However, for the Dalai Lama precepts are not absolute or exceptionless, not even the precept against killing. Nevertheless, the Dalai Lama’s standing commitment to compassion and the principle of non harming is beyond question. For instance, regarding the famous case of killing a criminal out of compassion in order to prevent him from killing many innocent people, the Dalai Lama seems to follow Tsongkhapa, the founder of the Gelugpa school of Tibetan Buddhism to which he belongs.
Tsongkhapa did not list compassionate killing for overall good consequences as an obligation, but he nevertheless allowed such action despite it generating negative karma for the agent. However, Tsongkhapa, in contrast to Śāntideva, holds that a monk may kill on compassionate grounds without losing his status as a monk, only if he is a bodhisattva who has reached the Noble stages (Harvey 140). The same applies to compassionate stealing and lying, though interestingly not to sexual intercourse. As a response to a question about the possibility of compassionate killing when overall good consequences follow, the Dalai Lama explicitly states that he has not reached the level of spiritual development necessary to break the principle of non-harming (Ingram 24-25).
Given that the Dalai Lama, following Tsongkhapa, does not view compassionate killing for overall good consequences as obligatory for all agents, and given that such a hypothetical act is constrained by virtue ethical considerations (being at a particular level of spiritual development), it seems that also in this regard the Dalai Lama’s ethics is closer to virtue ethics than to universalist perfectionist consequentialism. However, in this case the similarity with Aristotelian virtue ethics is limited because unlike the Dalai Lama, Aristotle views certain actions including 517 Journal of Buddhist Ethics theft and murder as not admitting of a mean and as always incorrect: “it is true without qualifications that to do any of them is to be in error” (1107a18-9). Nevertheless, the Dalai Lama and Buddhist ethics in general would agree with Aristotle’s view of certain feelings such as spite, shamelessness, and envy as never correct(1107a11-2).