THE VENERABLE Buddhadasa Bhikkhu, who passed away at the age of eighty-seven on July 8, 1993, was perhaps the best-known and most controversial Thai monk in the contemporary Theravada tradition. Although adhering strictly to the conservative Vinaya rules established by the historical Buddha, he claimed that to practice religion seriously one must be both conservative […]

To refrain from killing is the first Buddhist precept. The Theravada tradition of Southeast Asia interprets this precept in terms that parallel a Western sense of morality: there is a clear-cut distinction between killing and not killing in which the existence of a breathing, moving being either comes to its end—or doesn’t. In this view, […]