I know this subject will be of utmost difficulty for many readers, and will bring a lot of distress. I am so deeply sorry for any of you contemplating suicide or who have had loved ones pass in this way.
I don’t imagine this will be my only post on this topic. When I’m feeling low, my thoughts automatically track back to thoughts of suicide. These thoughts and I are old friends; my first experiences with depression dates back to when I was 13 or 14. I would sit at the end of my bed at night, looking out of the small, square window that was half covered by a white, crocheted curtain, high up on the opposite wall. I can almost still see the pattern. I’d sit there fiddling with a razor just wishing to be free of my mental distress. None of my immediate family had any experience with mental illness so I was very much alone with what I was thinking and feeling. I knew there was no way I would do anything, and I have never had the desire to self-harm, but there was something comforting in the fact that it was an option, that I, with the little razor, had the power to put an end to mental strife if I really needed to.
I think what is so much worse than planning or attempting to end your life is not being physically able to do so. So many years later and these thoughts have evolved to involve methods. It concerns me that if I leave it too late, I may lose this power, the ability to put an end to my physical and mental suffering. Have you watched “Still Alice”? How did you feel when the maid interrupts her?
What is so much worse than planning or attempting to end your life, is not being physically able to do so..
People who suicide are not cowards and they are not selfish, no matter what or who they leave behind (perhaps excluding perpetrators of heinous crimes that are avoiding sentencing or other consequences. That’s a whole ‘nother blog post). Those that hold those opinions can count themselves lucky that they clearly have never experienced the mental pain and suffering that would lead one to do so. There is no other option for these people in the very moments before they pass.
There’s a saying that people who suicide don’t want to die, they just want to be free of their suffering. Does this go without saying? Perhaps, but theres a lot more to this simple statement.
The band Rage Against the Machine has cycled back into my awarenss lately. Their self-titled 1992 album depicts a man on fire. As a kid I never paid it much attention. Much later I came to understand the back story of the man – a monk, named Thích Quảng Đức (pron. “Tech Kwaun Duk” if you’d like to attempt – but I’ve come across many pronunciations so don’t quote me!).
Thích Quảng Đức was a Vietnamese Mahayana Buddhist monk who, on the 11th June 1963 on a busy road in then Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City), lit a match after being doused with gasoline by two other monks. His self-immolation was in protest of the persecution of Buddist Monks by the South Vietnamese Government.
Quảng Đức’s last words before his self-immolation were documented in a letter he had left: “Before closing my eyes and moving towards the vision of the Buddha, I respectfully plead to President Ngô Đình Diệm to take a mind of compassion towards the people of the nation and implement religious equality to maintain the strength of the homeland eternally. I call the venerables, reverends, members of the sangha and the lay Buddhists to organize in solidarity to make sacrifices to protect Buddhism.”
While he burned, he made no sound or movement. His remains were taken and cremated, but his HEART REMAINED INTACT and is considered a sacred relic, seen as a physical manifestation of his compassion and a symbol. It is displayed in a glass chalice at the Xá Lợi Pagoda, in Ho Chi Minh City.
I visited his beautiful statue in Ho Chi Minh – erected at the same intersection where he passed. It was one of, if not the most special, memorable and humbling things I did in Vietnam.
What recently struck me about this other-wordly man, of whom there can be no complete and accurate words to describe, was that he KNEW that despite his suicide in protest of wordly things, he was going to be okay, and moving toward Buddha.
When I realised this, clearly stated and documented by a man who no doubt spent most of that incarnation understanding and moving toward his higher self and creator, it gave me comfort in the possibility of a suicidal ending – be it VAD (Voluntary Assisted Suicide), or completely by my own hand. Granted, my reasons are entirely selflish, and to avoid pain and suffering, while Quảng Đức’s were entirely selfless, and actually moved toward pain and suffering. But perhaps it is okay to believe in an understanding and forgiving God, who welcomes his children home no matter how they may choose to die.