Buddhist ethical teachings on bioethics: HSC Studies of Religion

What this dot point is asking

In each depth study the syllabus asks you to "describe and explain" the tradition's ethical teachings in ONE area: bioethics, environmental ethics or sexual ethics. This page covers Buddhist bioethics: the ethics of life, death and medicine. You need:

1. The sources and principles of Buddhist ethics, with precise references to the Pali Canon and other texts.
2. How these principles apply to specific issues: abortion, euthanasia and voluntary assisted dying, reproductive technology, and organ donation.
3. Diversity: how Theravada and Mahayana Buddhists, and individual Buddhists, weigh the same principles.

Bioethics is NESA's recurring choice for Buddhism: the 2024 sample answer applied the first precept to voluntary assisted dying, and the 2025 sample answer explained ahimsa and karuna as "two key ethical teachings relevant to bioethics".

The answer

The sources of Buddhist ethics

Buddhism has no creator God issuing commands. Ethical teaching comes from the Dhamma, the Buddha's teaching about how suffering arises and ceases, preserved in:

• The Pali Canon (Tipitaka), authoritative for Theravada Buddhists: the Vinaya Pitaka (monastic discipline), the Sutta Pitaka (discourses) and the Abhidhamma Pitaka.
• Mahayana sutras and commentaries, authoritative for Mahayana Buddhists in East Asia and Tibet, which add the ideal of the bodhisattva and the principle of skilful means (upaya).
• Living teachers and communities: monastics, teachers and national sanghas who apply the Dhamma to new cases.

Ethics (sila) is one of the three trainings on the Noble Eightfold Path, with meditation (samadhi) and wisdom (prajna). Right action (not killing, not stealing, no sexual misconduct) and right livelihood are the path factors most relevant to bioethics.

The principal beliefs underneath

• Dukkha and the Four Noble Truths. Life involves suffering, which arises from craving and can end in nibbana. Bioethics is about relieving suffering without creating more through unskilful action.
• Kamma and rebirth. Intentional actions shape future experience and rebirth. A human birth is rare and precious because it is the best opportunity to practise the Dhamma, which is why ending human life is taken so seriously.
• Anatta and dependent origination. There is no fixed self; a being is a process of body and mind (name and form) conditioned by consciousness. The Mahanidana Sutta teaches that if consciousness "were not conceived in the mother's womb", name and form would not develop there (DN 15), which grounds the common Buddhist view that a new life begins at conception.
• Anicca (impermanence). Death is natural and inevitable, "part of the human condition" (the phrase NESA's 2024 sample quoted from Pinit Ratanakul), so Buddhism does not demand that life be prolonged at any cost.

Teaching 1: The first precept and ahimsa

The first of the Five Precepts (pancasila) is "I undertake the training rule to abstain from taking life" (panatipata veramani sikkhapadam samadiyami). The precepts are training rules freely undertaken, not commandments, but the first is the most fundamental.

"All tremble at violence; all fear death. Putting oneself in the place of another, one should not kill nor cause another to kill." (Dhammapada 129, trans. Acharya Buddharakkhita)

Ahimsa (non-harming) extends the precept to all beings and to thought and speech as well as action. In bioethics it grounds opposition to deliberately ending a human life at any stage, and concern about harm to animals in research.

Teaching 2: Karuna and the brahmaviharas

Karuna (compassion) is one of the four brahmaviharas ("divine abidings"): metta (loving-kindness), karuna (compassion), mudita (sympathetic joy) and upekkha (equanimity). The Karaniya Metta Sutta teaches:

"Even as a mother protects with her life her child, her only child, so with a boundless heart should one cherish all living beings." (Sutta Nipata 1.8, trans. Amaravati Sangha)

In bioethics, compassion motivates medical care, pain relief, hospice work and generosity such as blood and organ donation. But it must be joined with prajna: Buddhist teachers stress that compassion does not justify killing, because intentionally ending life is itself a harm with kammic consequences.

Teaching 3: Cetana (intention) and kamma

"Intention, I tell you, is kamma. Intending, one does kamma by way of body, speech, & intellect." (Anguttara Nikaya 6.63, trans. Thanissaro Bhikkhu)

Because kamma is chiefly intention, Buddhist ethics asks why an act is done. This allows fine distinctions: giving morphine to relieve pain, with the foreseen but unintended effect of shortening life, differs from giving a drug to cause death; withdrawing treatment that only prolongs dying differs from killing. It also means the kammic weight of the same outward act can vary with the state of mind behind it.

Teaching 4: The Vinaya's rulings (Parajika 3)

The third of the four parajika ("defeat") rules for monks is the Buddhist Canon's most precise bioethical text:

"If a monk intentionally kills a human being or seeks an instrument of death for them or praises death or incites someone to die, saying, 'My friend, what's the point of this miserable and difficult life? Death is better for you than life!' ... he too is expelled and excluded from the community." (Vinaya, Parajika 3, trans. Bhikkhu Brahmali)

The case studies attached to the rule apply it:

• Euthanasia. "A certain monk was sick. Out of compassion, the monks praised death to him. He died." The Buddha ruled: "You've committed an offense entailing expulsion." Compassionate motive does not make it skilful to bring about death.
• Abortion. A monk who helped a woman have an abortion, after which "the child died", was ruled to have committed an offence entailing expulsion.

