How does one relate that to cultivation in spirituality? Some will say that to be able to kill yourself takes great courage. Those are the very people that do not understand how the mind works.
When a person decides to terminate their life, most often is due to the mental pain they experience at that moment is perceived to be more than the physical pain of dying.
Therefore they choose to end their life. When a person is in mental pain from heart ache, severe disappointment and also total lost of any future hope, then the idea of terminating one's life will be taken as an option. This is also due to strong attachment to the SELF.
In a moment of lost hope and despair, they are unable to detach from their SELF emotion, therefore experiencing pain that seems to feel like eternity. Whereby they can only choose to physically detach from the self which is through termination.
Buddhist and Taoist Cultivation on the other hand is teaching us about how to Let the Self go. Meaning slowly learn to not take the self so seriously. Knowing that you have had many self(S) in your countless existence. Heart ache, pains, disappointment , hopeless are only expectation that is attached to the SELF. When other and your own inability to fulfill those expectations, therefore the EGO will feel the pain mentally.
Buddhist have monks and nuns. Which is the first step of cultivation of releasing the self. In Chinese word, for one who is ordained as monk or nun is 出家人, literally meaning one who has left home. Why leaving home? Because in Asian culture, the family unit plays a critical role in defining the self. Your ancestors, your parent, your relatives, what your familly does and more; all of that defines who you are and ultimately how you view your SELF. When one is define as the one who have left home, means they have release and let go a large part of their SELF.
Then slowly learning to cultivate through meditation, letting go of attachments to various emotions. Serving others in monastic life, is also a training to focus on other instead of the self. However all these comes with renunciation. Below is an excerpt that elegantly defines renunciation.
Someone asked Guru Nanak, "O
saint, why have you not
shaved your head? You are a sanyasin."
Guru Nanak replied:
"My dear friend, I have shaved my
mind." In fact, the mind
should be cleanly shaved. Shaving the
mind consists of
getting rid of all attachments, egoism,
infatuation, lust, greed
and anger. That is real shaving.
External shaving of the head
has no meaning so long as there is
internal craving.
Many have not understood what true
renunciation is.
Renunciation of physical objects is no
renunciation at all.
True renunciation lies in the
abnegation of the mind. It consists
of renouncing all desires and egoism,
and not world-existence.
The real renunciation is the
renunciation of the ego. If you can
renounce this, you have renounced
everything in the world. If
the subtle egoism is given up,
identification with the body goes
away automatically.
As a layperson/householder, we too can practice daily on letting go which is through meditation. In 15-30 minutes a day, practice of letting go everything, your attachment, your failures, your success, and everything that defines who you are - Your SELF. Then you will find that slowly you will not be too attached to yourself, you can easily reach an emotional state of tranquility.
If you don't practice now, when the actual day really comes for you to let go everything, how would you be able to do it?
