclusion illustrates why a subjectivist approach to the morality of suicide is inadequate. Subjectivism leads to the conclusion that suicide (or murder) can be right for one person but wrong for another, or even right and wrong for the same person at different times, as his state of mind changes, and desire comes and goes.
 
It is perhaps just as well that the abbot and I did not have time to develop this, since there is no one I know of who would say that the woman whose cremation we were conducting was an enlightened disciple seeking a shortcut to Nirvana.  According to the evidence and her suicide note, she was seeking to stop living this life and had no concern about what comes next.
 
As I ruminate on this, the following thoughts occur:
 
  • Consigning a family’s loved one to certain hell is not a valid pastoral approach.  [The abbot did not do this, except in his conversation with me].  However, I have heard preachers comment at a funeral that the person died without faith that would have “saved him” from hell.  I have seen cemetery custodians refuse to allow someone to be buried beside the rest of their family because they were not “confirmed and baptized” correctly. 
  • There is a middle ground between absolutism and subjectivism, although it is not easy to identify.
  • A doctor might cause the death of a patient while trying desperately to save her life.  So might a “good Samaritan” who jumps into a freezing lake in the futile attempt to save a drowning child, resulting in his own death.
  • Enforcing prolonged, increasing agony in some terminal cases cannot be the right decision.
If all murder is as sinful as is a rash suicide, then the contributors to any military or police action that ends in deaths are guilty.  No society at present has drawn this conclusion; so there is an obvious gulf between the abbot’s hard line and social consensus about general welfare and security.  In fact, if the abbot is right, all members of any present society would be heading for hell.  Heaven would be empty.
4 Comments
Paul Frazier
5/12/2017 08:23:06 am

The Absolutism\Subjectivism dichotomy cannot but help lead us to extremes, and it's obvious to me that all extreme points are dangerous, absurd, unhelpful.
There are 3 Biblical examples of suicide that I know of: Saul, Judas, Abimelech in Judges 9.
All three were not-so-great role models, but they were in desperate situations of their own fault and mistakes and sins.
The most that Peter says of the suicide of Judas in Acts 2 is that "he went to his own place."
Folks who believe that suicides go to Hell will not be convinced otherwise; it destroys their view of God's Eternal Justice. Do these folks believe in Forgiveness as a reality of God's eternal work in Jesus Christ?
Also, folks believe folklore more than scholarship. After telling a woman when she asked, "Where in the Bible does it say that suicide is the worst sin? A friend of mine told me it was in the Bible" that no, it's not in the Bible, she repeated, "A friend told me it was." So, that was that. It didn't matter that I told her that Blasphemy against the holy spirit was the worst sin (Mtt. 12.31) because a friend told her that suicide was forbidden in the Bible.
We do what we can.

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Kenneth Chester Dobson
5/12/2017 04:17:05 pm

In US Christianity the debate about the very existence of Hell is raging. But almost as hot is the battle about the right to control one's own departure from this life. So far, the conservatives have not regained enough authority and outrage to dig up corpses that have committed suicide and burn them for heresy.

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Paul Frazier
5/12/2017 08:27:15 am

Your ending paragraph sums up our modern dilemma. We are all involved, tainted, caught, enriched, by social and economic systems that participate in death-dealing ways.

"If all murder is as sinful as is a rash suicide, then the contributors to any military or police action that ends in deaths are guilty. No society at present has drawn this conclusion; so there is an obvious gulf between the abbot’s hard line and social consensus about general welfare and security. In fact, if the abbot is right, all members of any present society would be heading for hell. Heaven would be empty."

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Donald Johnson
5/12/2017 09:31:49 pm

The Unitarian Universalist position, such as there is one in a faith that does not profess one creed, historically has been that there is no Hell because God in his/her infinite mercy is too good to permit one. In the 19th century we were known pejoratively as the "no Hellers".

This coincides to some degree with the Christian concept of grace, that you are forgiven for your sins through the sacrifice and love of Jesus Christ. Christianity has a "get out of jail free card" that can free one from the rigid laws of karma (or Hell). Most Christians would say this requires faith in Jesus as your savior and redeemer, and in the Holy Trinity, but Universalists would say that Christ's love was so great that it would include nonbelievers as well.

For those of us who believe in reincarnation, but who do not adhere to the tenets of Theravada Buddism, the "sin" of suicide is not irrevocable condemnation to Buddhist Hell, but rather the failure to learn from and overcome a life lesson. Hence, that life must be repeated in similar circumstances until such time as we can correct the mistakes of our own past. From this viewpoint, as expressed in the writings of Dr. Brian Weiss, we must work through the traumas of our past lives much like we must work through traumas from early childhood experiences.

I would therfore tell the family of a suicide victim that there is indeed a karmic price that must be paid, but the hope of redemption is always there.

I would have nothing more to say to the conservative Buddist abbot than I would have to say to my own Puritan ancestors, and that is, I know you are wrong in your punitive beliefs. Buddhism teaches compassion, and that compassion carries over to the hereafter. What more can you feel but compassion for a woman who kills herself from the shame of losing the equivalent of $3000 in an internet swindle? She certainly carries less blame and sin than those who defrauded her of her life savings. If I can understand and sympathize with her reasons for ending her life, would not a higher power have an even more compassionate and forgiving perspective?

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