If Buddhists think that existence is suffering, why don't they just kill themselves...

If Buddhists think that existence is suffering, why don't they just kill themselves? Is belief in reincarnation the only thing preventing them from doing so?

Pretty much

Buddhism is a silly religion like any other

They consider it wrong to be a nihilist or suicidal

Because suicides reincarnate in Naraka or come back to earth as an Albanian or something

but buddhists don't think existence is suffering
merely that existence is an illusion and that non-existence is preferable

You'll always exist because all minds are the same.

This.

"Existence is suffering" is a terrible translation of the first noble truth. Dukkha can mean suffering when it refers to things like physical pain, loss, etc, but in the first noble truth it only means "not satisfactory", as in "it's alright but it's still not perfect, and therefore not as good as nirvana".

>Existence and non-existence
>Buddhist

cmon everyone knows we're talking about nirvana and samsara stop being a smarty pants

>I will use precise Buddhist terminology at all costs when talking about Buddhism, even when it makes it impossible to communicate with anyone who hasn't studied it

>buddhists debated the nature of semantics for thousands years to make their message clearer
>fast forward 1500 years later
>fedora comes in from suburb
>claiming buddhism is dude lmao XDD

What does Buddhists working on their presentation for thousands of years have to do with nitpicking about the particular words being used by some internet random who obviously doesn't know anything about Buddhism in the first place? If OP's idea of Buddhist belief is "existence is suffering", he's not going to be concerned with Buddhism's particular philosophical position on existence as a concept, so what do you expect?

I don't know shit about buddhism. I just wanted to say that all sense of self in everyone feels the same so it's like you're everyone but can only feel it from one point of view at the time. Have a good day sir.

One person killing themselves isn't going to help the problem of a world where people / life in general keeps emerging, suffering, dying, re-emerging etc. So instead the Buddha realized a way to get shit in balance so that even though things are unpleasant you'll stop contributing to the problem and if everyone / everything eventually goes down that path then the suffering will end and the cycle of birth / death / rebirth will go away.

That gets you reincarnated. The goal of Buddhism is to stop reincarnating.

> what is the third noble truth

That suffering can be ended

>If Buddhists think that existence is suffering
Almost every religion thinks that. Different religions have different explanations.

through achieving nirvana, which is a state of non-existence

if you don't believe in reincarnation, it's the same as death

>if you don't believe in reincarnation, it's the same as death

The Buddhist stance is that the notion of life just ending when you die is one of two extremes of delusion. Neither annihilation nor eternalism are coherent views according to this Buddhist view, so it wouldn't make sense to speak of what death would be like if annihilation were true in the same way it wouldn't make sense to speak of what physics would be like if geocentrism were true. It's incoherent to have a universe revolving around one tiny planet, so you can't even really say anything about how stuff would work in that scenario; the point would be that nothing would make sense and if you examined how different details would play out with that starting premise you'd quickly run into a bunch of inane conclusions.

Also technically it's rebirth, not reincarnation. Reincarnation is the word for when someone comes back in another form after dying. Buddhism doesn't teach that you come back in another form after dying. In fact, Buddhism explicitly teaches that "you" isn't a real thing in the first place. What's *reborn* are aggregates of tendencies, not some absolute soul or anything like that.

Actually Buddhism teaches you that "you" does infact exist, just that its conditioned like all others and made of aggregates. What buddhism denies is the atman, the everlasting soul that is eternal, persists death, reincarnates etc.

When you buddhists say they are going through cycle of rebirth, they are literally talking about a new "you" being birthed. However the new "you" is connected to the old "you" through karma or rather karmic chain.

The murkiness of karmic chain is obvious. Although the Buddhists removed the need for a eternal soul or a soul that persists after death, or a god to create those souls, etc, they are still bound by the need for connection between the two intermediaries. Buddhism defines karmic chain as some sort of a universal force similar to causality(you could even say they're the same, if you want to be liberal about the definition). Its an ever-present constant that arises when conditioned being act in ways to propagate their condition. This is why Buddhist seek enlightenment(wisdom) before nirvana(end of suffering). The mind must be at stillness when the body reaches paranirvana(final death), so they won't cause any more karma to rise after. Its why the Tibetan Buddhists place more emphasis on the final resting of the mind.

This is also the reason suicide doesn't end the cycle in Buddhism. Suicidal person's mind is not still and in constant turmoil.

To add to this, Buddhists will say there are many other ways to reach that sort of mindset when you reach paranirvana.

So there could be other people who found ways to still their mind at their death with no regrets, no way to cause more condition things to happen, etc.

Buddha never said existence = suffering. He said that suffering is a fact, but that that fact has causes. If you remove those causes you will be happy.

Therefore really it is a philosophy of happiness and how to achieve it.

Why kill yourself when you can be happy? How can you kill yourself when you're already dead to the world, always worrying or stuck in the past or future instead of enjoying your precious life?

Literal reincarnation is a misunderstanding of buddhist doctrines.

>If Buddhists think that existence is suffering, why don't they just kill themselves?
Because they believe that the way to end that suffering is to annihilate the self, because there is continuity between you and whatever you're reincarnated as-thus it's completely pointless to do so as you will continue on the wheel anyway. The way away from the suffering is to become compassionately detached from the world.

More like "all conditioned beings suffer"

Its not a philosophy of happiness, Buddhism actually requires you to exercise your mind and body. Not just think about stuff.

All beings are conditioned.

A practical philosophy of happiness then.

Buddhism doesn't claim all beings are conditioned. Just that all conditioned beings suffer.

Who is an unconditioned being? A Buddha? How does he stop being conditioned by emptiness and dependant origination?

Suffering is not a result of being conditioned. It is a result of craving and aversion, both of which are types of delusion about the true nature of conditioned reality.

There is no "who" in an unconditioned being. Buddhist system simply doesn't have a place for unconditioned being, this is where nirvana is at. The questions of "who" survives and "who" doesn't survive nirvana are purely coming from semantics error and error from ignorance.

How did Buddha become unconditioned? Story of Buddha is pretty popular. He meditated and then reached enlightenment. Then later on nirvana and finally paranirvana.

Emptiness and dependent origination are simply a way to describe the world's existence without reliance on existence of a permanent self of conditioned things.

Suffering is a byproduct of being conditioned and grasping for the unconditioned. Whether its permanence of happiness or permanence of living or permanence of suffering, or permanence of self, etc grasp for the permanence in a conditioned world is a result of ignorance of the reality of nature. Such causes suffering.

>Buddhist system simply doesn't have a place for unconditioned being
>How did Buddha become unconditioned?

aren't you contradicting yourself here?

>He meditated and then reached enlightenment. Then later on nirvana and finally paranirvana.

where does it say that the attainment of these states meant that he ceased to have a conditioned existence?

>Emptiness and dependent origination are simply a way to describe the world's existence without reliance on existence of a permanent self

yes.

>of conditioned things.

no. they set out how absolutely everything in existence is conditioned. there is nothing outside of them.

>Suffering is a byproduct of being conditioned and grasping for the unconditioned.

it is a byproduct of grasping, but not of being conditioned. being conditioned allows for the cessation of suffering/the stopping of that grasping.

>Whether its permanence of happiness or permanence of living or permanence of suffering, or permanence of self, etc grasp for the permanence in a conditioned world is a result of ignorance of the reality of nature. Such causes suffering.

yes, but this is not a problem with being conditioned. this is a problem to do with understanding that condition correctly.