Dear Piya, Thomas and friends,

I believe the Buddhist viewpoint on suicide is widely published in
articles and books, but it still makes a good research topic for
aspiring students.

The Buddhist attitude to life is to face your problem, understand the
reality and solve it; not to run away from it. With this attitude,
Buddhism is probably the first religion to properly identifies mental
and psychological problems as problems of the mind and "heart", not
some demonic possession stories any kid can cook up.

In a way, this attitude is built into many Asian cultures, and the
samurai's culture is quite an extreme example of Buddhist influence.
But, then, the samurai is a warrior, a person who should have been
through the worst of life, even though his function to kill has
deviated from the Buddhist value of compassion. Also, do not associate
a samurai with a Jihadist or Crusadist suicide bomber. A samurai is
just like an elite soldier you find in your country's military.

From the Buddhist perspective, suicide does not solve much of a
problem, when taking into consideration the Buddhist concept of karma.
In fact, to a Buddhist, the greatest challenge of all in life (or
'lives') is the release from Samsara. Furthermore, every problem has a
solution. If the problem of Samsara can be solved, every other problem
presented in life can be solved too, here and now, without having to
resort to suicide.

Thomas: The best answer to your question is to read the sutta in
context. If you bother to type in the Pali passage (even Bhikkhu
Bodhi's English translation is fine), we can probably go through it
together.

metta,
Yong Peng.

--- In Pali@yahoogroups.com, Piya Tan wrote:

Suicide is a troubling reality in any society or religion. Suicide is
not encouraged in buddhism, and the practitioner is advised not to be
attached to life after all.

> In SN 4. 23: I 120-122 (1884. Bhikkhu Bodhi, SN Translation 2000:
> 212-215), Mara asks the Buddha to stop Godhika who wants to kill
> himself by a knife, but it is rejected by the Buddha. This seems
> to suggest that committing suicide is a personal choice and is
> accepted by the Buddha himself if the person has no attachment
> to his/her life. Am I right?