Jainism And Suicide Essay

I picked this topic because I recently had to put my animal down that I have had for 17 years. It was a struggle because I felt like I was committing a murder even though she was suffering. I found it very interesting in my readings that the Jainism religion is ok with suicide especially when it believes so strongly in nonviolence. To me suicide is still a form of violence and causes harm to everyone involved with the death because of this, I wanted to look farther into why such a peaceful religion is ok with suicide. In my research I discovered that Jainism does believe in ending one’s own life but that it’s not like our typical sense of suicide. When I think of suicide I think of someone killing themselves because of depression, or they feel like there is no way

In the 90’s and early 2003 there was an organization called the Hemlock organization. This group tried very hard to make it legal to euthanize adults who were terminally ill or helplessly ill. They supported the idea to euthanize for dying people. The Hemlock organization would provide support on how to bring about peoples peaceful ends when dying, trapped in a ruined body, or just plain terminally old, frail, and tired of life. (Humphry, 05) This is something I can understand however from a religious stand point I belive it would still be considered wrong. Espicially from the point of view of the Jains community. Even though someone is suffering they would not agree to commit an act of harm, the act of killing the person would be extreamly bad karma. This is the difference between the Jains practice of sallekhana and western views on suicide. Even though both are towards the end of their life the Jains spiritual journey to end life through starvation is not to eliminate pain but to be so selfless and free of one’s body that they can endure starving themselves to death. That cannot be easy to do and must be