Compassionate Dying

Yoga's teachings can guide us as we grapple with the decisions to make when we, or our loved ones, are dying.

By Judith Hanson Lasater

Modern life often seems to present us with moral dilemmas undreamed of by our great-grandparents, much less by the Indian sages who created yoga millennia ago. Thanks to the constant advances of modern medical technology, nowhere is this more obvious than in the decisions many of us need to make when we, or our loved ones, are dying.

As the end of life approaches, we may well confront choices about whether to use drugs that will ease our pain but interfere with the clarity of mind we seek as yoga practitioners. We may also have to decide whether we are willing to use these drugs to keep pain at bay even though the necessary dosage may hasten death. We may even grapple with whether we want to take the drugs precisely for that reason--so we can end life peacefully in the company of our loved ones and avoid days, weeks, or even months of intense suffering. And as difficult as these questions may be to sort out for ourselves, helping those we love to make such decisions can be even more poignant.

Such choices are almost always controversial. For example, in the six years since the voters of Oregon passed a ballot initiative allowing doctors to prescribe lethal doses of drugs for dying patients who requested them and met a strict set of criteria--a terminal diagnosis from two independent physicians, a positive psychological evaluation, the ability to self-administer the drugs--this law has come under concerted attack, including opposition by U.S. attorney general John Ashcroft. Yet the law has been just as passionately defended by advocates, who see it as the cutting edge of restoring choice, control, and a measure of dignity to the dying.

While modern medical technology may bring many more people face-to-face with dilemmas concerning death, the essential issues are timeless. There is nothing that's uniquely modern about the option of suicide to escape pain or the possibility of mercifully helping someone who, in the face of suffering, longs for death. And while there aren't many specific pronouncements on these issues in traditional yoga scriptures, the wisdom of yoga offers not only ethical principles that can guide us but also profoundly relevant teachings about death and its relationship to our lives.

The Paradox of Death

Death is, of course, inevitable, but one of the great paradoxes of human life is that we usually seem to believe and act as if life is certain and death is avoidable. In our more sober moments, however, we know that death is the only true certainty, and any attempt to avoid it can succeed only temporarily.

In yoga philosophy, the tendency toward abhinivesha, "clinging to life," is said to exist in all people, regardless of wisdom, age, wealth, or experience. We cling because we are afraid of the transition of death and of the pain, suffering, and decline that we may experience at the end of life. So we devise strategies to avoid thinking about death, such as acquiring material goods or experiences (including spiritual ones) or using drugs, or constantly creating "busyness" to fill up our time.

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