What he said may have been misreported in the Los Angeles Times.

Here is the official account:

“His Holiness then answered questions, some of which were submitted through the Internet. The first question was on His Holiness’ emphasis on compassion as a basis of ethics. It asked whether in some situation ensuring justice is more important than being compassionate to the perpetrator of a crime. It referred to the news of the death of Osama Bin Laden and the celebrations of it by some, and asked where compassion fit in with this and ethics. In his response, His Holiness emphasized the need to find a distinction between the action and the actor. He said in the case of Bin Laden, his action was of course destructive and the September 11 events killed thousands of people. So his action must be brought to justice, His Holiness said. But with the actor we must have compassion and a sense of concern, he added. His Holiness said therefore the counter measure, no matter what form it takes, has to be compassionate action. His Holiness referred to the basis of the practice of forgiveness saying that it, however, did not mean that one should forget what has been done.”

The Office of His Holiness The Dalai Lama

So, this is just a different way of thinking about things from the way we look at it in many Western ethical discussions. He’s saying that, if you are following the path of compassion, then whatever you do, whether it is taking him prisoner, or killing him, or doing nothing, whatever action you do, that it has to be done as a compassionate action - including compassion towards Osana Bin Ladin himself.

It’s hard for us to think of killing someone as a compassionate action. But it could be if you think that the harmful actions they do have effects back on them, in future lives or whatever might be their future after they die. If by killing him you prevent him from causing great harm to many people, then it might be compassionate action, not just to them, but to himself also.

While, if you kill him just out of anger and rage, then it’s not compassionate, even though the action may be the same and perhaps no onlooker can tell the difference. When Buddhist teachers talk about such things, they don’t say that any actions are compassionate or otherwise just on the basis of what you do. Always, your motivation is what makes it compassionate.

Give everyone in the world a meal, say, but you do it in a narrow selfish way, maybe to try to get them all to praise you, then there may be some compassion mixed in but it’s very limited.

Give a single person a glass of water, and your compassion could be so boundless that your action is vast beyond measure. That also is why they say you should never feel that you are too poor, or too limited in any way to be compassionate. You can be compassionate in that vast way even with a single glass of water.

In the West when we discuss ethics, we tend to just ignore whatever are the motivations behind the actions. We want to know “What should I do in this situation, what are the rules to govern my conduct”. It’s all about, should I do X in situation Y and A in situation B? We feel we can weigh everything up and decide in some objective way how compassionate someone is from the things they do, or to decide in any situation what is the ethical way to behave.

But in the Buddhist path and teachings, then you may get an answer about developing compassion and wisdom, and you are put back on the spot yourself ,asked to work on your own motivation and understanding. That’s something that you can’t get anyone else to do for you. You can’t hand off the decision making to some third party and then say that whatever you did is their responsibility. It doesn’t work like that.

So, you can’t expect the Dalai Lama to tell people what to do, just to give guidelines and suggestions. He’s not like a Pope. He can’t tell anyone what to do.

Now we do have vows also in the Buddhist teachings. Many Buddhists take a vow of not killing, for instance. Killing a human being is an absolute breach of that vow.

But even vows are not thought of as the final arbiter - they don’t get you out of this need to think for yourself and relate to your own compassion and wisdom. Most of the time then the vows will help to quiet your mind, which is their purpose. There are many things you don’t have to give any thought to. But the vows have many levels to them. The vow of not killing also applies even to insects. You do your best not to kill insects as well, the reason is not so much to save their lives - which are so short anyway. There’s no way you could save the lives of all insects no matter what you do, just postpone the inevitable. It’s more to do with training your mind, opening your mind to compassion and sensitivity even to the plight of an insect in its tiny world with its limited perception.

So all the time these vows get you thinking and working with yourself, your wisdom and compassion.

And then, there might be a situation where your compassion leads you to break one of those vows. An example my teacher used to give was - that if you are in a city and you see someone about to detonate a nuclear bomb, and the only way to stop them is to kill them - it might then be a compassionate action to kill them. First, of course, it’s compassionate to all the people that they will kill, but also for them too, because by killing so many people they are engaging in an act of great violence that will impact on themselves in an immediate way in future lives. Or whatever future there is after they die, since generally one wants to keep an open mind about what happens if you don’t know for sure.

So, it would be hard to do that as an act of pure compassion. Maybe if you have great wisdom and insight, and a very open mind, you could kill someone who is trying to kill thousands or millions of people with a mind that has nothing but deep and strong compasssion towards them, not a trace of anger or even annoyance. But chances are that you do feel irritated and probably scared, and angry. Still though that makes the action confused, you can still act out of compassion as best you can, your best approximation. And even if you can’t, still you may do it.

So - there’s no obligation to kill them. It’s not a rule. It’s actually breaking your vow of not killing if you took such a vow. That you act out of compassion doesn’t change anything about that, you are still someone who broke that vow. And if you have some anger then this is going to be an action that harms your own mind, in the way anger does, but even more so because you actually killed someone. So it would be mixed in its effects.

~So, in that situation nobody else, not the Buddha, not the Dalai Lama, could tell you what you should do in that situation. It’s you, there, in that situation, fully responsible, fully yourself, nobody else can do it for you. You then make the best decision you can in that situation. And then you live with the consequences, whatever they are.

So that’s how Buddhist think about such things. So the Dalai Lama couldn’t be saying that the US should kill Osama Bin Laden or any particular thing. For that matter he wasn’t there, he didn’t know the particulars of the situation. Was he armed or not armed? Many accounts have said he wasn’t armed and so could have been taken captive and not killed. Did they believe him to be armed - only they can know that for sure. But even if you knew everything about the situation, the decision is still up to the individual on the spot there. And you can’t tell them what to do because their action will have consequences and it’s for them to decide whether to accept those consequences whatever they are, and they, and you also, can’t know all the rammifications either of those consequences.

So the Dalai Lama’s advice here for someone who wants to follow the path of compassion is that you sometimes have to take forceful action, but when you do so, that you should do it as best you can out of compassion, even towards whoever it is you have to take the forceful action against, whatever the action is.

So, I hope that’s a bit clearer.