On the Noble Eightfold Path, the right view and right intention come under the higher training of wisdom. Then the next three — right speech, right action, and right livelihood — come under the higher training of ethical conduct. The last three — right joyous effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration — come under the higher training in concentration. The whole path is subsumed in the three higher trainings. Now we come to right action, which refers most specifically to the three detrimental actions of the body — killing, stealing, and unwise sexual conduct.

We all understand that killing is taking life and that life is what is cherished most by sentient beings. We understand that intellectually on one level, but on the other hand, you see many ways of justifying killing in our human world. Most of them by the wrong view. In some religions, they say that animals were created for human benefit, therefore killing them is not killing. However, Buddhists do not agree. Another form of killing out of ignorance is animal sacrifice. We think that by killing humans or animals, we appease gods or other powers. Both are examples of killing due to ignorance or bewilderment.

Killing due to attachment would be killing like a hunter does, out of attachment to eating the meat of the animal. Ignorance is probably mixed in there too, with its philosophical justification for taking life. I do not think killing that is motivated by anger needs much explanation. We can often see how when we have a lot of attachment to someone or something, the anger we have towards our object of attachment becomes equally strong.

Sometimes people kill or physically injure the very people that they are most attached to. This is something that happens quite often in domestic violence, either against spouses or children. Those people are the ones that the perpetrator is most attached to. When they do not do what the perpetrator wants, the latter gets so angry and carried away and ends up destroying the life of his or her very loved ones. We can see here that if we want to free ourselves from anger, we must also work on attachment because it can lead to very harmful consequences.

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