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Pages 1, 2
However, let us take the case of one who finds himself unable to break away from those situations where morally perplexing choices arise, and yet who cannot allow himself and his family to perish because he wishes to avoid killing destructive animals. Such a person, if he is to safeguard the interests of his family and community, may well find himself in a position where he feels compelled to take life-of animals and insects which threaten his welfare and the welfare of those who look to him for security. Though his action will doubtlessly be a breach of the precepts, a close examination of the principal of kamma will modify the judgement we would tend to pass upon such action. The Buddha teaches that kamma is essentially volition or intention (Chetana) for it is volition that motivates us to act in particular ways and comes to expression through our actions. Because volition constitutes the essence of kamma, the moral quality of action will derive from the moral quality of the volition that motivates the action.
Moreover, any complex action, such as those involved in the situations you describe, involves it whole series of states of mind (citta), each with its own intention and thus the act will involve a complex variety of intentions rather than a single simple intention. In the case of the person who kills a jaguar to protect his village or a boar to safeguard the fields on which his family depends, in the course of executing the killing of the animal different intentions will dominate his mind on different occasions within the same series of thoughts and actions that constitutes the act of killing. On some occasions he will be thinking of killing the animal, and then the unwholesome intention of taking life will be dominant; at other moments he will be thinking of protecting others from harm, and on those occasions the wholesome intention of helping others will be dominant. In so far as the man's action is a case of taking life, it will be an unwholesome kamma and a breach of the first precept. But insofar as it is motivated by concern for others, there will be occasions when wholesome elements enter into his action and these will significantly modify its ethical quality. Thus his act of killing will be different in essential ways from those acts of killing which are motivated by unmitigated hatred, anger, lust and cruelty.
Any act of killing must, as such, involve some degree admixture with the root defilements - greed, hate and delusion. One who is free from all defilements, an Arahat, is incapable of deliberately taking life; even a Sotapanna, one at the first, stage of enlightenment, cannot knowingly break the first, precept. However, a person bound up with life in the world, burdened with various social and family responsibilities might find himself in those moral predicaments where a mundane good - the protection of family and community - may appear to require of him that he commit an action that is karmically unwholesome and contrary to the moral code inculcated by his religion. In such a case he will have to choose between the two alternatives: in the interest, of his long-range spiritual welfare (which may also be in the interest of the long-range spiritual welfare of his family and neighbours) he can hold fast to the moral precepts and refuse to break them, even though this will lead to his mundane disadvantage; or he can choose to break the precept reluctantly, aware that his action is a "necessary evil" to secure his and his family's mundane well-being.
If he makes this latter choice, though the act is karmically unwholesome, the degree of unwholesomeness will be modified by the good aspect of his underlying motivation: he performs the action reluctantly, without pleasure and enjoyment, aware that it violates the precepts, and he tries to inflict as little harm as possible, And though the action will to some extent be an obstacle to his spiritual development, it need not be a major obstacle. If he understands his situation honestly, tries to avoid inflicting harm as much as possible, and seeks to counterbalance his deed with wholesome actions, he will be creating conditions which can modify and overcome the hindrance caused by the unwnolesorne action.
This is my own way of resolving the dilemmas you deal with in your questions. You may consider this and decide for yourself whether it sounds tenable.
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