Does life have any value?

 

One thing that has haunted my mind for decades, is what is the purpose of life if death is an eventuality? Anything we do become pointless and therefore meaningless. Why not end it all today?

Or in other words, what value is there in life, if anything and everything we do is for nothing?

Value is something that our conscious mind attaches to something we desire. As a Buddhist story goes, a student of Buddha takes a stone to a local market and people offer him nothing, He takes the same to an auction and people offer him large money and he takes to the wealthiest person and he offers him large real-estate. Such is value, its in the eye of the beholder. Why would life be any different? It is not even tangible, it is simply a state of your being.

Now you can assign it a value saying it is god given, or that it is incredibly rare, or that it is conditional on events that happen in your life. But these are all values you assign it. If you assign it value, then it becomes valuable.

So should you assign a value to your life? Now that is a difficult one, because assigning any value to anything means you are getting attached to it.  But if you don't attach value, then the diamond sitting on the road becomes worthless.  

The problem with getting attached to anything is that attachment brings about misery.

Imagine a merchant who lost diamond he had invested all his money in? while a dog which found it wouldn't even be interested in it. The value he gave to the diamond would bring him immense sorrow if anything would have happened to the the object of his perceived value, but remained neutral to the dog who found it.

So no, I don't think you should be assigning any value to your life. You should be okay to die today.

However the reverse is also true. If we assign death value because it bring about peace, we will still continue to suffer until we achieve that state.

So why not kill yourself today?   Please refer to my previously written posts "A plea to consider living" and "why should we live, if we are all going to die", if you would like my views on it. But to be short, I am neither for or against it. It is completely upto you whether you want to. All I ask is to reflect on the consequences and make sure it is what you want.