It’s not that complicated. Mahayanists came to the ethical conclusion that a spiritually perfected being would have removed all the selflish obstacles to wanting to help other people, not run straight for the escape hatch. So, the early Buddhist concept of the arhat made no sense to them. They instead turned to the Buddha as the exemplar and the bodhisattva as the praxis. As far as the creative destruction of early Buddhist orthodoxy, this can be understood as critique and satire. They were sometimes, I think, poking fun at intellectual Buddhists - like the Abhdiharmists - who miss the point in the Mahayanist’s point of view.
This assumes that such a decision is possible. The body of an Arahant persists because they created the conditions for it prior to attaining Arahantship. But because Arahants don’t create the conditions for renewed being while even alive, they would be incapable of pulling the aggregates together to stay in samsara after death. They don’t choose to be reborn or not be reborn after Arhantship. The nature of Arahantship itself prevents rebirth. This is why the Mahayana doctrine doesn’t work.
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It seems to me that the Buddha taught that all that arises, is conditioned and impermanent is suffering. There is the suffering of pain itself (which is found in the 1st Noble Truth), of change and of conditions. I think its a mistake to think that dukkha is only mental pain, the lamentation etc. The Buddha said that all feelings are dukkha, form is dukkha, even existence is dukkha. I don’t think it’s possible in the Dhamma to have a totally dukkha free life, for that would mean that somehow conditioned dhammas can be made to be non-dukkha. That doesn’t sound like something the Buddha would have agreed with.
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The Buddha is free from the aggregates, see the sutta on the cow hide. It literally doesn’t matter anymore for him what the aggregates do, even though the body causes pain in old age, he has laid down the burden (namarupa) upon reaching nibbana. So while the nature of the aggregates is indeed stressful, he is not associated with that anymore, he has been liberated. You’re free to interpret that this only happens in parinibbana, but I don’t particularly find that interpretation convincing as an EBT follower.
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It seems to me that the word “suffering” above is merely a translation. For example, consider the common term “dukkhavedana”. Is this term commonly translated as “suffering feelings”? 
My impression is the 1st Noble Truth literally summarizes all dukkha (here) as attachment towards the five aggregates. It seems to literally say:
saṅkhittena pañcupādānakkhandhā dukkhā.
In summary, the five grasping aggregates are suffering.
SN 56.11
I recall, possibly, SN 36.6 is the sutta that addresses the above matter of suffering related to physical pain.
Also, the idea of “suffering of change” seems to be another merely translation or interpretation. For example, SN 22.1 seems to be rather unambiguous in saying suffering only occurs in relation to change when there is attachment to the changing object as “I”, “me” & “mine”. It says, for example:
They don’t regard choices as self, self as having choices, choices in self, or self in choices. They’re not obsessed with the thought: ‘I am choices, choices are mine!’ So when those choices of theirs decay and perish (vipariṇamati aññathā), it doesn’t give rise to sorrow, lamentation, pain, sadness, and distress.
SN 22.1
If all feelings are “suffering” then SN 36.6 and Iti 44 may be wrong and Nibbana must also be dukkha.
And what is the element of extinguishment with something left over? It’s when a mendicant is a perfected one, with defilements ended, who has completed the spiritual journey, done what had to be done, laid down the burden, achieved their own true goal, utterly ended the fetters of rebirth, and is rightly freed through enlightenment. Their five sense faculties still remain. So long as their senses have not gone they continue to experience the agreeable and disagreeable, to feel pleasure and pain. The ending of greed, hate, and delusion in them is called the element of extinguishment with something left over.
Iti 44
So the Buddha didn’t agree with the statement below:
Happy, they’ve come to a safe place,
Te khemappattā sukhino,
extinguished in this very life.
diṭṭhadhammābhinibbutā;
They’ve gone beyond all threats and perils,
Sabbaverabhayātītā,
and risen above all suffering.”
sabbadukkhaṁ upaccagun”ti.MN 130
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He has no mental dukkha (lamentation, sorrow etc) but there is still the dukkha of pain and conditioned life itself. Dukkha isn’t simply negative emotions. It’s multifaceted. It includes both the mental and physical side of life. All that is impermanent is dukkha. Birth, ageing, sickness and death are both dukkha themselves and a condition for mental anguish. There are 2 darts, not one, and a dart is still a dart.
Most people who have done nearly anything worthwhile have suffered righteously tremendously, including the Buddha, to eventually find the Middle Way.
But Nirvana is not a True Extinction.
All Phenomena from the very first have of themselves borne the Marks of Tranquil Extinction.
The Emptiness of all Dharmas means they neither exist nor not exist.
With that in mind the Understanding of Buddhahood comes in infinite forms of Buddhahood in Maitri for Them.
