What’s wrong with committing suicide when yogis ending their life is considered glorious?

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Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI and may contain occasional errors or inaccuracies.

Summary

In Vedic philosophy, a clear distinction is made between conventional suicide driven by frustration and the voluntary departure of life practiced by advanced yogis.

• The Power of Intention and Awareness: Yogis who voluntarily leave their bodies do so out of a positive attraction to higher spiritual consciousness, guided by intense practice and profound inner awareness.

• Circumstances Matter: Historical and scriptural accounts show that ending one’s life out of defeat, disappointment, or frustration (like Duryodhana or certain vanaras) is viewed as tragic rather than heroic.

• The Role of Destiny and Karma: While an action requires favorable destiny to succeed, having the karmic credit to execute an act does not make the act itself morally right or laudable.

• Desire and Disembodiment: Conventional suicide typically stems from worldly desires paired with a lack of resources or life circumstances, leaving the person in a suffering, disembodied state due to prematurely destroying the physical gift of the body.

• Vedic Stance on Last Rites: Unlike historical Western traditions that strictly banned religious burials for suicide victims, the Vedic tradition permits last rites, though suicide is strongly discouraged because it creates more problems than it solves.

• True Renunciation vs. Escapism: Authentic spiritual departure is rooted in a higher purpose and freedom from material cravings, contrasting sharply with the despair-driven nature of suicide.