These rules bind monastics directly, but they are widely cited as evidence of the tradition's view for lay Buddhists too.

Teaching 5: The Middle Way and skilful means

The Middle Way avoids extremes, including clinging to life at any cost and rejecting life. In the Mahayana, skilful means (upaya) allows a bodhisattva to adapt teaching and action to circumstances out of compassion, which some Mahayana Buddhists invoke to weigh hard cases more flexibly. Theravada teachers generally hold more closely to the precept.

Applying the teachings

Abortion

Traditional teaching in both Theravada and Mahayana regards abortion as taking a human life (DN 15; Parajika 3) and therefore unskilful. In practice many Buddhists distinguish cases by intention and circumstance, such as a threat to the mother's life, and emphasise compassion for the woman rather than condemnation. In Japan, mizuko kuyo ("memorial service for a water child") is a Buddhist rite for a child lost through miscarriage, stillbirth or abortion, in which parents acknowledge the loss and dedicate merit. Contraception that prevents conception is generally acceptable, since no being has yet been conceived.

Euthanasia and voluntary assisted dying

Voluntary assisted dying is legal in NSW under the Voluntary Assisted Dying Act 2022. Most Buddhists oppose it: it intentionally ends a human life (first precept), the Vinaya condemns praising death even out of compassion, and the mind at the moment of death is thought to influence rebirth, so a calm and mindful death is valued. Buddhists support palliative care and may refuse burdensome or futile treatment: allowing death to come naturally is not killing. The Channa Sutta (SN 35.87), in which the gravely ill monk Channa takes his own life and the Buddha says he did so "blamelessly", is sometimes cited in favour of exceptions; most commentators read the passage as applying only to an arahant who will not be reborn, not as a general permission.

IVF and reproductive technology

IVF that helps a couple conceive is generally acceptable, and compassion for childless couples is a strong consideration. Concern arises over surplus embryos that are destroyed and over embryo research, since on the conception view these are beings. Views differ and many Buddhists leave decisions to the couple's intention and conscience.

Organ donation

Many Buddhists regard donation as dana (generosity), an expression of karuna modelled on Jataka stories in which the Bodhisattva gives his body to save others. Some Tibetan teachers advise leaving the body undisturbed for a time after death so that consciousness can depart peacefully, which can make the timing of donation a concern; individuals weigh this with their teachers.

Genetic engineering and cloning

Buddhists judge these by intention and consequence: therapies that relieve suffering are welcomed, while practices that destroy embryos or are driven by craving (for example, designing children for status) raise concern under the first precept and the teaching on tanha (craving).

Diversity within Buddhism

• Theravada (Sri Lanka, Thailand, Myanmar and many Australian temples) tends to hold closely to the Pali Canon and the precept.
• Mahayana (China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Tibet) shares the precept but gives greater weight to compassion and skilful means, and has developed practices such as mizuko kuyo.
• Individual responsibility. There is no Buddhist pope or binding council for lay people, so personal intention, reflection and advice from teachers shape decisions. Buddhists are about 2.4% of Australians (2021 Census), with communities from both major schools.

The effect on the expression of Buddhism

Bioethics shows Buddhism as a lived tradition applying ancient principles to modern medicine. It expresses the tradition's characteristic features: ethics grounded in intention rather than divine command, a deep concern for the suffering of all beings, acceptance of impermanence and death, and personal responsibility for kamma. It has shaped Buddhist hospice and chaplaincy work, rites such as mizuko kuyo, and Buddhist contributions to public debates such as those on voluntary assisted dying.

In one sentence

Buddhist bioethics applies the first precept and ahimsa, karuna and cetana, grounded in the Pali Canon (Dhammapada 129, AN 6.63, DN 15, the Vinaya's Parajika 3), so that most Buddhists regard abortion and euthanasia as taking life while supporting compassionate care, pain relief and organ donation, with Theravada and Mahayana communities and individuals weighing hard cases by intention and wisdom.

Try this

Q1. Outline the Buddhist teaching of ahimsa. (2 marks)

• What the marker wants. Non-harming of all living beings, linked to the first precept, with one source.

Q2. Explain how the teaching of cetana affects Buddhist responses to the end of life. (4 marks)

• What the marker wants. AN 6.63; distinctions between killing, allowing death and relieving pain; the state of mind at death.

Q3. Evaluate the extent to which Buddhist teachings on bioethics are consistent across the tradition. (8 marks)

• What the marker wants. The shared core (first precept, compassion), textual rulings (Parajika 3), diversity (Theravada and Mahayana, mizuko kuyo, the Channa debate, organ donation) and a clear judgement.