This chapter focusses on the guiding norms concerning intentional killing and its prohibition encoded in the first Buddhist precept. These are embedded in a broader theoretical structure which includes explicit and implicit value-claims concerning life and sentience, and the ways in which they’re understood in proto-biological and ethical terms, especially with regard to the suffering (dukkha) attending them. Early Buddhist norms around killing involve claims for the constitution of life, as well as value-hierarchies between different kinds of sentient being instantiating it, which given differing attributions of sentience guides the moral evaluation of killing as well. Criteria for intentional killing, in both theoretical and legal modes, also entail moral quandaries arising from the early Buddhist metaphysical frameworks in which this discussion occurs, questions taken up through early Buddhist history by such interlocutors as Vasubandhu, Buddhaghosa and Nāgārjuna. The precept prohibiting killing is seen to encode a general principle of the amelioration of suffering, which entails the recognition of moral agency in intention (cetanā), itself determining the moral valence of acts and so their instantiation ofkamma, or moral consequence. Hence, concerns to ameliorate suffering, by means ofkamma-laden acts, are seen to centrally undergird the moral evaluation of killing in the canonical record of early Buddhism.

1. 1.

   A para-canonical Theravāda text ofc. first century C.E. recording a dialogue between the monk Nāgasena and King Milinda (155–130 B.C.).

2. 2.

   Proscribing killing, stealing (and cheating), sexual misconduct, lying, and the use of intoxicants.

3. 3.

   The pre-Buddhist sense ofāyus is extensive and in the post-VedicŚatapatha Brāhmaṇa aligned to the notion ofamṛtam, or the undying, which in the context of the human mortal signifies a ‘full life’ (sarvam āyus) of a hundred years. Hence, the later Buddhist injunction against killing is not merely a valorisation of life per se, but carries the much older connotation of the value of a full life seen as a worldly desideratum, and rooted in the eschatology of rebirth into more fortunate (or eternal) lifetimes as highly-placed men or gods (see Collins, 44–47).

4. 4.

   Sn. 394:pāṇaṃ na hane na ca ghātayeyya na cānujaññā hanataṃ paresaṃ/ sabbesu bhūtesu nidhāya daṇdam ye thāvarā ye ca tasanti loke. (Cf. MN I 345; DN I 4).

5. 5.

   Schmithausen (2000, 41) notes that the recognition of accidental killing is only evident in later Vinaya and somesuttanta formulations of the precepts.

6. 6.

   Parricide, matricide, killing an Arhat, breaking up the Saṅgha, and causing, with evil intent, the Tathāgata (or Buddha) to bleed.

7. 7.

   Harvey’s (2000, 67) more literal rendering is “I undertake the training-precept to abstain from onslaught on breathing beings.”.

8. 8.

   The distinction is important when it comes to conceiving the morally relevant ending of life. For example, most Buddhist discussion of euthanasia concerns identifying the morally salient difference between its active and passive forms, insofar as the first precept is clearly implicated in the former, but possibly not the latter (Ratanakul 2000, 176). If however these two forms are not morally distinguished (Keown 2018a, 613) then the Buddhist-ethical status of passive euthanasia is reconfigured.

9. 9.

   For example, the embryo is alive but not yet breathing, though it carries that intrinsic capacity as it develops in utero.

10. 10.

    The pre-Buddhist origins of this equivalence between breath (or the capacity to breathe) and a universal life-force are extensive and evident from the Vedic scriptures to theBrāhmaṇas andUpaniṣads and beyond. Collins (1982, 50) observes the function ofprāṇa in the metaphysical formation of theātman concept and the growth of Brahmanical rebirth theory, which itself forms the origin for the Buddhist appropriation of rebirth as an ethical eschatology.

11. 11.

    The seven ‘universal’ mental factors constituting any moment of consciousness (citta) are:phassa (contact),vedanā (feeling or sensation),saññā (recognition, or perception/conception),cetanā (volition or intention),ekaggatā (concentration or one-pointedness),jīvitindriya (life-faculty),manasikāra (attention).

12. 12.

    Though, as noted in the AbhidhammaPaṭṭhana (or Conditional Relations) therūpa-jīvitindriya pertains only to thoserūpa-dhammas produced bykamma, rather than those produced by heat (usmā) or mental and nutritive physical causes (van Gorkom 52). See Jaini (540) for discussion of the taxonomical geneses of the Theravāda theory of dual psychophysicaljīvitindriyas and their differential appropriation in the Sarvāstivāda schools. Here we are concerned only with a general characterisation of the canonical and Theravāda presentation.

13. 13.

    Schmithausen (2000, 38), speaking with regard to Pāli sources of the relation between a liberated person and their death, also understands by “vijñāna, the sentience that kept his body alive”.

