A word on euthanasia from Yongdzin Rinpoche
Yesterday MPs in the UK Parliament voted in favour of the so-called “assisted dying bill” aka euthanasia. Yongdzin Rinpoche was asked about this during a retreat in Paris in April 1997 when he was teaching on Nyamzhag Gompai Laglen (Tib. Mnyam bzhag sgom pa’i lag len). Here is his response:
Q: (a question about euthanasia)
A: If someone is dying, terminally ill, it is better not to kill him or her or let them commit suicide because they haven’t worked through their karma yet. You should never kill. A painkiller is not an antidote to karmic cause, it can only alleviate some pain temporarily. Practice is the only painkiller for karmic cause.From: Nyamzhag Gompai Laglen: The Practice of Equanimous Contemplation, FPYB, forthcoming 2024-25
Photo: Yongdzin Rinpoche teaching in Shenten Dargye Ling, 2008. Photo by Carol Ermakova
7 Responses
Drugs like morphine are also not recommended for the dying, since they disorient and confuse.
Interestingly, babies born to drugged mothers are also often disoriented and confused upon birth, leading to several psychological disorders later in life.
It’s time for a new kind of education that addresses these issues directly.
I am totally in harmony with Rinpoche’s words on assisted dying and suicide. Yet somehow I find it difficult to take a general view here that this is always wrong. There were instances in the Pali canon of Buddhism where highly realised monks committed suicide, and in that particular instance the Buddha did not condemn this as unskillful, despite this being the general view on the topic.
Saying ‘it’s always like this’ somehow feels like it does not respond the the actual situation from naked awareness and compassion – it’s a conceptual guide, which I’m not sure I’d prefer to act from.
@Chodpa Please give references to suicide in Pali Cannon and Shakyamuni Buddha’s reaction.
Hi there.
https://suttacentral.net/sn22.87?view=normal&lang=en
https://suttacentral.net/sn35.87?view=normal&lang=en
Very unusual Suttas in this respect.
Chodpa
Who knows how authentic these suttas are? In any case, Yongdzin Rinpoche is speaking from the general standpoint of Yungdrung Bon. not Theravada Buddhism. From the point of view of Thegpa Chenpo (Mahayana, in both Indo-Tibetan Buddhism and Yungdrung Bon) there might be situations when suicide is justified, for example in case of Jathaka stories when Buddha or a Boddhisattva offers his body to feed the hungry, but those are special cases, and it is clarified that should an ordinary being try to do so, they will accumulate negative karma.
What’s important is how clear one is in the bardo. What does it matter if you’re just about to die and to alleviate the pain of the body you get a little morphine? You can actually create better circumstances for what’s to come in some cases. It is not the morphine that kills you anyway. Phowa were performed in Chinese prisons to avoid torture by Dzogchen masters on a side note too.
They were already highly realized though.
We are not talking about little morphine to alleviate pain but about killing people with injection of barbiturates, which is an entirely different sort of thing.
Yes, some masters performed phowa when arrested but… as you said, they were highly realised.