Depression - A Temporary State Of Mind

I was truly shocked to read a news column today. An actor couple committed suicide!

The couple,  husband 40 and wife 38 were both Kannada actors, having acted in movies and TV serials as well. They were into production too. Recently the wife returned from America having quite a few promises from her NRI friends to enter into production. There was a photo of the couple alongside the news. They look fairly beautiful, sort of made for each other. The couple was childless; both have living parents. Husband hails from Davangere and wife from Hassan. The sad part in fact is, according to the news both husband and wife were qualified Engineers doing well in software firms and opted for acting career rejecting the IT jobs for which practically a great majority of present day youth crave for. Yes, as the paper reports, both of them had indulged in too many things at a time and were in a sort of financial problems. Well, a senior actress says, they could have opted to to go back to IT field instead of taking the extreme step.

The point I want to discuss here is about the temporary state of mind that leads to commit suicide.

I have come across quite some cases of suicide, both successful and attempted. I know of at least two cases of repeated attempts. I have known people hanging themselves for reasons which look flimsy to you and me. A middle class person commits suicide because his daughter's rich father- in - law insults him in front of the gathering during the marriage. A bank manager hangs himself for having reprimanded by his superiors for not being able to recover the loan he had sanctioned to a customer of his branch though it was in 10970's. And the instances of suicide by failed lovers are ample from time immemorial.

I said it is a temporary state of mind. Well, all states of mind are temporary. Recollect all the happinesses you had in the past. All of them are temporary, because the very next moment when that moment of happiness passes, the happiness you had instantly turns into a piece of memory; you can never be in that state of happiness again. So is the mind about everything it undergoes and undertakes - a huge storehouse of me. Also no sad moment repeats itself except as memory. And the funny thing about this mind is, why do you feel sad again just by recollecting the memory of sadness?  I am sure this is not the experience limited to me only that no recollection of memory of happiness ever brings back happiness! Why?  Ego! Ego is 'me'. Ego is pride. Ego is hurt. Ego is insult. Ego is success. Ego is virtue. You see? All these values make for your ego which is akin to sorrow, not happiness. And this Ego is mind itself; not a separate entity. A created entity, that mind calls 'me', which is ego. Every sense, every value, every moment of life is ego-centric. Without ego there is no happiness, no sorrow, because the sense of these states creates ego, me. Therefore, the hurt also is directly proportionate to your sense of value. As I had said earlier in this write up, many a time the reason for suicide looks flimsy from outside the person who commits suicide. The value of money, sense of shame, degradation of pride, sense of achievement and all those attributes of the mind differ from person to person. So the gravity of the situation formed by the calibre of these attributes of the mind often pushes a person to commit suicide. If the mind survives the brief moment of peak acuteness of the urge to die, the same mind later regrets or even laughs at itself for having thought of dying a moment earlier!

I don't think there is anybody in this world who has not thought of committing suicide at least once in lifetime. Even a trained counselor is not free from this temporary state of mind. Life is, but in understanding this nature of the mind which never stays in one state, one place, one bit of value for long. A person arguing vigorously for the benefits of nonvegetarianism may suddenly turn into vegetarianism. Prince Siddhartha became The Buddha due to a momentary state of mind seeing the created pleasures of wealth. He too was not free from other states such as rivalry. Mahavir Jain was his rival! (Read Osho) Mahavir was very old and was having acute old age sufferings and  Buddha was a young sensation of divinity. Even then, today it is Buddha's teachings that rule the roost of most modern spiritual thinking. Aristotle was firm in his belief that women have less number of teeth! UG once said, "The difference between me and the psychiatrist is that I give expression to my thoughts; he doesn't! ... "

If one realises this fact about the mind being temporary every moment it thinks, no thought of suicide succeeds. Sure, the thought comes, maybe again and again and in some people yet again, but the awareness of this fact of the mind being temporary,- yes I said mind, not thought, - because it is the thought that creates mind! So the mind itself is an illusion!!! Why should one allow it to rule life?