{"collection":"Sacred Texts: Buddhism","full_text_available":false,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/sacred_texts_v1_bud_bits_bits098_htm/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/sacred_texts_v1_bud_bits_bits098_htm","id":"sacred_texts_v1_bud_bits_bits098_htm","license":"unknown_pending_legal_review","rights_basis":"sacred_texts_v1_preview_gate_primary_text_only; acquisition-method/ToS and compilation-copyright questions still open, not resolved by this gate","source":"sacred_texts_v1","source_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/bud/bits/bits098.htm","summary":"This is a translated excerpt from the *Milindapa\u00f1ha* (\"Questions of King Milinda\"), a Pali Buddhist dialogue text in which the Greek king Milinda poses philosophical challenges to the monk N\u0101gasena. The passage addresses an apparent doctrinal contradiction: the Buddha both prohibited suicide and praised those who \"extirpate\" birth, old age, disease, and death \u2014 seemingly endorsing an end to existence. N\u0101gasena resolves the tension by distinguishing two different aims: the prohibition on suicide protects virtuous people who serve as moral medicine and guides for others still caught in suffering, while the Buddha's praise of overcoming birth and death refers to the attainment of nirvana \u2014 the \"non-existent\" \u2014 through practice rather than physical self-destruction. A distinctive and striking feature is the exhaustive catalogue of miseries encountered in the cycle of rebirth, running from grief and poverty through dozens of named judicial torture methods (each glossed in a footnote with clinical detail), which serves rhetorically to establish why the non-existent is preferable to continued existence. The text's resolution \u2014 that preserving virtuous persons benefits all beings, while liberation is to be sought spiritually, not through death \u2014 exemplifies the Milindapa\u00f1ha's characteristic method of using sharp logical dilemmas to clarify Buddhist ethics. Anyone interested in Pali casuistry, early Buddhist attitudes toward suffering and suicide, or ancient Indian torture practices will find concrete and specific material here.","tags":["Henry Clarke Warren","Pali Canon Translations","Theravada Buddhism"],"text":null,"title":"Buddhism in Translations - \u00a7 98. No Buddhist Should Commit Suicide.","tradition":"Sacred Texts: Buddhism","translated_text":null,"word_count":1752}