Abstaining from intentional killing of beings

This is one of 5 precepts I read and the more I read and discover it puzzles me. So far my understanding is willful And intentional killing of any sentiment beings even a mosquito breaks this precept.

Then further reading the Final ruling Below and few other places I see intentional killing of plants and seeds is not allowed, intentional digging is prohibited, cooking raw food is prohibited all is for saving this precept


(SuttaCentral)‘If a monk destroys plants, he commits an offense entailing confession.’”

Question comes to me to what extent this precept goes, and what are the beings who are conscious, our body is composed of +50% foreign cells bacteria and viruses More than half your body is not human - BBC News . Are these also sentiment beings, Any living cells?

When we open our mouth, move our body or perform any day to day activity certainly some smaller beings, plants or seeds might be destroyed, When you rub hands 1000s of cells are destroyed also these microbes along with might be. So literally a 10 step walk is not possible maintaining this precept to the fullest, so does it mean one should stop a intentional walk? Or movement of body ?

1 Like

Greetings @sumants,

There was quite a detailed discussion about this in the topic below

https://discourse.suttacentral.net/t/knowing-that-living-beings-such-as-insects-will-directly-be-killed-as-a-result-of-your-actions/8106

Just so that we can keep the archiving of topics and answers manageable, we ask that people do a bit of a search for the topic, before they post. If there is another existing post, it is better to read that, and then to post any additional questions, or comments there if it will benefit the discussion :slight_smile: All these little things just help to make this a good community :smiley: :pray:

6 Likes

Thank you for this link, I thought had searched upon plants but didn’t find many hits regardless this link seems to have 81 discussions so will go through them. We don’t need this topic anymore.

By the way one request for moderators can someone conclude for each topic what’s the outline of discussion in context with original question if done it will be much easier instead of going through 81 posts

1 Like

Hmmm, thats quite a responsibility, a lot of work and extra obligation for volunteer moderators to undertake…
Nice in theory, but I don’t see it happening :slight_smile: :pray:

Besides, who knows what riches may be discarded in the summary :smiley:

I see, then another suggestion the posts should not go live before moderator approves it and verifies content is not already answered that might be better option

Just to note, the Discourse platform does have a summarize function. With long threads you’ll see a “Summarize This Topic” button at the bottom of the first post:

In this case, the 82 posts are reduced to 17.

I’ve no clue what kind of algorithm behind post selection is, but at the very least it should provide some kind of flavour.

1 Like

Reading all the 81 posts takes 30 minutes. It would seem to me to be a good investment of time. Short-cuts are not always beneficial :pray: