Life, Death, & Damn Reincarnation!

“Do not pity the dead, Harry. Pity the living and, above all, those who live without love” (spirit of school headmaster Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2).

The greatest gift life offers many people is that someday, likely preferably sooner rather than later, they get to die. Perhaps worsening matters for them is when suicide is simply not an option, for whatever reason(s), meaning there’s little hope of receiving an early reprieve from their literal life sentence.

Many chronically and pharmaceutically untreatably depressed and/or anxiety-ridden people won’t miss this world when they finally pass away. They simply want/need their (at least seemingly) pointless immense corporeal suffering to end.

Therefore, being reincarnated an indefinite number of times would be considered Hell for many of them, as it would be for me — the repetition of mostly unhappiness. From my understanding, Buddhism [or is it Zen Buddhism?], which in large part is the positive belief in reincarnation, acknowledges that life generally is suffering or hardship interspersed with genuine happiness.

Ergo, to quote passages of a poem …


I awoke from another very bad dream, a reincarnation nightmare

where having blessedly died I’m still bullied towards rebirth back into human form

despite my pleas I be allowed to rest in permanent peace.

My bed wet from sweat, I futilely try to convince my own autistic brain

I want to live, the same traumatized dysthymic brain displacing me

from the functional world.

.

Within my nightmare a mob encircles me and insists that life’s a blessing,

including mine.

I ask them for the blessed purpose of my continuance. I insist

upon a practical purpose.

Give me a real purpose, I cry out, and it’s not enough simply to live

nor that it’s a beautiful sunny day with colorful fragrant flowers!

.

I’m tormented hourly by my desire for emotional, material and creative gain

that ultimately matters naught, I explain. My own mind brutalizes me like it has

a sadistic mind of its own.

I must have a progressive reason for this harsh endurance!

Bewildered they warn that one day on my death bed I’ll regret my ingratitude

and that I’m about to lose my life.

I counter that I cannot mourn the loss of something I never really had

so I’m unlikely to dread parting from it.

.

Frustrated they say that moments from death I’ll clamor and claw for life

like a bridge jumper instinctively flailing his limbs as though to grasp at something

anything that may delay his imminent thrust into the eternal abyss.

How can I in good conscience morosely hate my life

while many who love theirs lose it so soon? they ask.

Angry I reply that people bewail the ‘unfair’ untimely deaths of the young who’ve received early reprieve

from their life sentence, people who must remain behind corporeally confined

yet do their utmost to complete their entire life sentence—even more if they could!

.

The vexed mob then curse me with envy for rejecting what they’d kill for—continued life through unending rebirth.

“Then why don’t you just kill yourself?” they yell,

to which I retort “I would if I could. My life sentence is made all the more oppressive by my inability to take my own life.”

“Then we’ll do it for you.” As their circle closes on me, I wake up.

.

Could there be people who immensely suffer yet convince themselves

they sincerely want to live when in fact

they don’t want to die, so greatly they fear Death’s unknown?

No one should ever have to repeat and suffer again a single second that passes.

Nay, I will engage and embrace the dying of my blight!

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