I tend to think of dukkhavedana as dukkha due to vedana (suffering due to feelings). Kind of like carpet burn can be thought of as a burn due to [sliding on a] carpet.
But I generally agree. The word suffering doesn’t adequately capture all aspects of dukkha.
There are two darts but the second dart has nothing to do with him, hence the cowhide sutta. Also the sutta that says when an Ariya is hit with pleasure his mind doesn’t delight, when he is hit with pain, his mind doesn’t sorrow. The mind is also the forerunner, it’s also the mind that can turn off experience at will with nirodha samapatti.
Yes, obviously the Buddha has preferences, yes his back aches and this makes him not want to teach the dhamma, keep in mind he didn’t want to teach the dhamma from the beginning because people misunderstanding him would be troublesome for him, so it seems like he’s willing to get mixed up with pain for the sake of helping others, but if he wants to he could just abide in “unalloyed” perfect happiness in nirodha samapatti where the second dart doesn’t touch him. So actually he doesn’t need to die to escape the second dart, and going back to my response to OP, “life” is a sandbox and one could very much be alive and not deal with dukkha, the Buddha could enter nirodha samapatti and have unalloyed pleasure for 7 days, grab some food and rinse and repeat until he dies, that’s probably what pacceka buddhas do if they don’t care about teaching.
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In the view that life (jiiva) and dukkha are the same, there is no noble life. In the view that life and dukkha are different one from the other, there is no noble life.
Avoiding these two extremes, the Buddha teaches the dharma/dhamma by the middle way of Conditioned Arising in both arising and ceasing modes.
Dukkha, being not real, arises by causal condition (nidaana); having arisen it ceases completely by causal condition. It is a result of previous action (karma/kamma), but there is no doer (anatta ‘not-self’).
No ? OP was asking , as a buddhist whom practise to end dukkha therefore they ends life in the end . According to you , life is not precious ?
But are you saying life of animals or some others are considered not precious if they cant gain SE ? Do you have support from the suttas ?
OP was asking , as a buddhist whom surely treasure life , be it a human being or other animals that one could see or in contact with , therefore , that is something are precious , no ? In which case the buddhist are trying to end it ( by ending dukkha ).
Do you have support from sutta saying dukkha isnt real ? Thanks .
When kittens are born, when people are pregnant, we don’t want to kill the lives which already got reborn.
But we would support neutering the cats to avoid overpopulation and there’s no sadness for less life appearing as kittens.
Nor is there sadness for monastics choosing to become celibate and thus losing out on potential children which we might otherwise sire.
Life is not precious in the same manner of the more the better, but in the manner of once it’s there, it is worthy of loving kindness, but one does not aim to bring about a universe where there’s maximum amount of sentient beings.
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There’s a choice to become an arhat by practicing that path. In India, for long time, there was a three-vehicle system of thought that all Buddhists accepted - sravakas became arhats, bodhisattvas became Buddhas, and independently awakened became pratyeka-buddhas. This was mainstream Buddhism.
There were Mahayana writers who made various different arguments; it’s more of genre than a “doctrine”. Some Mahayanists early on said a person would have to avoid even being a stream-entrant, others took a more post-modern approach (like whoever wrote the Lotus Sutra) and disavowed the old orthodoxy, set it on its head, etc. But the basis for all of this is the belief that it’s better to help others than to just save yourself. There was a turn towards an altruistic ideal and away from individualism, which is really apparent in Jataka and other Avadana literature about the Buddha as a bodhisattva.
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You might be misunderstaning of the OP . OP concern wasnt about maximising the numbers . The question was asking , life , to a buddhist is precious , but again , buddhist are trying to end it (by ending the dukkha) isnt it ?
If you’re not using precious in the sense of monetary value of the more the better then, your wordings can be very problematic.
As you well know the situation of life is precious therefore don’t kill is very different from the situation of let’s not face another death, so let’s aim for no more rebirth.
The two situations are very different as has been explained to you by so many people and if you still choose to mix and confuse them up using the same term of life, then that’s on you. I dunno what other answers are you aiming for.
Ps. Not ending rebirth is qualitatively the same as having more experience of lifetimes being reborn, thus more life.
So what do you mean by life is precious then ?
And you do have supports from the suttas ?
It means don’t kill others, don’t commit suicide, do your best to practice the dhamma to end rebirth.
I think the word precious doesnt mean that . You are conflating two things together into one .
Well, what would you suggest then?
I think usually it’s sufficient for the common, even non Buddhist folks to avoid suicidal thoughts thinking that this life is worth living, then we steer them to the practice of dhamma when they are better from their depression.
It’s also precious in the sense of rare to get human rebirth, rare to see the dhamma. So precious opportunity. How many other beings would pay so much to get where we are. To have the chance to end rebirth once and for all.