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

The Ultimate Vampires British Petroleum

Do vampires exist? I never believed until now and the truth is I am one of them. The ultimate vampires are those who drill into the flesh of the Earth and suck up oil up out of the planet. They are vicious monsters who sacrifice humans, animals, water, and all things to have more. It is no different than a heroine user who pokes holes in their flesh to feed their habit, and thus ruin everyone they know and love in the process. And the populations of the western world are the addicts, who cannot see or care to get off of it. Our lives have been designed to use the blood of a planet. We are making her toxic at every turn. If she had arms or legs she would have punctured holes in every corner, bruised purple and yellow at each area overused. A vampire’s purpose is to suck every red blood cell out of you and leave you for dead, only to find another victim. This is the perfect description of BP.
A vampire is a soulless creature who feeds off of others to live. It is an abomination. This is what has happened to the Western world. We have crossed the line and America, Britain and the Dutch (Shell) are the vampires that rule over the rest of us. Are they our makers? We act like they are. We cannot shift away from the blood/oil. We are seduced by the SUV and monstrous trucks that litter and suck up oil for image and selfish reasons.
For the last ten years we have shed blood of young soldiers, spent ourselves into a recession and now we will destroy a bounty of food, industry and animals to drive our SUV’s around this country. Bush started this downward spiral in 2001. Iraq and Afghanistan have cost us $1,000,510,911,829 since it started in 2001. (http://costofwar.com/). The cost in human life has been 4400 for Iraq and 1087 for Afghanistan. When will it all be stopped? Now oil spills into our water and this issue is not a far away. The oil spills into our American lives in the worst way. The blood of the Earth spills out and now we all have it on our hands. If you are driving a car then you are guilty. If you drive an SUV or Giant Motor home around for your pleasure, you have more blood on your hands. We can see it now and how it is destroying life as we speak. The pure spirits of the animal kingdom and life forms that live in the Gulf of Mexico are being sacrificed for our greed, our decadent need for oil. Just like a drug addicted human we scurry away from the truth, and deny we have a problem. We are all vampires in some way and our leaders have made us this way because of their own immoral soulless existence. Here is the beginning of the end when Bush the King of Vampires let oil begin in the Gulf of Mexixo.

“At first, officials said 83 inspections had been performed since the rig arrived in the Gulf 104 months ago, in September 2001. While being questioned about the once-per-month claim, the officials subsequently revised the total up to 88 inspections. The number of more recent inspections also changed — from 26 to 48 in the 64 months since January 2005.” (http://www.sodahead.com/united-states/can-we-blame-bush-for-the-bp-oil-spill-in-the-gulf/question-1017369/)

Now Obama must face another failure of the Bush Administration. Obama is faced with the knowledge that if he takes the Dutch’s (Shell Oil) help to seal the spill then what shall be the payment. These multi-billion dollar Vampires do not just sit around and do things for moral or environmental reasons. They are the very greediest, immoral-if-you-want-to-call-them-humans- on Earth. If Obama has done his homework he knows he is replacing one evil with another while dealing with the oil companies. According to the following research Shell is having people arrested and hung for protesting their oil drilling in the Africa coast. So if Obama has one ounce of ethics then he cannot have Shell help him, it would be like asking the Devil to help you.
The history of destroying land, humans and water is not short for the Dutch Company Shell Oil. They are out of control. Here is some of the history of their pursuit of oil.
On November 10, 1995, Greenpeace released the following statement:
The blood of Ken Saro-Wiwa will permanently stain the name of Shell, Greenpeace said today in response to the news that Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other Ogoni were, according to widespread rumors, hanged this morning in Port Harcourt, Nigeria.
"Ken Saro-Wiwa was hanged today for speaking out against the environmental damage to the Niger Delta caused by Shell Oil through its 37 years of drilling in the region. Ken Saro Wiwa was campaigning for what Greenpeace considers the most basic of human rights: the right for clean air, land and water. His only crime was his success in bringing his cause to international attention," said Thilo Bode, Executive Director of Greenpeace International.
(http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/5/23/867889/-Vampire-Blues)
BP is not much different as far as their ruthless quest for oil. We have accommodated and maybe even slept with our dealer to make sure we have plenty of the oil. There is no difference between drug dealers or vampires in this case. BP has killed eleven people because of negligence and now we will pay as we always do to clean it up, suffer loss of American businesses, and our beautiful land and water will be toxic for decades. BP should be charged with murder and pay out to all the businesses in the area of the spill. They should be banned and or dissolved as a business. This is a serious crime. We must hold people and lawmakers accountable for man-made disasters against our planet. When will we stop thinking about ourselves? The monsters are winning and they are ugly, greedy vampires ready to suck and sacrifice everything, including destroying the planet for their own profit.

