Dear Sundari, Mike O’Brian and John Martin in Vancouver Canada have puzzled over the Dharma/Karma role of Medically Assistance in Dying (MAID).
Could you please clarify the Vedanta position on this issue.
This came up following the MAID death of a dear and spiritually developed friend. He was dying of cancer for years but was keeping up his spirits.
Suddenly his health collapsed and he decided it was to just too painful to live therefore, he choose MAID to end his life.
I have reread your article September 2020, “Fear of Death and the Now.”
I impute that we should just accept death as just another object in the only reality that is Consciousness. Did I understand correctly? Is there clear answer on the issue of MAID?
I am aware that the Buddhist tradition holds that we should fight for every breath to the very end, since how we die is also part of our Karma to be lived out in this apparent borrowed body.
Sundari: You ask a good question because though life is the cheapest thing on this planet, human life has great value, both from the perspective of an individual and of universal life. Being born ‘in’ a body is a gift from Isvara, one that requires reciprocation. Only ‘in’ a human body is moksa able to obtain. Which means taking care of and respecting the body/mind. Apart from lifestyle and diet, the most respect we can have for the jiva is to free it from identification with the body/mind.
Taking or ending a life for adharmic reasons goes against the law of non-injury that Isvara has built into the matrix of life. One that we contravene at our peril. And even though some people find life intolerable for whatever reason, be it illness or psychological problems, we all actually love life and living. Even someone who kills themselves for no other reason than that they cannot tolerate the painful thoughts that manage the mind, is doing so because they love themselves.
The first thing to examine as an inquirer, one that should be known to you if you have assimilated the main message of the nondual teachings of Vedanta, is that as the Self, you are unborn and therefore, cannot and do not ever die. The body is born and dies. Only that which believes it is born and is identified with the body/mind can suffer. Dharma applies to the jiva because in order for it to have a good life and experience peace of mind, it must follow dharma – the law of non-injury, or it suffers.
Following dharma with the karma yoga attitude does not put an end to human suffering, but it does end suffering over your suffering. In which case, ‘you’ are not suffering because you know that the suffering, though it feels very real to the jiva, is not. You no longer have karma. You are that which is real and knows the apparent karma, suffering and sufferer.
As the Self, dharma does not apply to you because you are not born. You are not an object of experience and cannot suffer. That said, appearing here as a jiva who is the Self and knows it means we will follow dharma impeccably. We would not cause injury deliberately, for any reason, which as stated, includes not injuring ‘our’ body. But what does following dharma mean? Well, while the law of non-injury is universal, it also means different things to different people depending on their prarabdha karma.
Here are the three dharmas:
1: Samanya Dharma orUniversal values are twofold: 1) The moral laws governing the Field of Existence that apply to everyone personally, like non-injury, honesty, fairness etc. 2) The macrocosmic laws of physics, like gravity, electricity, and thermodynamics etc. These laws behave the way they behave whether you are aware of them or not and cannot be changed, only understood. Universal laws work the same way for everybody and cannot be contravened without consequence.
2: Visesa Dharma is how the individual interprets universal laws and applies them to their lives in the apparent reality with regards to everything: lifestyle, diet, money, work, family, sex, marriage, how one relates to people and the environment one lives in, technology, even how we die. Visesa dharma will vary for everyone depending on their life circumstances and svadharma.
3: Svadharma with a small “s” is an individual’s conditioning. This is the nature and the predisposition with which each person is born, along with the kind of body they are given. To be happy the individual needs to act in accordance with his or her inborn nature or he or she will not be following dharma. For instance, if it is an individual’s nature to be a business person, it will not serve them to be in the healing professions, or vice versa. Or if you are born with a body that has a lot of problems, you will not be able to do many things that one who has a strong body can do.
Or your life karma may be wildly different. Say you are injured in a bad car accident and have no sensory input, but your mind is functional, how does one value life then? You may be loved by many regardless of the lack of what most would consider quality of life, but you may still not have the capacity to endure such a life. Who is to say what is right or wrong? The Self does not care one way or the other. What is right for one person is not right for another. Svadharma is different for everyone.
All bodies die sooner or later. As I said in the satsang of mine you quote – If there is nothing you can do about the body dying, why worry about it? The Greek philosopher Epicurus famously said, “Death is nothing to us; when we exist, death is not; and when death exists, we are not. All sensation and consciousness end with death and therefore in death there is neither pleasure nor pain. The fear of death arises from the belief that in death, there is awareness”. End quote.
Epicurus did not have Self-knowledge; he was identified with the body and so believed that consciousness ends when it ends. But if he had Self-knowledge, he would have ended that statement with:
“The fear of death arises from the belief that in death, Awareness (Consciousness) ends”.
As stated, death applies only to the body, which upon its demise returns to the five elements from which it arose. The Subtle body, the blueprint for that particular vasana bundle, is subsumed back into the Causal body from where it originated. And, depending on whether or not that blueprint exhausted its vasanas, it may or may not be recycled in the ongoing apparently real world, mithya. With the emphasis on ‘apparently real’. Real being that which is always present and unchanging, which only applies to you, Awareness. From the Self’s point of view, nothing ever gets ‘recycled’ because nothing ‘cycled’ in the first place.
Ending the life of the body because life for it has become intolerable is dharmic according to your karma. Isvara does not sit in judgment of us, as the religious gods deem it does. The only issue is the karma load of that Subtle body – which may or may not end, even in death, by our hand or any other way. Prarabdha karma is like a bullet shot from a gun – it will hit its mark sooner or later. Karma only ends when we have actualized the Self.
So, like everything else from the nondual perspective, the answer depends on a few factors. It is an individual choice. Even committing suicide if you are not ill or no longer competent is not ‘wrong’. It just has consequences karmically, for the Subtle body alone. For James and I, who know we are the Self, we have both made provisions for such a choice, should the time come that life for the jiva is no longer tenable because the mind and body are no longer competent, and we become a burden to others.
I hope this helps
John: This is truly a brilliant and deeply moving statement about Karm., Swadarhma and our role in the Self. I bow to you your insight. With great respect!
You are welcome, John
Om
Sundari
