Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 6-minute teaching, a teacher explores a classic Buddhist ethical problem: whether suicide constitutes a complete negative action under the law of karma. He establishes that while suicide is harmful action, it lacks a key component — the object must die before the agent, which cannot occur when one kills oneself. He therefore classifies it as a negative action but not a complete one. He then applies this reasoning to a historical case: Tibetan resistance to Chinese invasion, where some Tibetans chose suicide rather than face torture and oppression, believing this would prevent their oppressors from accumulating further negative karma. Despite such circumstances, he concludes that suicide remains improper — it is still negative action, regardless of noble intention or external pressure. The talk addresses serious practitioners wrestling with karma, ethics, and the limits of harm reduction.
File metadata (for organising)
File: tbi-duplicate-kr-thought-tranf-suns-radiance-suns-radiance-of-thought-transformation-2a-1989-08-01
Teacher: TBI (duplicate – KR Thought Tranformation 1989)
Collection: Sun's Radiance (TBI (duplicate – KR Thought Tranformation 1989))
Date: 1989-08-01
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Words: ~305