A friend who once worked as a psychiatrist in a posh town in California once said to me that he saw the act of suicide as a permanent solution to a temporary problem. Ironically, his own crazily hedonistic lifestyle militated against his innate wisdom and he himself later tried to commit suicide. But I never forgot his words, especially since I lost a few friends in this manner; every single time I heard someone had offed themselves the shock was great. The worst news was the suicide of a lovely woman I knew in New York. One fine day in fall, she had gone home and shot herself with a gun she had just bought, and that too before her beloved cat. Since she lived alone on the top floor of a condo, her body was not found for several days, and that poor cat had to be a witness to the gradual decomposition of the body of his beloved mistress. I was in a restaurant enjoying brunch with a friend when I heard the news; I literally screamed—because I had once been close to her. She had been a strong Zen practitioner, calm, quiet and loving, and also the last person in the world I would have thought would have killed herself. Later I heard she left a note saying she was going over to the other side to see what it was like, or something asinine in that vein, which just goes to show that we should never go by a façade.
I love the teachings of the East because they tell us clearly that getting rid of the physical body, which is just a mix of the great elements of fire, air, earth, water and consciousness, and run by the three “gunas” of rajas, tamas and sattva, does not get rid of our suffering. Simply put, our immortal Spirit takes a new form and the suffering continues. This nugget of mystical information should be enough to stop us from ever contemplating suicide, but then, how many on the planet today give a damn for eastern philosophy, or even know that its ancient truths are priceless? Continue reading
Let’s face the bitter truth, Jasmine: it was not your circumstances that caused you (and those other celebrities) to snuff out their lives…the real assassin was and is the ego — the false self that seduces us into believing — despite all the misery and seeming unfairness of life — that we should be given all that our little hearts desire — in your specific case, a stellar celluloid career and the love of an honorable man.
Food apart, what about other critical issues? You probably had access to an excellent education, Jasmine, but did you know that nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read? Here are other shocking stats: less than one per cent of the global expense on arms could educate the world’s children — but few humans, least of all the super-wealthy who could make a difference, give a good goddamn.
Recent headlines about a young Bollywood star who hung herself one fine day in her posh Mumbai home set me to wondering just why a woman so blessed would resort to so irrevocable an act. I dug a little deeper: career and romantic problems, screeched the media, citing the same boring reasons that have led other glamorous stars all over the globe to snuff out their privileged lives.
It’s the Manhattan winter of 1992, less than three months since I’ve left my mate of fourteen years, losing, in one fell swoop, all the solid props of my life. To stay financially afloat, I take on freelance administrative gigs in arguably the planet’s most frenzied and high-stakes city.
mira prabhu 