Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 7-minute discussion, Kyabje Rinpoche examines whether suicide constitutes a complete negative action according to Buddhist ethics. He draws a crucial distinction: while suicide is a negative action, it cannot be a complete killing because Buddhist ethics defines a complete killing as requiring the object to die before the actor. In suicide, the actor is the object, so it cannot meet this criterion. A complete killing therefore must involve harming another person. He illustrates this principle through the example of Tibetans during the Chinese invasion who chose suicide to prevent further oppression; Rinpoche argues that even in this compassionate context, suicide remains impermissible. The talk presents a rigorous framework for understanding why Buddhist ethics applies its prohibition on killing universally.
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File: 1989-08-01 – 2A – Sun's Radiance of – KR.mp3
UUID: c448ae82-4f66-4ed4-9c8e-1bb4bca4c93d
Teacher: Kyabje Rinpoche
Collection: Sun Radiance – Thought Transformation
Date: 1989-08-01
Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide
Words: ~218
This transcript was generated using AI speech recognition and has been reviewed for Buddhist terminology accuracy. Some inaccuracies may remain. Please refer to the original audio recording as the authoritative source.
# Sun’s Radiance of Thought Transformation 2a 1989-08-01 **Collection:** Rinpoche Recordings — Sun’s Radiance (1989) **Duration:** 7.0 minutes **Words:** 218 **Model:** Deepgram Nova-3 **Corrections applied:** 0 **Transcribed:** 2026-02-27 15:15 — Okay. What’s suicide? No. Wrong. Just in general suicide, are you talking about the specific example? So, suicide is a negative action, but it doesn’t have all the components of…
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# Sun’s Radiance of Thought Transformation 2a 1989-08-01
**Collection:** Rinpoche Recordings — Sun’s Radiance (1989)
**Duration:** 7.0 minutes
**Words:** 218
**Model:** Deepgram Nova-3
**Corrections applied:** 0
**Transcribed:** 2026-02-27 15:15
—
Okay. What’s suicide? No. Wrong. Just in general suicide, are you talking about the specific example?
So, suicide is a negative action, but it doesn’t have all the components of a complete negative action of killing. Simply from the point of view that in order to have a complete negative action of killing it must be the object killed must die before you, and in this case it doesn’t happen. So therefore it is a negative action but it’s not a complete negative action. It doesn’t have all the components of it, of a complete negative action. So, a complete negative action of killing must involve killing someone other than you.
It said it was a negative action but it’s not a complete negative action. What would you like to know? So it’s never proper to kill yourself, to commit suicide. Even the case for example when the invasion of Chinese, of Tibet by the Chinese, that as the prospects of being tortured and being oppressed for a very long time due to that, considering that possibility many Tibetans, they committed suicide. And also, since having committed suicide, that the Chinese would not commit the negative action of hurting this particular person.
Even then, it’s not proper. It’s still a negative negative action. Action. You have a question?