According to Buddhism,
"There is suffering in this world; suffering has a cause; and the cause is desire."
So, the desire to stay alive, forces us to work which causes suffering in the form of depression.
Does this mean that life is the root cause of all suffering and it is impractical to stay alive?
Many teachings point to the concept of desire being a cause of suffering.
Example:
Your question seems to unravel a bit with the "staying alive". Desire causing suffering around this subject would be more applicable to e.g. terminally ill people wishing they could live instead.
it is impractical to stay alive?
You could reword your question to "if feeling pain and suffering only happens to living beings, could the solution to pain and suffering be the death of all things?"
And yes, that would end all pain and suffering. It would also end all joy and beauty. Most people's conclusion is that the value of life outweighs the suffering. A lot of self-harm occurs when a person's suffering outweighs their joy, and they don't see that changing in the future. Veering away from philosophy, this becomes more of a medical question as we consider that state of being as "mentally ill", a sickness that should be treated with professional help.
According to Buddha's Theory,
It is not a theory; it is large set of traditional philosophy, world-view, precept or partly religion.
The word "theory" implies that there is something here that needs to be proven. But there are no proofs required for the overall works. The accounts of Buddha are either (1) history (i.e., accounts of historic figures, with the obvious caveat that the main figure is so far back in time, and has been subject to phases of oral traditions, that any "truth value" has the same problems as in any other history and is very hard to discern from only being an allegorical vehicle to give the content a "vehicle" that can be written down or transferred orally); or on (2) experience (i.e., things you can try to reproduce experimentally yourself; such as meditation, sticking with the precepts etc.); or on (3) purely "internal" logic (i.e., building up the statements learned from experience to more abstract or powerful ones); or (4) partly on belief-based spiritual claims (i.e., about reincarnation) which are by their nature not provable or disprovable.
"There is suffering in this world; suffering has a cause; and the cause is desire."
No. There are three main causes of suffering according to buddhist traditions: ignorance, attachment, and aversion. "Desire" could be sorted within "attachment", but it certainly is not the only or main cause of suffering.
So, the desire to stay alive, forces us to work which causes suffering in the form of depression. Does this mean that life is the root cause of all suffering and it is impractical to stay alive?
This sounds like a very confused mix-up of all kinds of words, with no real semantics behind it.
"Desire" is one possible translation for "tanha" in Pali. But other translations would be "thirst" or even "craving". I think "craving" is more useful here. It's the "excessive craving" and the attachment that results from it that causes suffering. You can very well enjoy life, but don't get attached to it so much that it would trigger behaviors that could engender suffering.
Yes, but only in a fairly boring and trivial way. Any experience requires an experiencer, without life there would be nobody to experience suffering, hence there would be no suffering.
But there would also be no joy. There would be no pain, but there would also be no pleasure. There would be no happiness, no excitement, and no inspiration.
Moreover, in practical terms, the destruction of life (however done) causes pain, depression and suffering. So while a lifeless universe would not have any suffering, this is not a goal to aim for, nor an ideal. You can't get to a better universe by "snapping your fingers" and willing everybody to be dead.
Assumption that life causes suffering is a paralogism. Try applying this logic to another example. Is water the cause of swimming for fish? Is space the cause of movement? Life is just an abstract set of objects which share similar properties, like metabolism for example. Suffering is one of the subjective properties of these objects, so suffering is observed, thus occurs in life. Same as fish are doomed to swim, the humans are to suffer. I would say that suffering is caused by the mechanics of which life is structured. You need to struggle and feel the pain, otherwise you won't figure out what is best for you and your surroundings. Nietzsche said that those who are able to suffer and persevere have a greater capacity for meaning and purpose in life. Suffering is the price you pay for figuring out what is really valuable to your true self, thus is a natural mechanism which occurs in living creatures to help them finding an orientation in this reality.
The first mistake is to ask about Buddhism in a Philosophy ("knowledge") forum.
Philosophers think and ponder, rationalise and analyse. However, the Buddhist/Yogic way is to "look".
What is suffering? If you meditate on why you are driven to ask this question, your answer is probably there.
That is the Buddhist/Yogic way to attain enlightenment. To put it in another way, enlightenment is already within you. The answer is already within you and around you. But you (and I), are clouded, diluted, distracted, confused by thousand thoughts, emotions, impulses.
So adding a bunch of other thoughts and questions will not lead to clarity - rather the opposite.
To sit, to concentrate, to observe deeply is the way to "see" the answer; the answer that is already there.
To put it in another way, Buddhism is experiential - Philosophy is knowledge and debate.
We can trade knowledge and debate all day about the experience of riding a bicycle - but only when you get on a bicycle and ride for yourself, you will know.
As it says: desire is the root of suffering.
Desire to live is not life. To live is to let your body to function autonomically. To desire is to add something to the autonomic functions of the body: to live a certain way... which typically fails, or requires effort, and is nonetheless always subject to the law of impermanence, which practically means that you will eventually always lose what you desire, and you will always be somewhat afraid of when it happens.
You can live a fulfilling life of desire, but it can never be guaranteed, no matter what. Loss always accompanies desire, and that is why there is misery, or suffering.