Full Transcription

Why is suicide condemned? Isn’t it that the person was destined to die at that time? If destiny were not involved then why would some suicides be successful and some not? And yogis also commit a kind of suicide they take samadhi to new their body why is that considered glorious and the other not? Answer The word suicide has a particular specific connotation and voluntarily ending one’s life is not as simple as that to be encompassing all the connotations of the word or the action you could say so let’s first consider the point of yogis just as in our daily life one of the basic teachings of the Gita is that one’s action is important but one’s intention in doing one’s action is also equally if not more important and if the intention is negative intention is self-centered then that has consequences even for so called good action so yogis when they leave their body voluntarily they do so because they wish to seek a higher attainment and they do so by entering into yogic trance and slowly turning away from the body to a irreversibly high level where they stop all food and breath, food and air food and water and eventually even air and this is done primarily for gaining spiritual realization a higher spiritual attainment where they feel that this in this bodily embodiment their particular role is over and they are ready to move on to the next destination so we could say there could be action in sattva, rajas and tamas and of course there could be action in pure transcendence also but broadly this is called prayavrata where one is turning away from the body and it’s not turning away from the bodily care because one is so focused on spiritual absorption and yes if somebody decides that they want to longer wish to live they can do that so when yogis do it it is that they also have some level of higher awareness because of their intense yoga practice by which they understand that this is the time when this bodily stay is supposed to end also and that’s how they end their life so I would say two things over here, their attention and their overall awareness is there so that’s what characterizes overall level of awareness that’s what characterizes prayavrata now somebody else may take on the external acts external action of prayavrata also and that’s not necessarily considered so spiritual or elevating like Duryodhana when he gets frustrated after being after setting out to humiliate the Pandavas and ending up himself humiliated before the Pandavas by the Gandharvas he decides to end his life and that is disastrous same with the vanaras, some of the vanaras led by Angada want to end their life because they are unable to find Sita but there is also the fear of Sugriva’s retribution which Angada fills the vanaras minds with and that is both of these are circumstantially put off are they glorious things? no, they are arising from disappointment and frustration and while the overall practice itself doesn’t seem shocking if you read the overall context of either book in that particular individual’s choice is not considered heroic or glorious in any way so the circumstance in which prayavrata is embraced or is adopted also matters and thus the vanaras or Duryodhana’s attempt is not considered at the same level of a yogi entering into a mystical trance or for example Duryodhana’s father Dhritharashtra at the end of his life under Vidura’s guidance creating a mystical fire out of his own body and ending his life or the Pandavas at the end of their life as described in the Mahabharata, not in the Mahabharata, in the Bhagavatam drawing the life airs into their body and ending their lives thereby so these are considered a person who has practiced earnest spiritual life throughout their life, have raised their consciousness and have chosen to use these mystical practices or to use the practices of yoga to enter higher consciousness now if we consider the circumstance of suicide today no action will be successful unless it is destined unless destiny works with it but that does not mean that that action is acceptable or or laudable for that matter sometimes somebody may try to rob someone and they may fail to rob does that mean that if they are successful in robbing and you can say destiny was with them when they were successful and destiny was not with them when they were unsuccessful that is true but just because destiny was with something in some particular action does not in itself make that action right or even glorious sometimes some people may have a certain stockpile of karma by which they have the freedom to do certain things which may be good or bad so the morality of particular action is independent of whether the person has the favorable destiny to do it so we can say a person needs some past karmic credits to do any significant activity in this world but the karmic effect of those activities is different from the karmic credits needed to do those activities that means there might have been many supremacists like Hitler who wanted to take over the world but few of them had the past karmic credits that Hitler had to be able to rise to the level of power that Hitler could rise to but that does not mean that Hitler had some favorable destiny to rise to extraordinary level of power it does not in any way mean that Hitler’s rise to power itself was a good thing he adopted reprehensible means involving killing millions of people civilians as a part of the holocaust and that was horrendous so generally suicide arises out of Rajoguna going down to Tamoguna where one wants to enjoy the things of this world and is yet not able to because of various circumstances and therefore feels frustrated and thus decides to end their life so generally just as we say renunciation that is out of frustration is not very much appreciated because it involves having the desires for worldly pleasure but lacking the facilities for those pleasures and therefore one continues in a one adopts renunciation in an externally renowned state but internally craving for the pleasures that one is not expected to be craving in that order similarly in the state of when somebody commits suicide out of frustration they have they have desires for worldly pleasures but they lack the resources maybe circumstances have worked out in such a way that they are not able to either get the necessary they may not be able to form a particular relationship or get marks or get wealth or whatever and therefore they decide that they want to end their life now they destroy their body but because they still have a desire for bodily pleasure they end up in a disembodied state wherein they they don’t have the karmic threads to get a new body right now because they destroyed their previous body prematurely and yet they have desires for bodily pleasure thus they end up wandering about in the disembodied state that is commonly called as ghosts and suicide is disapproved or condemned although the condemnation is not of the same gravity as is there in the Christian tradition wherein a person who has committed suicide is not allowed to be buried in the religiously sanctioned graveyards that’s how it was in the past at least Catholic Church would not allow people who committed suicide to be buried and thus sometimes people would hide the fact that somebody had committed suicide in order for them to get a respectable burial in the Vedic tradition there is no ban against the last rites being performed for somebody who committed suicide but it is disapproved in the sense that it is a solution worse than the problem right now as long as a person has the body there is at least the facility for working and hopefully acquiring or reacquiring some of the desires that one is seeking to fulfill but when one destroys the body that itself involves a certain level of negative karma because the body is not ours to destroy first of all it is a gift given to us and secondly the disembodied state so to not have a beautiful home is bad but to not have any home at all is worse similarly to not have physical resources such as wealth or beauty or other qualities which one can enjoy the world is bad but to not have fundamental physical resource of the body itself is far worse and in that state the person suffers much more because suicide is an act that causes more problems than it solves and thus involves a significant amount of negative karma that is why it is disapproved of in contrast, great yogis and their lives they have neither their desires they have no longer any desire for worldly pleasures and they don’t have the resources and they don’t need the resources therefore therefore just as real renunciation is glorified because one has found a higher purpose and is turning toward that higher purpose because of positive attraction toward that purpose toward that higher reality and not due to a frustration with the lower reality because of that the yogis departing from the world voluntarily is considered glorious whereas those committing suicide are not