Eastern Vs. Western Views of Death and Suicide

There is some debate about death and especially what happens to you if you committ suicide. The first examines the typical Christian attitude that taking ones life is a major sin and hell would be the result. The other more literal one actually proclaims that hell might be layers under lithosphere(top-layer of Earth) that are lava and full of some negative energy. If hell is below the Earth's first layer does that mean Heaven means floating out in space?

I am writing this hub to give an Eastern perspective of death with a special focus on Japanese suicide. I am not advocating for either one but something in the middle. While I view human life as a good westerner as precious, I also respect the Buddhist idea of reincarnation. So I will argue for both and use Chrisitan and Buddhists ideas together.

First lets look at the Japanese long history of suicide. It has never been a sin to commit suicide in Japan. It is quite the opposite. Suicide in Japan is about shame. In the west suicide is about guilt and sin. The Japanese feel that if they shame themselves or their family then dishonor has occured and some sacrifice must be made. It is ironic that Christians believe that a god sacrificed himself for them. As a result they are so self- centered and unable to take responsibilty for themselves that they would never think of sacrificing themselves. What is ironic is that they prefer the son of god to come here and sacrifice himself for them. It is all very convienent and lazy. At least in Japanese society people are aware of their own faults and try to redeem themselves and take this responsibilty to the death.

Japanese, especially the Samurai, glorified and romanticized the idea of suicide in Japan. For the Samurai everything was about honor and duty. He existed only for these two qualites and so if he failed his high standard of living he must end his life. This is also known as losing face. Roxanne Russel states this in a her thesis paper.

"Historically,suicide has been the primary means of showing one’s innocence, regaining lost honor, and saving face for a past transgression."(http://vcas.wlu.edu/VRAS/2005/Russell.pdf)

During World War II the western world experienced this sort of glorified samurai attitude in the form of the Kamikazi. It was not just the pilots who honored their country. The Japanese generals committed suicide because they felt that they had failed in the war so they were shamed or dishonored.

Buddhism advocates that each person does not have an individual soul that is eternal and moves on as does the Christian faith. This might add to the ability to end ones life without any consequence to that soul. Buddhism also promotes reincarnation, the idea that the soul lives more than one life. I think this part is a little unclear and the Japanese Buddhists manipulate the doctrine to fit their cultural view of suicide. Buddhist have the belief that their is a wheel of birth, life and death also called Saṃsāra. Life is suffering. To get off the wheel, and to not reincarnate again one must reach enlightenment. So if a person committed suicide one would have the mark of suicide on their soul and thus would not have been englightened. The end result is one would have to come back, continue the wheel of life and suffer some more. So instead of the Christian view of suffering in hell, the Buddhist view is that you come back into the Earthly existence because you have not reached englightment and until one understands the nature of suffering which is attachment to desires then you will reincarnate again and again. One unclear part of Buddhism is that if the soul is not eternal- with a distinct underlying sameness throughtout each incarnation then why does it continue to return to Earthly experience without enlightenment?

I believe that if a person takes their life then they will suffer greatly when they cross over from life to death, but it will not be the hell fire of the Bible or a layer of Earth underneath us. I do believe the soul will be in a sort of darkness, an absence of light depending on their state of mind and heart when they committed suicide. I think committing suicide because you think you dishonored yourself and or your family is different than someone who is deep depression and loaths themselves. Their is a different intent per culture or for each individual and I think this matters. I believe it will be something like in the movie "What Dreams May Come" where the wife is in a sort of hell of her own making, but that people of light are sent to help the soul understand their actions and thus they can be released from their own self-imposed bondage. I do believe in the wheel of birth, life and death, Saṃsāra - that we reincarnate and this suicide act would stay with us until we learned to forgive ourselves and to release the pain.

Ultimately we are spiritual beings first and we decided to have a Earthly experience where our vibration is decreased to expereince something very specific. Life and death are an illusion for learning. If death was not here we would not take life so seriously, and we would not pretend so hard. Death makes life precious, but it should not be feared. It is all quite amazing.

I say these things with my intellectual understanding but when someone dies, like my father too early, I was torn into tiny pieces. I felt that I am wandering inside myself picking up the shreds of my heart trying to put it all back together with only some scotch tape. My heart doesn't beat the same, it is eternally broken. So one foot is in flesh and bone and one foot is striving to understand the higher purpose. It is not an easy task, but my father taught me well. He was my teacher of all these metaphysical ideas. He did not commit suicide but left this Earth in quite a hurry. Sadness was in his heart, but also a wisdom to know it was a time to go.

Long at Sea - Poem about Life

Long at Sea

I left The Home so long ago
now that I would not recognize my own face.
I constructed the Boat of My Life
and I set out into the open sea
waving to all who knew that
the seas would give me everything I could handle
and everything I could not and yet they waved
and I set out in the open sea
in the Boat of My Life:
built from Soul
crafted from Heart
and with great innocence
I pushed off into the open sea
and have been away from Home so long now
that I would not recognized my own face
but I know that Home-
Home remembers me.

Em Claire 2007