Suicide & the Ontology of the Self; Conversation with an Enlightened Individual
Hi all,
A little while back, I had the opportunity to ask a question to an individual whom I believe has attained traditional Buddhist enlightenment.
As a result of enlightenment, this individual claims their phenomenological experience no longer contains a sense of self/center. This has reduced their personal suffering by 90%+.
They are capable of achieving a meditative state known as "Nirodha Samapatti," which is essentially meditation-induced unconsciousness.
They are aligned with philosophical pessimism in that they believe every state of mind is painful relative to Nirodha Samapatti/unconsciousness. And what the mind mistakenly classifies as "pleasure" is really the alleviation of some prior suffering.
After enlightenment/the getting rid of a sense of self, they experience the world as a "hive mind," and as a result, the "will to be" or the "will to not be" do not resonate at a deep level anymore, because they do not connect to some central column of being that can answer existential questions on behalf of the entire hive mind.
The question I asked him was: "You say that after enlightenment, the “will to not be” doesn't resonate at a deep level anymore. Given that there is no additive pleasure in conscious experience, wouldn't the “will to not be” become amplified after enlightenment? Even if the will does not connect to a central column of being, doesn't it make sense to shut the whole decentralized network of conscious experience off? Basically: what is motivating you to stay alive? Does this motivation make sense to the intellect or is it blind and irrational?"
His answer was: "Neither the will to be nor not be, because both are realised to be insufficient descriptions of reality. It links with the no self insight. There isn't an identification with being or non-being, or conscious or not conscious for that matter. I don't think about wanting to stay alive or die anymore. And when I ask those questions and look inside I find no perspective or aspect that can speak for the whole. The question does become quite a lot less interesting, because it's no longer related to as being ultimately meaningful. It's a bit like if I ask you "Who would win in a fight Batman or Iron man?". We can entertain the question and talk about reasons why we think one may win over the other, but hopefully we don't hold the question too seriously because we know its fictional. In fact, when we ask these hypothetical questions and someone does take them very seriously, we view that person as being ontologically confused about what's real and what actually matters. This ultimate nonsensicality of the questions is revealed when we access greater contexts and pop-certain bubbles - until then it seems absolutely real."
I am not encouraging suicide, but from the perspective of alleviating suffering, it seems suicide is still the most rationally self-interested action (presuming metaphysical idealists/panpsychists are wrong and death is unconsciousness). While the sense of a self/center seems to substantially worsen suffering, the root cause of suffering seems to be consciousness.
Interested to hear your thoughts.