Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. “Mistaken compassion” is the thread Khensur Rinpoche pulls on in this 12-minute talk — whether ending a life to relieve suffering constitutes genuine compassion. He opens with a lesser vehicle account of a monk who killed his suffering mother; the Buddha called it unacceptable, explaining that enduring suffering exhausts past negative karma. Rinpoche then applies the principle to two practical cases: accidentally hitting an animal while driving (no harmful intention, no negative karma created) versus deliberately killing a suffering animal, which he names mistaken compassion, with guidance on caring for injured animals and addressing others who hold this view. He closes with medical ethics: giving palliative medicine that may hasten death is acceptable when the sole intention is to relieve pain, not to kill.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 07 1989 03 19 PT Compassion in everyday life c2.mp3
UUID: b6b51386-acd5-4e5c-b9f8-caef9e63c11c
Teacher: Khensur Rinpoche
Collection: Public Talks 1988-2003 (Khensur Rinpoche)
Date: 1989-03-19
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 12.2 minutes
Words: ~367
So it said that in the case of humans it’s not acceptable. According to, you know, we’re talking about the great vehicle and the lesser vehicle. And in the lesser vehicle tradition there is a story in which a monk actually killed his mother who was in a great deal of suffering and the Buddha said that this was an extremely negative action to have done. It was unacceptable. So because even though that person is undergoing suffering, by undergoing that suffering they’re exhausting the negative karma that they’ve created in the past.
So remember she says, you shouldn’t kill it. So now driving along and you hit an animal, since there was no intention, there was no negative intention then there’s no negative karma created. Having to hit the animal, wanting to kill it, then of course there’s a negative intention involved in killing and this you create negative karma. And also the thought that it’s compassionate to kill this animal because it’s suffering is mistaken compassion. So you should, as best you can, take care of that animal.
Give it whatever treatment you can without leaving it, simply just leaving it there. Set it aside and treat it as best you can. You should try to speak to them in a very skillful way, explaining to them that they’re creating a lot of negativity by killing this animal and that this isn’t an expression of love and compassion for that animal. At the same time? You mean you don’t know?
Would you prescribe a medicine that you didn’t know whether it’s going to kill a person or not? So that’s all you’re talking about whether you prescribe medicine that would relieve their pain? I don’t know if I’m going to come to you. So if you’re giving this medicine with a beneficial intention to relieve their pain and then there’s no intention that it’s going to kill them, then if they it’s quite acceptable to give them the medicine and then and there’s no fault on your side if if it if it eventuates that they die. Yeah?
But on the other hand, if you have the intention to kill them, then it’s not acceptable.