[Buddha-l] Buddhist Bioethics

[jkirk]

Having again read through Keown's analysis of the suttas and commentaries
around the Canna story, including various interpretations of the 
term -anupavajja- where he concludes that it meant -not to be reborn- rather 
than -blameless-, and how he finally concludes that the sutta's treatment of 
this issue had much to do with the expected behavior of arhats, I was 
persuaded that the Buddha in the Pali texts does not -condone- suicide. 
http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma/suicide.html

However, I wish to note that a difference can be proposed as between some 
suicides and other actions that are still deemed suicide in contemporary 
idiomatic parlance but that are not occasioned by the intention to 
self-destruct because of either desire, aversion, or delusion. These would 
be instances where the body, or perhaps just the brain (which governs the 
rest of the body anyway) itself, has already begun to die--IOW,  instances 
of incurable illness.

I have in mind here the practice being resorted to by some elderly people 
who have incurable disease, with death as the predicted end, who decide to 
begin fasting with the aim of eventually ceasing to eat and drink 
altogether. The reasons they give for this procedure are not singular, but 
usually include compassion for others--usually kinfolk, usually only one 
person in many cases, usually a daughter not a son--who would be forced by 
circumstances to stand by and care for such patients, often for unknown 
durations. They also include compassion for themselves, in that by pursuing 
self-euthanasia they can maintain dignity and awareness until the end, 
unlike what would happen if they sink into a vegetative state or develop 
full-blown brain disease with senility.

Under such circumstances, to insist on ethical grounds on the medical 
intervention of keeping the dying body alive as long as possible, or to 
ethically condemn its dying other than by leaving it to its own devices, 
strikes me as social torture. The instances of the illnesses occasioned by 
the suicides found in the suttas do not tell the reader, of 2000 years 
later, what precisely these monks suffered from nor do we know the extent if 
any of the medical treatment that might have either restored them to health, 
assuaged their pain, or kept them alive even though their bodies were 
already dying.  Thus, I do not see how these cases, nor the Pali canon for 
that matter, can literally be applied to contemporary situations of elderly 
patients who are already dying but being kept alive on life support with the 
postponement (not the elimination) of predicted death, i.e., for whom there 
is no cure.

The industrial culture that we live in is highly stressful to the working 
population. To stick our societies and their still working kinfolk with the 
deficits entailed by endless maintainance of the life of patients who have 
lived their lives, have incurable illnesses, and are ready to die strikes me 
as unwarranted on any basis. IMO contemporary, or "modern Buddhism" as it's 
sometimes called, should not condemn such people as unethical and or 
delusional, nor should society for that matter. The delusions about this 
situation reside in the society, not in the courageous people who say, it's 
time to go.

Joanna