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SUICIDE "I take
it Talk about it:
There are several mainstream web sites that deal with the topic of suicide. A few of them can be found here and here. This section of LiveReal is designed to complement, not replace, this material.(We also have a disclaimer here)
Further, this article is not necessarily written for someone who is currently thinking of suicide as an option. If this is the case, we recommend finding a professional through the above sites. Many academics and intellectuals have spent countless hours researching the topic of suicide, and have written countless books on the subject. So, as is typically the case nowadays, we have mounds and mounds of information, more than we can ever hope to absorb, and much of which is essentially trivial, redundant, or practically useless. Further, the suicide services out there - many of which are excellent - sometimes tend to focus on short-term, crisis-oriented, ultimately temporary solutions. And meanwhile, the suicide rate seems to keep rising. ". . . we know a mastodonic amount about suicide.
We know, for example, a great deal about the underlying conditions
that predispose an individual to kill himself -
heredity, severe mental illness, an impulsive or violent temperament -
and we know, too, that there are some events or circumstances in life
that interact in a particularly deadly way with these predisposing vulnerabilities:
romantic failures or upheavals; economic and job setbacks;
confrontations with the law; terminal or debilitating illnesses;
situations that cause great shame, or are perceived as such;
the injudicious use of alcohol or drugs.
We have much knowledge, as well, about who commits suicide:
the most vulnerable age groups and the social backgrounds and gender of those most at risk;
and we know, too, about the hows and wheres and whens of suicide:
the methods used; the places, times, and seasons chosen.
But we are less certain of why people kill themselves . . ." Why does a person commit suicide? Let's cut the crap: it's really not too terribly difficult to understand. Life is hard. And in times when things get really, really hard, suicide can seem like one of the only solutions. "No one Statistics:
"When you're between any sort of devil and the deep blue sea,
So what's going on in suicide? Suicide, in itself, is only seen as a "problem" by people who are on the outside, looking in, trying to figure it out intellectually the way they would figure out a math problem. But to the person who is actually thinking about doing it, it is not seen as a "problem" at all - rather, it is seen as a solution - a solution to another problem, or set of problems.
"The thought of suicide is a great consolation:
So then, what can a person do about it? The best approach to suicide we have found is this: A person commits suicide because they are in a great deal of pain, probably have been suffering for a long time, and imagine that their pain and suffering will continue for a very long time in the future. Suicide, then, is sometimes imagined as a way to end the pain, as a solution to the suffering. In other words, a person imagines that the reason they are suffering is because there are alive and have body, a physical human body. And they imagine that if they end the body, or end their life, then the suffering will cease, and there will hopefully be peace. However, there is at least a fair chance that even killing the body may not end the suffering. Instead a person may be better off killing the ego instead. Many wise individuals claim that the cause of suffering is not the body, or being alive, but is the "ego." And if a person "kills" the ego, then the suffering will cease, for real. So then, how to "kill the ego"? Well, many recommend certain exercises which, if practiced sincerely and consistently, lead to a kind of "ego death" which ends suffering. Click here to try some of those exercises. And further, it might help to get in contact with certain spiritual teachers, either ones you are familiar with or others here, who may be able to help with those exercises.
"Is Suicide Really An Escape?" passage from The Wheel of Life and Death by Phillip Kapleau "The ordinary suicide may think he or she is escaping a life of misery, pain, or financial or other difficulties, but life and death are part of an ongoing process, and anyone who understands this will realize that one does not escape one's misery in one life and avoid having to deal with it in another. (See "Karma" and "Rebirth" (in the book)). A friend once told me, "Many times I considered killing myself - particularly in my younger days - but each time the idea cam up I thought to myself, 'If I think it's bad now, what will it be like if I kill myself? Then, not only will I still have to face what is unresolved for me now, but I will have the added karmic burden of the suicide to deal with as well - not to mention the guilt arising from my awareness of the pain to others that my self-inflicted death caused..."
