Respect the choice of one to end their life

Every religion has their rules for how to become a true believer of that particular religion. In the Jain religion people must follow a strict diet, a strict schedule of when they can walk, when they can sleep, when they can talk and in the most extreme how they should die. Jainism has a practice of self-killing in which observers starve themselves to death. At first I felt that this was shocking and even reprehensible, but then I had to take myself out of the picture because I am from the western world. In the western world killing oneself is not only against the law but is looked upon as selfish on the part of the person who committed self killing. However, a main point to make is that generally self killings in western culture are due to a sense of helplessness in terms of mental illness where as in Jainism the people committing the act of self killing are doing it to show the utmost religious devotion akin to martyerdom in the Christian religion. However, in the Christian religion in odd to be a martyr one must die or their cause but not by their own hand, in fact killing oneself is considered sinful in the eyes of the Christian church. The Jainist people who partake in self killing have to be appreciated and respected for their devotion to their religion, a level of devotion that very few can even dream of attaining across religions. Because of their devotion they have gained a status akin to sainthood in the area surrounding when they lived and died. And in a way you can look at it as a selfish act to gain fame in their death, but then you would be discounting how difficult it is to starve oneself to death. It goes against the natural biological and psychological need to eat, and they force away those thoughts and complaints from their bodies in order to commit self killing. This requires a lot of will power, mental strength and devotion to the religion that very few can attain, and the paper illustrates that simply by having very few examples of people who completed the self killing.

Ciara Williams