Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 23-minute teaching, a Buddhist teacher explores how moral action depends on both the immediate intention and the underlying motivation. Using concrete examples — a monk who kills his suffering mother out of compassion, farmers harvesting rice while killing insects, and choices about medical treatment near death — the teacher walks through the principle that both near and distant motivations must be beneficial for an act to be truly wholesome. He addresses the Buddhist rejection of euthanasia, the graduated negativity of killing different beings, the unavoidable karmic cost of eating any food, and the nuanced ethics of prolonging life when suffering is severe versus when spiritual practice remains possible. The teaching emphasizes that ethical discernment requires examining the actual mind that acts, not only the wish behind it.
File metadata (for organising)
File: tbi-duplicate-kr-thought-tranf-suns-radiance-suns-radiance-of-thought-transformation-4a-1989-08-08
Teacher: TBI (duplicate – KR Thought Tranformation 1989)
Collection: Sun's Radiance (TBI (duplicate – KR Thought Tranformation 1989))
Date: 1989-08-08
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Words: ~998