Can Killing a Living Being Ever Be an Act of Compassion? The Analysis of the Act of Killing in the Abhidhamma and Pali Commentaries

The article begins by reviewing the Pāli Nikāya teaching that killing living beings is an unwholesome action and that the Buddhist path requires refraining from harming life. Gethin then turns to the Vinaya rules, especially the third pārājika, which concerns intentionally killing a human being or encouraging death, and pācittiya sixty-one, which concerns killing non-human living beings. From there, the article examines the commentarial analysis of killing as a complete course of action requiring five components: a living being, awareness that it is a living being, the intention to kill, the act or effort, and the death of the being as a result. The central section analyzes the Abhidhamma understanding of intention (cetanā), showing that the intention to kill is classified as unwholesome and rooted in aversion and delusion. Gethin then engages with the question of compassion as a motive for killing, especially in cases resembling euthanasia, and critiques the view that a good motive can make intentional killing morally acceptable within Theravāda thought. He further discusses how the tradition interprets cases where monks appear to act out of compassion but are judged to have committed a grave offence because the decisive intention is still directed toward death. The article closes by comparing this Theravāda position with broader Indian Buddhist materials, including Sarvāstivāda Abhidharma and the Upāyakauśalya Sūtra, before concluding that intentional killing cannot be wholly an act of compassion in mainstream Buddhist ethical psychology.