wife: it is quite possible that she would have offered it. Without such
consideration, just following a mind stuck on a single track may lead to destruction
of a happy family and end in suicide. There is nothing more pernicious in the
world than that sort of bad thinking.
Further, these days some imagine that suicide is the best way to end suffering,
and they actually propagate such notions on websites, in books, and so on. These
are works of fools and not at all correct. As it has been said,
Those who find no meaning in life,
Thwarted, seek happiness in death.Suicide, however, will not end suffering. At the time of death, first there is heavy
suffering in the gradual dissolution of the four elements. Happiness and suffering
and even temporal duration are just subjective illusions. Happiness can seem
eternal; but even the five-hundred-year life span of a god expires in a moment.
Likewise a moment of suffering may seem like an eon. When our lives are full of
anxiety and we cannot sleep at night, a day may seem like a month. Look at the
pain that we endure when we simply try to stop our breath for one minute; each
second seems an eternity. At the time of death, considering only the suffering
caused by the cessation of the outer breath, our suffering is immense. Then,
immediately after the moment of death, when outer appearances have ceased and
the sound of the bardo hits us like thunder, we are terror struck. When rays of
heat and light vastly more powerful than the rays of our sun strike our body, we
are terrified. With knowledge of the body’s insubstantiality and transparency, we
are paralyzed with fear. Although all this fear is mental delusion, the suffering is
seven times greater than mundane suffering. Consciousness is now moving like a
feather on the wind, without any control at all. Beset by the illusions of the after-
death bardo, we must go alone and friendless through the narrow defile of rebirth.
To find more about the bardos, read Liberation by Hearing in the Bardo (The
Tibetan Book of the Dead).
If, mentally, we look into the bardo, we find that some dead people become evil
spirits. There are many stories about them, of course, but such spirits can actually
be seen with the eyes. Rationalists may not believe in the existence of beings like
this, but they cannot prove they do not exist. On December 20th, 2003, on the BBC
Hindi program, it was reported that, in an old castle that had been turned into an
exhibition hall, a video had been shot of a strange old man wearing clothes dating
from a thousand years ago. Moreover strange voices had been heard several times
in that castle. Such stories may provide information from which we may deduce
that there are beings in the bardo. Moreover, a being of that type may actually
enter the mind of a person still living and cause the person possessed to recognize
relatives, a house, locations, and so forth, that the living person had no previous
knowledge of. Certain occurrences can be cataloged. Just recently at Limi Til in
Humla, Nepal, a woman’s spirit possessed a man, and this was witnessed by many
people.
Anyway, the point is that suicide does not end suffering. After death we must
enter the bardo of becoming, the bardo of rebirth, and its suffering, so those who