In wanting to kill himself, a man wants only to kill his consciousness of pain. I think therefore I am; therefore if I am not, I cannot think. The assumption here is that consciousness - both registrar and judge of experience - is limited by and to its vessel. (This does not explain why amputees still experience sensation in limbs long removed, or how a mother knows a child she cannot see is drowning in the pool outside.) Added to which, there is in suffering a call for an end to itself (all processes involve facilitation of their conclusion). The suicidal man may misinterpret this as a call for self-destruction. He is bombarded by urges for conclusion: end the suffering and end it now.

All that is being demanded is a revision (of perception and priorities), but how can he revise something he does not understand? He is assured that he exists in a realm of opposites. Therefore if life is suffering and death is the opposite of life, death must be the opposite of suffering. The suicidal man has not been told that suffering is not a state. He does not know that suffering is just a process in which the human animal sometimes gets stuck. The state of being stuck - or, paradoxically, coming unstuck - is thus the issue, never suffering. And this is why death cannot possibly have any impact on suffering. Death is not the opposite of life; the opposite of death is birth. Life has no opposite. It is a constant, like the universe. Suicide solves nothing.

- from The Eclipse: A Memoir of Suicide