A well-known Buddhist text called the Bardo Thodol, commonly referenced in the west as the Tibetan Book of the Dead, purports to describe the death experience from the moment the body dies to the point of reincarnation as a newborn. Throughout the text, it provides instructions for the living guiding the deceased through the process, where the dead first go through a Heaven-like experience of ecstasy and then descend into something reminiscent of the western concept of Hell. On each day, the dead are to be reminded their experiences are merely their thought-forms, perhaps loosely thought of as imagination. If the dead are able to realize this, they achieve enlightenment and no longer need to be re-incarnated.
I bring this up because of a conversation I had this week with Eva Kratochvil while I was covering World Suicide Prevention Day in town. She emphasized the importance of breaking down the stigma of suicide so more people would be comfortable talking about it. She noted a person may feel helpless, hopeless or unable to change their lives for the better in the moment, and often suicide prevention comes down to helping them realize these intense feelings are fleeting and their lives could look quite different within a week when they pass.
The western interpretation of the Bardo Thodol is somewhat skewed. While it certainly is a manual for the dead and dying, it's also a manual for the living. To save you all the trouble of reading the book, the idea is we are all always being born, living, dying and being reborn again. Every moment, even every second, we have changed and grown in some manner.
Relating back to Eva's point, our emotions are always in a state of flux. We've all been at that point where it feels like nothing we do works, where we can't find any solutions and we can't grasp any hope. We've also been in those moments of pure bliss that we wish would never end. And we spend the rest of our lives moving in between these two extremes.
The reality is we all experience suicidal thoughts at one point or another. There are plenty of reasons in this world to feel depressed and hopeless. Climate change continues to wreak havoc on traditional ways of life. Covid-19 has put the whole of human society in a sleeper-hold, leaving us to wonder if or when life will return to normal. The burden of our past mistakes continue to weigh down on us all.
But there are also reasons to have hope. Children are reconnecting with their traditional languages. Self-governance agreements show Indigenous peoples are reclaiming control of their destinies. Young innovators and inventors are devising alternatives to plastics and even ways to remove them from the ecosystem.
Don't let the demons win. There is always someone willing to listen to your pain and we all would rather hear about it than spend the rest of our lives without you. No one is going to sit around the Christmas dinner table and talk about how glad they are that you are not there.
No matter how deep in the pit you may be, shout out. Someone will hear you and throw you a rope. You are not alone. Let's face this together.