According to Patricia Cohen of the New York times, A new five-year analysis of the nation's death rates recently released by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that the suicide rate among 45-to-54-year-olds increased nearly 20 percent from 1999 to 2004, the latest year studied, far outpacing changes in nearly every other age group. (All figures are adjusted for population.) For women 45 to 54, the rate leapt 31 percent. "That is certainly a break from trends of the past," said Ann Haas, the research director of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.
This article points out, I believe, that loneliness can literally kill you. Loneliness is a forlornness, a crushing despondency filled with despair and hopelessness; a desperate reaching out for anyone who might hear your apprehensive, silent cries of anguish. You will do most anything to relieve the terrible feelings of dejection, and begin looking for someone to talk to, or something to do; anything to get your mind off this claustrophobic emptiness. We all know the feeling well.
As we navigate through this amazing experience called life, we will find comfort in someone or something new, keeping our minds happy. Or we will engage in a career or activity that keeps our mind busy and engaged so that loneliness won't creep in. But eventually that new friend or new situation becomes estranged in some odd way, and we become disenchanted. Then what? What happens when loneliness raises its ugly head, as if it were a latent disease lurking in our minds, waiting to destroy us at the first opportunity? We may even end up destroying ourselves.
The New York Times certainly makes a point; people are reaching the end of their ropes. The values that they have relied on for a half century somehow has abandoned them, and they end it all. These are Christians, or I assume that they are since recent surveys show that close to 90 percent of Americans are Christian. Yet in Thailand, which is 90 percent Buddhist, the suicide rate is much less. According to the World Health Organization, 11 out of 100,000 people commit suicide in America, where in Thailand that figure is 4 out of 100,000.
Yet when I recommend that people meditate, I am more often than not snickered at, or defamed in some way as if I am trying to deceive them, trying to introduce some kind of foreign ideology that will be detrimental to them. I am not. I am simply trying to help people navigate through what can be a very trying experience . . . life.
Life is a trick. It tricks you. It leads you to believe that life is wonderful (that's what everybody says), and when life turns out to be not so wonderful, when you find yourself lonely and sick, old and ugly, and few around who have the time or inclination to take care of you, and if you don't have money, or kids with a lot of time on their hands, you may be left to fend for yourself. You could very easily die alone in a small apartment, ill, and lonely. A skilled meditator would have absolutely no problem with this.
Meditation, unlike most social religions such as popular Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, is a solitary endeavor. Meditation may be practiced in a group, but the actual experience is solitary. Because it is solitary, a meditator gets used to being by themselves, and becomes comfortable with it. More than this, as a meditator becomes skilled; he or she will understand that no one is there to be by themselves, that "themselves" is an illusion. Loneliness is based on the illusion that someone is lonely and therefore has no relevance with an experienced meditator. Loneliness is only a perception, an inaccurate perception based on a false assumption of self.
Loneliness, abandonment, hopelessness; these are terrible thing to have over our heads. If we could look into all of this before suicide takes our lives, and really attack this looming act of violence against ourselves, this isolation grounded in a stubborn, false belief of self, could we defeat it? I say that we can, and it is relatively easy. All we have to do is get to know loneliness rather than run from it.
We can begin by watching our thoughts, which is meditation, because without thoughts there can be no loneliness.
Since we have been thinking non-stop since birth, watching thoughts so that we can get to know our loneliness, instead of running from it like a coward, can be a little tricky to begin with. There are so many thoughts and they are so fast, it's like trying to catch a train that's going a hundred miles an hour down the tracks. We must find a way to slow the train down.
The easiest way to slow the train down is to keep one BIG thought in mind, and then the millions of other little thoughts can't surface. The best BIG thought to keep in mind is the one that is with you at all times; which is simply your breathing. When you direct your mind to your breathing, that's a thought! "I'm watching my breathing." Then, all the little (or big thoughts such as, "I'm so lonely,") can't get in.
The interesting thing about this simple substitution of one BIG thought for all the little thoughts is that the underlying fear that you have; knowing that loneliness could arise, or all the hundreds of other little fears you have been harboring -- they all go away for awhile. And when they go away for awhile, the mind finds some breathing space, and you never know what will come of that. Sometimes immensely creative things!
It's easy to begin practicing one BIG thought. Before you go to bed every night, sit on the floor, knees crossed, back straight, and watch your breathing at the solar plexus. The belly will subtly go in and out. Think, "I am watching my breath." And then just mentally watch the belly go in and out without even thinking about it. If a stray thought comes into your mind that takes your attention off your belly going in and out, then as soon as you discover that you have been ambushed by a little thought, go back to the BIG thought, "I am watching my breathing."
Few accomplished meditators are ever lonely, or ever consider suicide. Meditation is such a consistent discovery and limitless internal experiment, that meditators never fear being alone at all. Not only that, but meditation can lead to more as well, such as complete total freedom from fear, and to complete, total liberation!
Try it for a few months and see for yourself, and maybe even save yourself.
E. Raymond Rock of Fort Myers, Florida is cofounder and principal teacher at the Southwest Florida Insight Center, http://www.SouthwestFloridaInsightCenter.com His twenty-nine years of meditation experience has taken him across four continents, including two stopovers in Thailand where he practiced in the remote northeast forests as an ordained Theravada Buddhist monk. His book, A Year to Enlightenment (Career Press/New Page Books) is now available at major bookstores and online retailers. Visit http://www.AYearToEnlightenment.com
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