George Bowman was certified as a Zen Master and lineage holder by Zen Master Seung Sahn in October 1992. He is Guiding Teacher at the Cambridge Buddhist Association and has a psychotherapy practice. Trudy Goodman is a child and family therapist who has studied Buddhist meditation since 1974. This is an excerpt from a longer interview, offered here as a companion piece to Maria Monroe’s article, “A Very Human Death.”

Maria Monroe: Both the Pali Canon and Tibetan scriptures have strictures against taking life and against suicide. Is this also true of Zen scriptures and commentary?

George Bowman: A famous Zen story tells of Hyakujo, a Chinese Zen master who founded monastic Zen practice as we know it today. He was most famous for his statement that a day without work is a day without eating. The Zen monasteries at the time were self-sustaining communities that raised their own food. When Hyakujo was an old man and could no longer work in the fields, he told his monks, “I’m going to stop eating. Since I can’t work there’s no sense in my living. I can’t contribute to the community.” At the time it was bitter winter and the ground was frozen. His monks said, “You know, if you die now, it will create a problem for us. We’ll have to look at your corpse till spring comes and the ground thaws.” He said, “In that case I’ll wait until spring.” He agreed to eat even though he couldn’t work. When spring came he stopped eating and starved himself to death.

Some Zen masters die with a human flavor and say, “I don’t want to die,” and live through bitter pain until the end comes. Others have a tea party and die standing on their heads. So I think the message is that in the Zen tradition, at the deepest level of practice, there is really no rule book, no game plan.

From the Zen perspective, the way I was taught by my teacher, Soen Sa Nim, what’s most important is a person’s intention. If a person’s genuine intention is to help other people, and he or she is not just acting out of a motivation to escape pain or to be self-serving in some way, then the action is considered to be pure and is not breaking the precepts. Under certain conditions that could include even taking one’s life or even taking someone else’s life. From the Zen perspective it really depends on the purity of one’s practice.

Trudy Goodman: Many people who kill themselves act impulsively. Or it may be premeditated for days or weeks, but it’s still basically an action that’s taken out of tremendous self-absorption and pain and not from a wide perspective of clarity and wisdom. My former husband committed suicide in a violent and terrifying way. There’s such a difference between an act like that—which left his children and family in incredible shock and agony—and the kind of choice that can be made with compassion for yourself and everyone around you, and done with tremendous grace.

MM: Do you think that choosing to end one’s life when facing the unrelenting suffering of a terminal illness should be called suicide?

TG: Maybe that choice should not be called suicide. “Choosing the time to die” seems more accurate. We have the technology to make that possible. I don’t really like “death with dignity,” because it implies that a death where somebody whose suffering is unbearable and out of control is not a death with dignity, and I really have a problem with making that judgment about what’s a good death.

GB: My father died about three months ago. He had cancer of the bowel for a number of years. They had cut most of his gut out and prolonged his life for a year or two, and then it metasticized to his liver. Toward the end of his life he was extremely clear and adamant about not wanting to go to the hospital and not wanting any life-support systems to keep him going. I saw him two weeks before he died. He knew his time was coming and chose to die at home knowing his life could have been prolonged another six or seven months, maybe even a year in the hospital. There’s a big distinction between this and suicide.

MM: Does the consciousness that is tormented or demented due to pain or disease remain in torment or dementia while going through the stages of death?

GB: As I listen to these questions I’m so humbled by them because I really don’t know. I have only my own intuition. When we talk about death or dying, or assume that there even are stages, I have to question that and be willing to doubt and say that maybe we really don’t know. All of the stages of dying that are talked about from different cultural perspectives—whether it’s a Yanamamo shaman in Venezuela or an Eskimo or a Buddhist or an American Indian—are metaphors for something that is profoundly unknowable and untouchable. I’m personally quite suspicious about anyone who says we’ve got the mystery mapped out.

MM: If someone suffering the last stages of a terminal illness, with extreme physical and mental torment, came to you for advice on ending his or her life, what would you say?

TG: What would be most important to convey is my compassion and deepest respect for whatever decision they would make and my willingness to support and love them. The respect would come from their having really gone someplace that I have never been and my not being able to know that place better than they do. They really are the expert on their own life and would have to help me understand how it is for them.

MM: Do you think a decision to commit suicide should be made based on any outside authority, such as that of a dharma teacher, or rather in response to the person’s own inner voice?

TG: As a Zen student, I’d have to say that it’s a person’s most profound truth, their own inner voice that would decide. Of course, people who have a mental illness or are emotionally disturbed will actually hear voices telling them to do things like kill themselves. And people who have been severely abused are sometimes programmed to kill themselves rather than reveal what they have seen and what has been done to them. That’s not the kind of inner voice we’re talking about. It’s very clear to me that there is no outside authority. What could it be? Who could it be? Where could it be? If not me, who? How, in the deepest sense, could it possibly be outside of myself?

∞

From the Spring 1993 issue of Inquiring Mind (Vol. 9, No. 2)

Text © 1993–2021 by Maria Monroe

Related articles by Maria Monroe:

“Interview with Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche, A Tibetan Perspective”

“A Very Human Death.”

Maria Monroe taught vipassana meditation with Joseph Goldstein for five years. She enjoys organic gardening, dollmaking and was a transcriptionist for Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche. 

Maria Monroe taught vipassana meditation with Joseph Goldstein for five years. She enjoys organic gardening, dollmaking and was a transcriptionist for Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche.