Religious views on suicide

In Theravada Buddhism, for a monk to so much as praise death, including dwelling upon life's miseries or extolling stories of possibly blissful rebirth in a higher realm in a way that might condition the hearer to die by suicide or to pine away to death, is explicitly stated as a breach in one of highest vinaya codes, the prohibition against harming life, one that will result in automatic expulsion from Sangha.

If someone dies by suicide in anger, he may be reborn in a sorrowful realm due to negative final thoughts.

But in a Buddhist tale, a bhikkhu named Vakkali who was extremely ill and racked with excruciating pain, was said to have died by suicide when near death and upon making statements suggesting he had passed beyond desires (and thus perhaps an arahant).

[9] While believing himself again in a state of temporary liberation it occurred to him to cut his own throat, in hopes thus to be reborn in a high realm.

[9]Ultimately, tales like these could be read as implying past Buddhist beliefs that suicide might be acceptable in certain circumstances if it might lead to non-attachment.

[11] In an entry in The Encyclopedia of Religion, Marilyn J. Harran wrote the following: Buddhism in its various forms affirms that, while suicide as self-sacrifice may be appropriate for the person who is an arhat, one who has attained enlightenment, it is still very much the exception to the rule.

Generally, taking your own life is considered a violation of the code of ahimsa (non-violence) and therefore equally sinful as murdering another.

The Mahabharata talks of suicide, stating those who perform the act can never attain regions (of heaven) that are blessed.

Major contexts include betrayal (Ahitophel and Judas)[22][23] and divine judgement resulting in military defeat (Saul and Abimelech).

[25][26][27][28] According to the theology of the Roman Catholic Church, suicide is objectively a sin which violates the commandment "Thou shalt not kill".

The Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992), Paragraph 2283 states: "We should not despair of the eternal salvation of persons who have taken their own lives.

[30] Protestants such as most mainstream Evangelicals, Charismatics, Pentecostals, and other denominations have often argued that suicide is self-murder, and so anyone who performs the act is sinning and it is the same as if the person murdered another human being.

An additional view concerns the act of asking for salvation and accepting Jesus Christ as personal savior, which must be done prior to death.

Most pentecostals believe that a Born-Again person can still go to Heaven because the blood of Jesus covers the sin of suicide.

Suicide is regarded generally within the Eastern Orthodoxy tradition as a rejection of God's gift of physical life, a failure of stewardship, an act of despair, and a transgression of the sixth commandment, "You shall not kill" (Exodus 20:13).

However, the Eastern Orthodox Church shows compassion on those who have taken their own life because of mental illness or severe emotional stress, when a physician can verify a condition of impaired rationality.

In early Christian traditions, the condemnation of suicide is reflected in the teachings of Lactantius, St. Augustine, Clement of Alexandria, and others.

Among the martyrs at Antioch were three women who died by suicide to avoid rape; although professor William E. Phipps gives this as an example of virtuous early Christian suicides, Augustine declared that although they may have done "what was right in the sight of God," in his view the women "should not have assumed that rape would necessarily have deprived them of their purity" (as purity was, to Augustine, a state of mind).

However, committing this sin does not take one out of the fold of Islam, and according to some scholars, nor does it necessarily condemn them to eternal damnation in Hell.

"Despite it being prohibited and considered a sin in Islamic and previous texts (Torah and Injeel), it was, in some instances, imposed as a punishment by Allah on the transgressors among the Children of Israel, as indicated by Allah's saying: "And [recall] when Moses said to his people, "O my people, indeed you have wronged yourselves by your taking of the calf [for worship].

[40][41][42] Suicides are frowned upon and buried in a separate part of a Jewish cemetery and may not receive certain mourning rites.

[43] Most authorities hold that it is not permissible to hasten death to avoid pain if one is dying in any event, but the Talmud is somewhat unclear on the matter.