Scott's Odyssey Part 4

Scott's Odyssey Part 4

Another Dream and then the Chills

I am convinced I am in contact with my father even though he passed over to the other side. And since it is a powerful meeting, it affects me physically more than usual. I dream of him and then the chills start all over my body and I become freezing. I even had the dream that I had a temperature gage and my temperature was dropping so I got up and then I woke up. It as if the physical me was influencing the dream. I am sure all my "freezing" dreams are related to my father. Maybe he is closer than I think. Many people when they come in contact with a spirit that is already passed the veil of the three dimensional world, there is a different energy manifesting. It is not good, bad or evil- just different level of consciousness.

What are dreams exactly? Are they only chemicals bouncing around in our head or something more?

David Wilcock

When I said that I believe our body is receiving energy- or something is shifting this is what one researcher says. This sort of makes sense with all the supernatural shows on TV- the young generations are interested in ghost- and they are all vegan's or vegitarians-WHAT????

David Wilcock: "So now, we are moving into a new position. Microbiology experts tell us that 97 percent of our DNA is apparently un-used, but I have been told that more and more of the chain is ''unzipping'' for those who are able to handle the new fourth-density energy structure. These people may not physically look any different, except perhaps more attractive in subtle ways, but internally they will develop greater depths of emotion, perception, intuition, and sensitivity.

Some of the younger people will actually develop telekinesis or the ability to ''see dead people.'' Many others often find that their bodies will no longer tolerate foods of lower vibration, and they are impelled to eat diets high in fresh organic fruits and vegetables."

Dreaming Deep- Awake Freezing

Art by Susan Boulet

Lately I have been dreaming a lot. I always remember my dreams, but lately they have taken a strange twist. When I go to sleep, I immediately dream something very vivid and I am semi-aware of the gravity/richness of the dream. When something giant happens, or I awake too much inside the dream I awaken in reality, but I am freezing. My body is stone cold. It is like the dream sends out an ice wind to go through every pore or atom that I am here in this physical dimension. The dreams are not negative, but are extremely powerful. I think sometimes I am getting a bolt of energy from some other dimension and my body freaks out and I become so cold that I shiver. My house is always at 71-74 degrees F. I mean I have searched articles and Google to find out what this is, but it there is no explanation.



I have done research on dreaming in the past because I have always been able to remember it all, or go into REM extremely fast. REM is rapid eye movement- it is the stage of deep sleep where we dream. We all dream but some of us do not remember our dreams. I believe that some of us have particular sleep patterns. For example I believe my deepest sleep happens between 3 am to 5am. That means I go into REM during this time- and so when I have to wake up at 4:45 for my job- I am always in the middle of my dreams and thus I remember them. If someone else has their deepest sleep at 11pm to 1am- then you might not remember your dreams as well as someone with a later deep sleep pattern.



Carlos Castaneda is the only one I have read that has a different view of dreaming. His is very spiritual. Don Juan was his mentor and was also a shaman or sorcerer from the Yaqui Indians of Mexico. Carlos recounts many teachings that he went through and many of these were on the art of dreaming. The sorcerer explains that if you can awaken in your dream- then there are steps to take to understand this realm. This is nothing for an everyday dreamer to explore, it is dangerous and must be done with a mentor. Don Juan says this about dreaming.



