When there is a decision to let her die, to give her a shot, or just pulling the plug on the machine, the bad karma of killing is created.

STUDENT:

So if a practitioner expresses a wish to die, he or she should be reminded that there could be karmic consequences to making that kind of decision?

SHIH-FU:

That's right

STUDENT:

Relating to suicide, is there any circumstance where taking one's own life is justified? And legally, what about the question of the right to die? There are those who are very old, feeble, or in so much pain that they want to die, or perhaps they are in a vegetative state. What about the Vietnamese monk who burned himself as a protest against the incursion of communism?

SHIH-FU:

From the perspective of fundamental Buddhism, all of these examples are against the teachings. The principle of karma is that whatever actions people perform, they will incur the appropriate kind of consequences, regardless of whether they are healthy or unhealthy, young or old, useful or useless, aware or unaware. And also, this kind of cause and consequence sometimes does not affect only the people themselves, but also everyone around them.