14. 14.

    van Gorkom is largely summarising Buddhaghosa’s commentary theAtthasālinī on the first book of the Abhidhamma Piṭaka, theDhammsaṅgaṇī, which treats of the 52 mental factors of the Theravāda Abhidhamma.Dhammas, most broadly, in the Abhidhamma/Abhidharma denote the most irreducibly fundamental constituents of psychophysical experience. Jaini claims that thejīvitindriya is one of the 24 kinds of ‘derived matter’ (upādāya-rūpa) which “According to the Theravādins are ‘dhammas' and hence ought to be recognized as ultimate elements. But a large number of these can be treated rather as aspects, modes, or qualities than as separate entities […] Thejīvitindriya, for instance, does not consist of a separaterūpa, but is only a name given to the life of matter.” (533–34).

15. 15.

    The central text of the Sarvāstivāda in which Vasubandhu presents Vaibhāṣika doctrine along with his commentary engaging Sautrāntika critique of it. In the (1971 reprint of the) 1923 French translation by Louis de la Vallée Poussin, the relevant discussion appears in Volume III, 71c-d through to 73c-d (pps. 151–155). Pruden’s English translation (1991) of the same passage is in Vol. II, pps. 644–651. (All refs. to AKBh are to its identification by chapter (usually IV) and numbered section, generally followed by its corresponding page number in the Pruden translation.).

16. 16.

    But whose ambiguous ontological status is also contested; see Jaini 541.

17. 17.

    The term ‘sentience’ is here used, as it is generally in Buddhist ethics as elsewhere, to summarise a range of values that, as Harvey suggests, in the Buddhist context most broadly denotes “the ability to experience and to suffer, and the related ability, in this or a future life, to transcend suffering by attaining enlightenment.” (2000, 151).

18. 18.

    See MN III 167–9, SN II 1890–90, for reference to human, animal and insect sentience particularly in relation to rebirth andkammic relations between them in past lives. (AN I 161 describes human consideration shown to insects in feeding them.).

19. 19.

    This chapter doesn’t thematize animal ethics in depth, for reason of the general inclusion of animals in an early Buddhist ethics of care and consideration extended to all sentient beings (see e.g., AN II 72–73; Vin. 109–110; Vin. III 62; Sn. 967b; MN II 371; Ud. II 3). Chapter4 more closely considers the evaluative and categorial distinctions between human and animal objects that inform the conceptual grounds for a would-be early Buddhist ethics of killing. See also Schmithausen (2000, 45ff).

20. 20.

    Confirmed also in the different degrees of penalty for human killing (pārājika no. 3) and animal killing (pācittiya no. 61) in thePātimokkha-sutta: expulsion from the Order, and atonement of an offence, respectively.

21. 21.

    See DN I 4; 63; 171; 181; MN I 179; 267; 345; III 33; AN II 208: V 204.

22. 22.

    Vin. IV 49 and 125.

23. 23.

    See Schmithausen (2000, 47) andpassim.

24. 24.

    All refs. to Vism. are to the chapter number followed by paragraph, in Ñāṇamoli (tr., 2011).

25. 25.

    Cf. theGarbhāvakrāntyavadāna. Barnhart (2018, 601ff.) discusses the relations between the Pāli Buddhist proto-biological notion of intermediate being (gandhabba) and the embryo. Schlieter also notes that “Tibetan embryological texts stress the homogeneous continuity of the development [between intermediate being and embryo] with the fact that the karmic “consciousness principle” may even “experience” entering the womb.” (2014, 313).

26. 26.

    The contrary possibility, present in some pathological conditions, to seek pain and avoid pleasure, would not qualify sentience per se but would question its hedonic configuration as generally presupposed.

27. 27.

    DN II 62–3 describes the conditionality of consciousness for the birth of a sentient body.

28. 28.

    Thejātakas in particular narrate accounts of a shared sense of the normative status of suffering between humans and some (linguistically as well as morally gifted) animals. But this idea tends mainly to bolster an account of thekammic continuities of virtue between transspecies lifetimes, rather than of animal sentience per se (indeed most animals in the same tales do not share the same virtue).

29. 29.

    Elsewhere in the canon (e.g., DN III 216), suffering is conceptualized in a threefold differentiation as:dukkha-dukkhatā (suffering due to pain),saṅkhāra-dukkhatā (caused by conditioning),vipariṇāma-dukkhatā (caused by change). Inasmuch as pleasure as an object of biological desire or craving and thence psychological attachment is impermanent, then the hedonic value of pleasure soon provides the condition for an anhedonic form of the suffering of change, and conditioning, if not of pain.

30. 30.

    Cf. MN III 203.

31. 31.

    Parallel (if somewhat perverse) claims could be raised regarding legal human killing, for example among some forms of state-sponsored premeditated execution such as counter-terroristic assassination; see Chap.12 for extended discussion.

32. 32.

    See for example AN X 28, 176; MN 9, 114;

33. 33.

    Cf. MN-a I 198; Sp. 439.

34. 34.