Further Factors Suicide, again, is often viewed as an isolated, remote, random problem, which it isn't. We often hear about suicide as a single, isolated event, that "so-and-so committed suicide," and that's often all we hear about it. But actually, this is something like reading the final chapter twenty of a book - having skipped the first nineteen chapters. We see the result, often the inevitable conclusion of the first nineteen chapters -but none of it really makes sense. It's not that it doesn't make sense - it's just that we need to read the preceding nineteen chapters first - after which all the pieces can click more into place. In fact, some individuals can read the first chapter or two of a book, or see the first few minutes of a movie, and can accurately predict what will happen from there - in a way, they can foresee the plot and consequences of how certain stories will turn out. This is sometimes a perspective on people who understand real morality. The solution to suicide, in this editor's opinion, is not one that is best addressed directly; The best means, in other words, for "solving" the problem of suicide lies in addressing all the things that lead up to it. The good part is, few of us are actually locked into hopelessly unpleasant situations. Even in the worst of situations, we have the ability to overcome them. We can often think that painful times may seem permanent, as if they will last forever, as if we will be scarred for life and in pain somehow. This is not true. Remember constantly, in regards to whatever kind of pain we are going through now, that everything changes: "This too shall pass." If one is in a bad or seemingly unbearable social situation, such as a bad marriage or family relationship, do everything in your power to change it, and then bear the must come, remembering that "This too shall pass." Everything changes with time. Do what can be done to alleviate depression; Find meaning in life, or figure out why you are here Try to understand why you are suffering, and then try to find the solution to it. Do what needs to be done to get some kind of "faith"
On Prevention: "If some people fail to live boldly, out of their fear of death, Appendix "There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, ( - in other words, why are we here?) Many of the most insightful and successful thinkers throughout time have grappled with the issue of suicide, asking, as Camus did, "Why not?" They have often come up with some creative solutions . . . Story of Paul Brunton "As a result he found himself out of tune with the harsh materialistic big-city vibrations surrounding him. In fact, he told me, they became unbearable. Finally, he decided he could do something about it, that he did not have to put up with the situation, that he had a choice - and that choice was to leave this world by the only means he knew, that of committing suicide. So being a well organized young man he wrote in his diary: "Commit suicide a fortnight hence." And he proceeded to put his affairs in order. The thought then struck him: what happens when I die? Where do I go? His curiosity aroused, he went to the large British Museum Library and asked the reference librarian for books on death. She steered him to the shelves carrying books on spiritualism. He took home half a dozed and eager devoured them. He found the subject fascinating - so fascinating, in fact, that as he had not finished all the books when his two weeks were up he postponed his impending suicide and went back to the library for more books. And again he had to postpone his suicide which he read with much interest whatever books he could obtain on the subject. Finally, he decided to postpone his suicide indefinitely . . . " Story of William James An excerpt from a biography of James, often considered to be "The Father of American Psychology": "For almost three years after graduation, James lived in the family home. His bouts of depression increased after a young woman whom he had befriended died following a prolonged illness. He would later describe his depression as a descent into a profound crisis-of spirituality, of being, of meaning, of will. He suffered panic attacks and even hallucinations that left him mentally crippled. His father had suffered similar attacks and had sought refuge from them in spiritual quests. William feared that his infirmity was rooted in a biological destiny he would be unable to overcome. He also shrouded his angst with secrecy and used only his reading and journal writing to deal with the mental anguish. One day in April of 1870, the psychological fever began to brake. He recorded in his journal that, after reading an essay by Charles Renouvier, he had come to believe that free will was no illusion and that he could use his will to alter his mental state. He need not be a slave to a presumed biological destiny. "My first act of free will," he wrote, "shall be to believe in free will." James was now 30, three years out of medical school, and with no career prospects or plans except for a vague desire to devote himself to philosophy in some fashion. It was at this propitious time that Harvard president Charles Eliot, a neighbor and former teacher of James, offered him a post at Harvard teaching physiology for the modest sum of $600 per year. His acceptance signaled the start of a prestigious career, for James was to become a gifted teacher, a skilled orator, and, of course, a prodigious thinker and writer." William James essay: "Is Life Worth Living?"
William Shakespeare Shakespeare understood the mind and heart of a person who considers suicide. A passage from Hamlet where the young prince is considering whether or not to take his own life: To be, or not to be, - that is the question: -
LiveReal Editor's Note: This is a question asked by the warrior Arjuna at the beginning of a battle in the centuries-old tale called the Bhagavad Gita . . . Talk about it: "Razors pain you "There are frightening
statistics of suicide by young people in the last decades.
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