Sacred Texts: Buddhism

Buddhism in Translations - § 98. No Buddhist Should Commit Suicide.

Henry Clarke WarrenPali Canon TranslationsTheravada Buddhism

Summary only - full text stays on its own separately-gated source. Read the full text at the source »

This is a translated excerpt from the *Milindapañha* ("Questions of King Milinda"), a Pali Buddhist dialogue text in which the Greek king Milinda poses philosophical challenges to the monk Nāgasena. The passage addresses an apparent doctrinal contradiction: the Buddha both prohibited suicide and praised those who "extirpate" birth, old age, disease, and death — seemingly endorsing an end to existence. Nāgasena 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 — the "non-existent" — 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 — that preserving virtuous persons benefits all beings, while liberation is to be sought spiritually, not through death — exemplifies the Milindapañha'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.

Buddhism in Translations - § 98. No Buddhist Should Commit Suicide.

Related pages View as graph →