"Dreaming can only be experienced. Dreaming is not just having dreams; neither is it daydreaming or wishing or imagining. Through dreaming we can perceive other worlds, which we can certainly describe, but we can't describe what makes us perceive them. Yet we can feel how dreaming opens up those other realms. Dreaming seems to be a sensation-a process in our bodies, an awareness in our minds." (Pg ix, The Art of Dreaming, Carlos Castaneda)



I am in love my night mystery and I don't mind dreaming deep. Sometimes I become so cold that I have to take a bath to get warm again. So my dreaming self is doing some serious stuff out there and then jumps - sort of violently- back into my heavy body- i.e. brings coldness with it- when a ghost comes around things get cold- yes??? Who knows??? Now I am just going way out there for an explanation. Something is happening here!!!

http://hubpages.com/hub/Scotts-Odyssey-Part-3

Here is the lastest on Scott's Odyssey

Obsessed With NOt Forgetting

My father passed on about 6 years ago. Time becomes distorted when I think of him. It is as if it stops or fast forwards itself- like time doesn't really exist. I don't think it does. Maybe his presence beyond the veil is proof for when I concentrate on him time sinks, dissappears and I do not know anything- I just know that he is close, but not close enough in human terms. I feel like two distinct beings when I think of him. I know instinctively that he has never left my side and or is available and or doing something on his own that is tied into me somehow, but I am afraid. My fear comes from the human condition, not my instinctual grace. My humanness doesnt' seem to want to go away. It haunts me and tries to erase and bring me down. The emotional thing that runs so deep is so strange and confusing. I let it come because I have no choice here. I am in a limited dimension. If I wanted to get my crap together and mediate more, let go of the human stuff and promote more of my grace, I could. Who knows why I don't.

Why do I miss him? It is not just the man that was ever so lightfilled, but just a person that lived outside the box. So unmainstream, yet so intune with it all. If I had some crazy whim, mostly spiritual- he would meet me there and go far beyond my expectations. For example, if I had some question or experience he would have some profound answer and or expectation that I should meet. He was in the world - yet strangely other worldly.

Right now I have this feeling that I have some connection to my local area. It is sort of a Carlos Canstenada- experience. I think he wrote about Don Juan- the Yaquai Indian sorcerer who helped Carlos begin his spirtual journey. I thought there was something about noticing the signs out in nature, that they are speaking to you if you would only focus your energy in a different direction. Everytime I go out into the desert- an Osprey flies over my path or very close to it. It happens when I am in the car too, on my way home- which is in the middle of the desert. So it is strange. Now my dad has read all those book, not to mention a lot more on all things spiritual and psychological. But it is not only that, he is very in tune with the EArth. He could be an Oxford academic, but also a bee keeper, fence builder, Japanese garden creator. I mean his attributes go on forever. He would feel and have fun at any pub in the world- then he would be able to write a drop dead gorgeous dissertation on Quatum Physics and how that promotes our spiritual nature- I mean it. Of course I am completely prejudice and bias towards his ability. Just miss it and really want to know what amazing things he is up to. If there was ever a soul who is doing something brilliant on the other side it is him. Someone like Ghandi - Martin Luther King- you know they are not just sitting around in heaven chilling- come on they are shakers and movers- they are getting something started whereever they are!!!

As it relates to my Osprey friends in the sky- I am not quitting my job and becoming a shaman- and I don't know if is true or not- but I think as you open your mind to other possibities the universe will meet you half way. There is a lot in the universe going on- even if you are aware or not. If we spend all of our energy working, consuming, being distracted then we will never move on... I plan on moving on- when the moment in space and time where everything aligns and opens up.

Scotts Odyssey on The Other Side

http://hubpages.com/hub/Scotts-Odyssey

Remembering Scott

I just can't stop writing about my dad. Maybe it is fear motivating me but I promised myself that I would never forget him in any way. I believe that he very close, but it is not close enough. So I wrote a story about how he crosses over from this world to the next and what happens to him on the other side. I have only put the first part on my hubpages. So I am on a quest to write is to keep him alive for me. I don't know why death feels so final, I think it is a false feeling. So many of our expereinces, feelings and earthly road is false. It seems so real, but is it really. We are atomic particles vibrating at a high rate- what is that? Anyway just some thoughts for those that have passed on.