In the movie ‘Dark Places’, a desperate mother pays an ‘angel of debt’ (a fancy name for ‘hired gun’) to fake her murder, so as to claim insurance money for her poor children. In her letter disclosed, she wrote – ‘Your grandparents always told me, “Make a useful life.” I don’t think I’ve really done that, but I can make a useful death. My life has been determined so much by accidents, it seems nice that an accident on purpose will make things right again. I hope you all forgive me. Take care of yourselves.’
It is moving, somewhat. However, life is not over until it is over, which means there is still hope to do much of the useful. Why give up so soon, choosing a ‘difficult’ and ‘easy’ way out? Even though her death did trick the insurance firm, it was deceit with ‘suicide’, which break the Fourth and First Precepts respectively, the karmic effects of which will haunt her future life, even casting shadows upon her offsprings’ future in this case (although that is their karma at play too).
A useful death results only from a useful life, which is never puppeted by ‘accidental’ circumstances such that there is no wiggle room to make things better at all. In fact, there are no accidents at all; only karmic causes and effects at play, that we can strive to play better with, especially if given a poor hand of ‘cards’. And of course, there is no such thing as an accident on purpose, unless there is purposely neglect of mindful living, which leads to ‘accidents’, that make nothing really right at all.
