The Karmic Perils Of Following Suit

Published : March 09, 2010 :: 17:03:26 [ 2,665 views ]

The Karmic Perils Of Following Suit

With the Thai penchant for emulating their heroes, especially movie super stars, one has to be careful not to instil ideas in impressionable minds. Apparently, the Japanese have a suicide syndrome which many follow unthinkingly, due to inordinate academic or business pressure. Though the same pressures could hardly be claimed for the majority of Thais, nevertheless, they do like to be copyists. One often sees this among lovelorn bar girls who, when jilted, readily slit their wrists.

The recent tragic tale of a young Bangkok couple, holidaying in Phuket, illustrates one such example not to be followed. The couple, presumably middle class due to the fact they were staying in a luxury condominium in Phuket, had apparently carried out a death pact by leaping off the condominium roof together. The reasons for their demise wasn’t made apparent in the media, but it could well have been unrequited love, a common problem, especially amongst the Thai middle class who still tend to be conservative and adhere to strict rules of conduct and interrelationship. Maybe one of them wasn’t sufficiently Chinese or ‘hi-so’ enough. For whatever reason, they felt the only way out of their predicament was to leap to their deaths together.

As stated at the beginning of this article, one has to be careful of the potential psychological impact on impressionable young minds, so one might say ‘enough is enough. What you’ve already written will be sufficient to impel some misguided soul to end it all’. If that’s the case, maybe we should follow with some apt food for thought.

Although the common belief among Thais is that what happens in this life doesn’t really matter and it’s ok to drive your motorbike at speeds reckless enough to kill yourself because you may come back to better circumstances in the next life, well, think again. The finding of the monks of Tibet, advanced in the knowledge of the ‘bardos’ or inter death states between incarnations, staunchly militate against suicide because one is left in an interim state, continually suffering the pangs and tribulations that caused the person to take their life in the first place. This continues until the soul’s original allotted span is up, irrespective of when they took their lives. Suicide, then, is no way out, plus such flippant usage of the sacred life receptacle will incur further karma to be worked off in the next life, which will be probably more difficult to bear than that which caused the suicide in this life.

Lest any of you misguided cynics out there, just waiting to plunge negatively on anything you deem alien to your precious weltanschauung or philosophy of life, care to take objection to the above statements, I say to you read the Tibetan Book of the Dead before you begin your petty-minded tirades.

As for young lovelorn Thai or suicidal farangs, for that matter, don’t waste the precious gift of the universe, namely human life. No tribulation, no matter how apparently hard, is worth sacrificing the gift of life and the karmic consequences are severe!

Reporter: Mark Battle