The issue of suicide within any religious tradition raises basic questions about the value of human life and the freedom of the individual to take control of that most fundamental and unavoidable end result of living, death itself. For Buddhism the problem is not as clearly delineated as it is for Christianity, which Professor Markham describes as, " . . . virtually unanimous in considering suicide a sin." (The Times 14-05-98). Of the three clear cases of suicide reported in the Pali Canon, the case of Channa seems to be the most widely used to demonstrate Buddhist ambivalence on the subject. For this reason, and because it gives the best evidence of the Buddha’s accord with the act, I will focus on this case alone in this essay.

I intend to show that the majority of Buddhists and scholars of Buddhism take the view that suicide is wrong for the unenlightened but acceptable for the arahant, and I will examine the reasons why this is so. I will then show why this causes tension with other aspects of Buddhist thought before moving on to an examination of objective grounds for believing all suicide to be wrong when looked at in the context of Buddhist teaching and values.

There are complications here. Firstly, in reducing a complex and varied religion to the reports in the Pali Canon without bringing in thousands of years of contextual and cultural variation I am in danger of over simplification. My search however is restricted to looking for grounds for an objective belief in the immorality of suicide within the Pali Canon and not to presume to pronounce a binding ethical position, which all Buddhists should adhere to.

Secondly, a definition of suicide in itself will not be attempted beyond stating that I refer to the deliberate self inflicted death for no other (worldly) reason than putting an end to a life and everything therein. Issues concerning whether feeding one’s body to a hungry tigress (in ‘Jaataka-mala’) or the Jain tradition of fasting to death, constitute suicide will not be discussed as space is limited.

Harran writing in Eliade’s Encyclopaedia of Religion points towards the equivocal treatment of suicide in Buddhism stating: "Buddhism in its various forms affirms that, while suicide as self sacrifice may be appropriate for the person who is an arhat, one who has attained enlightenment, it is still very much the exception to the rule." (1987 Vol 14, pg 129). Becker commenting upon the suicide of the monks, Channa and Vakkali, refers to the, "Buddha’s praise of the suicides," and claims that this praise is based upon the fact that . . . their minds were selfless, desireless and enlightened at the moment of their passing." (1990 pg547). Whilst I disagree with Becker regarding the Buddha’s praising of these suicides, and will show why shortly, this does give an insight into the reasons why there is a division in morality between the suicidal act of an arhat and a non-arhat. In 1987 Lamotte wrote,

"The desperate person who takes his own life obviously aspires to annihilation: his suicide, instigated by desire, will not omit him from fruition, and he will have to partake in the fruit of his action. In the case of the ordinary man, suicide is folly and does not achieve the intended aim." (1987 pg110).

The position is summed up by Wiltshire who commented that, "suicide is salvifically fatal in most cases, but not for the arahant since he cannot be motivated by desire," (Wiltshire 1983 pg 134) and this position is demonstrated further by my own research amongst internet newsgroups (alt.Buddhism, alt.religion.buddhism, alt.uk.buddhism) where the unanimous response to my inquiries was fundamentally the same as that of the scholars above.

We must therefore conclude that the majority view is that there is nothing wrong, ‘per se,’ in the act of suicide but that the morality of the act is entirely dependent upon the motivation and state of mind of the person who commits the act. In other words morality in the case of suicide is purely subjective.

This idea that the individuals state of mind is the defining factor of morality seems to lead to conclusions which are contrary to Buddhist doctrine when applied to other issues. Keown (1996 pg12) gives the example that this hard and uncompromising form of subjectivism would mean that the wrongness of murder lies solely in the perpetrators desire to kill which ignores the objective dimension of the act, namely that an injustice is done to someone in so far as a person is deprived of life. This formulation of subjectivism actually ignores the act itself and only takes account of the actor. In this way it is only the desire which is wrong not the suicide or murder. The inescapable conclusion of this line of argument is therefore that someone who murders without desire does nothing wrong.

One could argue here that it is impossible to murder without desire and yet if an arhat is able to commit suicide without desire (as is claimed) there seems no theoretical reason why that same arhat could not murder without desire which, as my incursions into Buddhist internet newsgroups assure me, is absurd. This point does involve a linkage between suicide and murder which some may object to and yet the similarities are strong, both involve violence and death and both can, as in the case of euthanasia, involve compassion. For this reason the point has some force.

Another objection to this subjectivist position as compatible with Buddhism, or indeed any other practical ethic, is that the gravity of a crime would seem to be directly proportional to the amount of passion or desire present in the mind of the perpetrator. In this scenario the murder of an abusive drunken husband in a rage of fury, for example, would be far worse than the cold blooded, dispassionate execution of a person by a contract killer. In Buddhist countries as in Western countries, the opposite is deemed to be true.

There is another reason why suicide would have to be given special status of the arhat/non-arhat division is to be maintained and that is the Buddhist tradition of imitating the enlightened in everything. This exhortation covers all aspects of the life and thought of the enlightened striving to be like their masters and it is not clear why suicide should be the only exception to this rule.

