12.8 Of Murder (KV12.8)

Controverted Point: That a person who has attained to sound views may yet designedly commit murder.

Theravādin: Then you imply that he may designedly commit any murder, even the worst, to wit matricide, parricide, Arahanticide, or with enmity at heart may wound a Tathāgata, or create schism in the Order … .

You imply, moreover, that since he may commit such a deed he can have no reverence for Master, Doctrine, Order, or Training, while you know, on the other hand, that such a person feels just the opposite.

You imply, moreover, that such a person may defile Buddha shrines, desecrate them, spit on them, behave as an infidel in presence of them?

But was it not said by the Exalted One:

“Just as the ocean, bhikkhus, remains of the same nature, and passes not beyond the shore, just so is the body of precepts which I have established for those who are hearers of my word, and which they their lives long do not pass beyond”?

Hence it is not right to say that a person who has attained to sound views may designedly deprive a living creature of life.

The Points of Controversy, an English translation of the Pali Abhidhamma Kathāvatthu. Translated by Shwe Zan Aung and C.A.F. Rhys Davids. First published by Pali Text Society, 1915.

This SuttaCentral edition was prepared by Manfred Wierich and Ven. Vimala and proofread by Josephine Tobin. Some changes were introduced:

Abbreviations, i.e., those of cited works and the participants in the controversies, were expanded.

Cross-references were linked.

Some typographic changes were introduced, among others, i.e.: the phonetic symbol “ŋ” was changed to the Pāli diacritical letter “ṃ”, “ô” to “o”, single quotes to double quotes, and “:—” to “:”.

Letter-spacing with fixed spaces was replaced with bold font.

The corrigenda were merged into the text. Some could not be resolved, though.

This electronic version is published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 3.0 licence (CC BY-NC 3.0) as found here: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/

All copyright is owned by the Pali Text Society. See also the statement under http://www.palitext.com/ → Publications → Copyright Announcement. For non-commercial use only.