Suicide

My Dad killed himself 14 years ago.

Being a "survivor of suicide" doesn't make me an expert though I can speak from an experience not so many have had. I've spent many years pissed at him, many years missing him, and many years hoping his death provided him the relief he desired.

Nothing short circuits any of that experience. A friend of mine told me, "This is gonna hurt and it's supposed to."

One thing I feel needs to be said that nobody here is gonna say:

IT'S OKAY TO THINK ABOUT KILLING YOURSELF. IT'S OKAY TO KILL YOURSELF.

Everyone in here pussyfooting around basic human honesty. If someone wants to kill themselves they're gonna do it. They just are. Don't mollycoddle each other. All people deserve the freedom to kill themselves. It's like love. You can't make someone love another, just as you can't make someone love life. You can only love when you're free not to. Same with life. Real life comes out of the freedom of death. Insisting to someone that their pain (real or imagined is no matter) is never a valid reason to kill themselves takes away their validity of sensation and thought.

What right does anyone have to pressure another into subsisting when they are suffering?

Reminds me of the Bill Hicks bit about how pro-lifers should stand outside cemeteries instead of abortion clinics if they're really pro-life.

People kill themselves for all sorts of reasons though I think it comes down to pain.

Aside from physical pain, there is mental anguish. Zen masters address this directly:

Have nothing inside. Seek nothing outside. -- Joshu

If there is a true challenge and practice for zen students it is Joshu's instruction.

How to practice it? Joshu also provides instruction:

When hot, hot. When cold, cold. -- Joshu

I won't tell you all that one should cultivate patience or focus on a red triangle or any of that other nonsense in an attempt to mollycoddle you all towards Joshu's "having nothing inside, seeking nothing outside."

It's impossible and still you can do it.

You don't ask how to "not have anything inside"....you simply not have.

I know it sounds impossible. Too cute. Too pat. It is. All at once it's a million little pieces and the next it's a whole hole.

A 100 miles high wall rising up before you is the thoughts in your head and all the thoughts you seek outside your head all remaining before us all. HOW DO WE SCALE IT? HOW DO WE ANSWER THE ZEN MASTER QUESTIONING US FROM THE SAFETY OF THE PATH WHILE WE HANG FROM A TREE BRANCH BY OUR TEETH ABOVE A 10,000' CHASM?

We can't. It's impossible.

We can do it anyways.

We just do it.

It's your damn mind people. It's your damn house. It's your damn lamp.

If you never understood why it's said that if there's ever a true person of Chan in a crowd when someone begins talking about the ineffableness of the dharma, that person would slap the speaker....understand it right now: If you are dying of thirst and someone gives you a clean glass of water, but just as you begin to up end the glass and drink someone takes the glass away telling you you're not drinking it properly YOU SLAP THAT PERSON AND TAKE YOUR GLASS OF WATER BACK AND DRINK IT.

No magic. You know what to do with water when you're thirsty. The same mind that knows this is the same mind that knows how to do everything else there is to do.

Stop speaking and thinking and there is nothing you cannot understand. -- Sengcan

^That one stops me cold every time I read it.

Hey, I'm no more expert

We only have this ratio of existence and damnit it's a magical ratio! Magical enough to terrify and inspire.

Ach.

I'm tired now after writing this, and I see as usual I wrote a bunch of nonsense to comfort myself. Not zen.

Submitted January 23, 2019 at 10:28PM by -johnjones- http://bit.ly/2Ta69tI