For these reasons the theory that the state of mind of the suicide case is definitive in ascertaining the morality of that suicide within Buddhism, appears to be on weak grounds. For the second half of the essay I propose to show that accounts of the Buddha’s "praise" of suicide are inconsistent with the primary texts and from this base I will attempt to put forward objective grounds for the immorality of suicide within the Buddhist tradition.

The facts of Channa’s suicide are very straightforward in that he was a monk with incurable disease, which caused immense pain and suffering. He killed himself believing (perhaps falsely) that he had reached ‘paranirvana’ (see Schumann 1982 pg152) and that he had no more purpose on this earth, thus further suffering was pointless. His last words were to his friend Sariputta, "Remember this: the monk Channa will use the knife blamelessly." After this he killed himself. The central issue here is whether Channa was an arhat at the time he decided to commit suicide. He seems to claim that he was and yet that does not mean that this was the case and this doesn’t seem to be the opinion of the early commentators on the Pali Canon, as I will demonstrate shortly.

Becker (1990 pg547) Wiltshire (1983 pg132) and Keown (1996 pg16) all agree that the case of Channa gives the best evidence that the Buddha condoned suicide and Keown cites the particular passage that is used to show permission. The Buddha said,

"For whoso Sariputta, lays down one body and takes up another body, of him I say, "he is to blame." But not so with the brother Channa. Without reproach was the knife used by the brother Channa." (Ibid)

Here we can see the roots of the current majority position outlined earlier. One initial comment is that saying his action is "without reproach" is not necessarily the same as condoning the act and is certainly not the "praising" referred to by Becker (1990 pg547). Keown draws a useful parallel here with Christ’s reaction to the adulterous woman defending her with the words; "Neither do I condemn thee." (Keown 1996 pg 18) Clearly Christ intends not to condone adultery but to show compassion to a sinner. Compassion is one of the central doctrines of Buddhism and it is at least as likely that the Buddha was exonerating Channa rather than condoning suicide in a paradigmatically similar fashion to Christ with the adulteress.

The commentary accompanying the main text of the story of Channa in the Pali Canon attempts to make sense of this death in the following ways. (I rely here upon Keown (1990) for this as I have not been able to locate an English translation of the primary source.)

It is suggested that Channa, because he felt unable to bear the pain of the illness, could not have been enlightened when he decided to take his life. There is clearly a problem in the view that an enlightened person having escaped from suffering could be subservient to pain and so the commentary seems justified in this presumption. We are then told that Channa achieved enlightenment at the point of death and was thus a samasisin (equal headed). There is a long tradition of sudden enlightenment at the point of death within the Buddhist tradition (see Burton Cit. Pabst 1982 pg 53) and this interpretation throws a different light upon the case of Channa which the traditional interpretations that we have looked at fail to take into account.

In saying that Channa was not an arhat until the point of death those who suggest that suicide is wrong for a non-arhat would have to accept that Channa was wrong to commit the act. It is at least probable that in the conception and execution of the act he was not an arhat and this temporal issue is crucial to the following conclusions.

We have arrived at the point where the conclusion that suicide by an arhat is acceptable to Buddhism has become unjustifiable with regards to the teachings of the Buddha as reported in the Pali Canon. The prime example of an arhat committing suicide (Channa) turns out to be not the suicide of an arhat, but instead the actions of an unenlightened man who can stand the pain of life no more. He was only to become enlightened at the point of death and thus, his enlightened ‘self’ was exonerated of responsibility. It was the old, flawed Channa who committed the act and the old, flawed Channa who was wrong to do as he did.

The point here is that there is evidence to suggest that no arhat has committed suicide and that those who point to Channa are mislead if they use his death to substantiate such a claim. Therefore although an enlightened person may be able to commit suicide in an ‘a priori’ sense we have no empirical evidence to support the view that he or she might do so. The argument is therefore no more substantial than a claim that an arhat can blamelessly murder, or blamelessly use a nuclear device on an innocent population. This may be true as his greater insight into nature could allow him such a course of action, but I suspect that no Buddhist would claim that this is the case.

This interpretation is consistent with Buddhist doctrine in a way that others are not. Indeed the First Precept shows that the taking of any human life is the gravest offence a Buddhist can commit (Saddhatissa 1970 pg87-88). Further the third parajika (Nakasone 1990 pg67-68) is clearly against suicide, abetting suicide and commending death by suicide and the principle of ahimsa (non-injury) is clearly shattered by any act of violence, including suicide.

Therefore it seems reasonable to conclude that rather than the morality of suicide being subjective there is a great deal of evidence to support the contrary view, namely that there is some feature of the act itself which marks it out as morally suspect.

Buddhism sees death not as an end to life, but merely as a transition to another life. Anyone who thinks of death as an end to suffering has misunderstood the First Noble Truth which clearly states that death itself is one of the most basic aspects of suffering and that in this way it is the problem, not the solution. An arhat will not commit suicide because he cannot wish for death (or life). When death comes, it comes and can only be met with indifference otherwise the arhat has revealed himself to be less than enlightened.

If, like Channa, the person who commits suicide gains enlightenment at the point of death then his good fortune will not require him to go through the suffering of another life regardless of the objective immorality of his act.

BIBLIOGRAPHY?? - Watch this space

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