    The threefold division belongs to the Abhidhamma matrix of triplets(tika-mātikā) set out for example at the beginning of theDhammasaṅgaṇī. Some scholars (such as Heim 2014) simply use the English good and bad forkusala andakusala respectively.

35. 35.

    See Schmithausen (2000, 47); Gethin (2004a, 178) andpassim. This claim is a central focus of Chap.6, there discussed in-depth. There is an apparent exception to it in the Vinaya of the Mahīśāsakas which conceives the legal blamelessness of compassionate killing by monks (Schmithausen 48). However, the assertion of the legal provisionde jure does not thereby ensure the truth of the psychological case de facto.

36. 36.

    By the same token, silence, or the intended omission of speech, is as morally significant qua abstention as intended speech, and right speech (sammā-vācā), the third of the path factors of the Eightfold Path, is characterised in terms of abstention not only from lying and divisive speech, but also abuse and gossip (SN 45.8), and where both affectionate (AN 5.198) and pleasant (Thag. 21) affect are recommended.

37. 37.

    Howkamma as an effect ofcetanā entails a quotient of soteriological value (rather than the various popular but misleading notions of just desert) will also emerge in Chap.7, below.

38. 38.

    A reasoning that echoes the attenuation (even exoneration) of combat soldiers’ guilt from killing in Western moral tradition. However, the Buddhist sense of primary intention also modifies this reasoning, such that the guilt of one member of the group pertains to all members sharing a collective intention. (See Vasubandhu’s claim at AKBh IV 72c-d, 649, which holds the guilt of one soldier committed to killing as the guilt of all, no matter which of them acts on their shared intention; cf. also Sect. “An Exception to the Precept: Doctrinal Context” in Chap. 5).

39. 39.

    While according to the Pramāṇavāda (or epistemological) school perceptual objects are in theory perceived veridically, it is also the case that perception-conception (saṃjñā), the thirdkhandha/skandha, perceives only mental representations (ākāra) of intrinsically real specifically-characterised phenomena, which entails complex conceptual superimpositions on them before they are cognizable as such (see Dunne 2004).

40. 40.

    See Loy (1996, 2000a).

41. 41.

    AN III 415:cetanāhaṃ bhikkhave kammaṃ vadāmi │cetayitvā kammaṃ karoti. As this paradigmatic quote indicates,kamma refers to all intentional action, which being intended generates wholesome, unwholesome, or neutral, psychological and ethical effects.

42. 42.

    Similarly, with reference to the three poisons of greed, hatred and delusion as the causal roots (mūla) for all unwholesome acts more generally, Harvey writes “Greed, hatred and delusion are presented here [at MN I 46-47] as the innercauses of the unwholesome, though not thecriteria for labelling something as the unwholesome. They are, though, themselves unwholesome (AN I 201).” (2018, 13; italics original).

43. 43.

    Channovāda Sutta (MN III 263–6, n.144; SN IV 55–60);Vakkali Sutta (SN III 119–24);Godhika Sutta (SN I 120–2). See Keown (1996a), Delhey (2006, 2009), Anālayo (2010), Kovan (2013, 2014, 2018) for varied discussion.

44. 44.

    For a survey of alternative accounts of the Buddha’s exoneration of arhat suicide see Kovan (2013, 2018).

45. 45.

    Clearly the canonical suicidal arhats are an exception to this claim, but in Kovan (2013, 2018) I argue that the salient distinction in their case is not only that they are morally blameless, but that suicide is constitutively sui generis as a literally and morally reflexive lethal act.

46. 46.

    See for example Keown (1996b), Goodman (2017), Coseru (2007), Finnigan (2022).

47. 47.

    The task undertaken in McDermott (1984), Reichenbach (1990), O’Flaherty (1980), Prasad (1989), among others.

48. 48.

    It should be noted that such effects (vipāka) of intentional action are themselves kammically neutral and hence notkammic causes of subsequent action (even if they are among the important psychological or other conditions for it), which instead requires thecetanā for committing some morally-laden act. Also, physical objects produced fromkammic causes (such as a sentient being) are not themselveskamma-vipāka, which refers only to mental phenomena.

49. 49.

    Ricard and Singer (2017, 181–182) discuss the intersubjective causation of moral phenomena in Buddhist-psychological and neuroethical terms (cf. Coseru 2017a). Coseru (in 2007) also develops a naturalized model ofkamma.

50. 50.

    MN III 202–03; SN I 91–93. Reichenbach (1990, 27) rejects a purelysaṃskāra-based or ‘subjective’ theory ofkamma as inadequate to addressing the objective wrongness of acts and not merely the intentional dispositions which give rise to them. Keown counters this claim by correctly asserting that “Asaṃskāra theory of karma is not a normative theory but a theory about moral causation. It says nothing about moral axiology and does not require a commitment to the view that normative principles are reducible to psychological states.” (1996b, 338).

Authors and Affiliations

1. Sydney, NSW, Australia

   Martin Kovan

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