suicide and reincarnation

[surreal]

I've been thinking a lot about suicide and feeling suicidal but I don't want to die. I just want everything to stop. But lately I've had this random thought and feeling come out nowhere that says if I suicide I will be reincarnated into a worse situation and suffer more. So I feel backed into a corner no way out. No options not even death anymore.

[Guest]

I believe in reincarnation and also have suicidal thoughts.

 

This is just my view. And that is we all suffer pain, as human beings. Some of us suffer very difficult things, some of us cope better with other things, one persons trauma can be anothers persons hardship. Just as you and me are different, so the pain we feel is different. What I do know is that we all have pain as a feature of being alive. So while I wouldn't assume that if I committed suicide, I would be born into worse pain, I do feel that to commit suicide to escape the pain right now, were I born again, I would have other pain. In this lifetime, I have felt pain and a lack of pain, I have been depressed and I have been well. In those times, I was sure what I felt right then was final. But it changed. because really, the idea of reincarnation is arguably about change.

 

I heard Pema Chodron talk about karma on a podcast this week. And she talked about karma not as a kind of divine punishment system. But in the sense that what we choose now will ripen our future. Cause and effect are everywhere for us to see. The choice you make today to reach other and get some help will have an effect on how long you have to suffer this depression. Depression exists because the conditions for it exist - chemical imbalance, trauma, lack of support and isolation, poor physical health, a predisposition for it. But even though you can't see it, the conditions exist for not-depression, from a Buddhist perspective, there is suffering in your life today, but also not suffering.  That not suffering is there in your hands, it just hasn't got the right conditions to appear yet. And so nothing is final, you don't have to take your life to feel that final relief. I can see why that might seem like the option. From your sig I see you have been fighting for a very long time.

 

If you are alive, you have the potential to feel pain. You also have the potential to feel other things, joy, freedom, peace of mind. You may not be able to banish the depression here right now. But you can see it, decide what you are going to do about it, and get some help. That is, some would say, your karma.

Edited September 25, 2013 by Titania

[Atoka]

^ that shit was deeeeep lol

[koa]

I agree, Titania gave a good answer.

 

Truthfully no one really knows 100 percent what will happen once you die.  

 

But that shouldn't really factor into things.  I hope you'll stick around for your family and friends, if not for yourself and for the hope that things may eventually get better.