I have never read a story of a Bodhisattva who killed someone to save many others. So, I don't know anything about that. What I do understand is that a Bodhisattva would never kill. Period. But what about killing with a good intention? Ok, what about 1936, if you had the ability to kill Adolf Hitler, would you do it? It is a good question. But killing him at that stage, well, was there another crazy guy behind Adolf Hitler. And was there going to be another crazy guy behind him, as well? And does it really solve anything in the long run? These are questions I can't answer, but that is something else to consider.
To kill in self defense, with the intention of stopping the person of doing harm. Now this is a different way of looking at intention. We kill, but not that we want to kill, we just want to stop harm from happening. And in stopping the harm, we have to do so much work that we have to kill that person. But our intention was not actually to kill that person, our intention was to stop the harm.
Individually it is a question each person has to ask themselves. In the ultimate sense, as far as Buddhism goes, a person enlightened would not be able to kill at all, not in self-defense, because they have no self to defend. So there is no point for them. One of the chief disciples of the Buddha and who was fully enlightened, Mogallana was murdered in his last life due to having killed his parents in a previous life. Now as that story went he was meditating in a hut and he knew these people were coming to murder him, they had been paid by someone who was jealous of Mogallana. When he knew they were coming the first time, he went up through the roof with his psychic power, so when they came there wasn't anyone there. This happened two or three days in a row, and the people were quite baffled, they couldn't figure it out. They knew he was in there, but he was not there when they went in.
Now in doing so Mogallana was actually not trying to avoid his death. As the story goes he was trying to give the other people enough time to change their mind. As it turned out according to the story, two or three men changed their mind, they freaked out, this guy is too strange, they knew he was in there and then he is not in there anymore, "This guy has psychic powers, I don't want to have anything to do with this guy." So some of them did change their mind. Then about the fourth day they came, Mogallana's powers left, he simply didn't have the psychic power anymore, he could not go out through the roof, it was his time. He was then murdered. But his wishing to avoid them was not an actually avoiding his death, because he knew it was coming. It was out of compassion for the people who were going to kill him. So this is a very interesting perspective.
Now if somebody is murdering you - if you happen to be fully enlightened at that time, there will be no self to defend, that's fine. But most of us are not fully enlightened and you may wish to continue living, then this is a question that each one of you should ask yourself - to what extends are you going to harm somebody else so that you can live. Now I happen to be older than all of you here, I feel I have lived a very good life. I feel that I have done lots of good actions in the last 18 years being a Dhamma teacher. I feel content with my life. I don't feel so eager to angrily hate and try to defend myself, beat up somebody else. I don't feel so eager at this time, because I have confidence in the sense of Buddhism, that because I have lived a very good life, if I happen to die tonight I'm going to have a good rebirth.
So for me personally at this stage of my life now, I don't have that much of a desire that I want to defend this body to keep it alive, because I have contentment with what I have done. Now that is a personal choice, that is not something I want to put on each one of you, but just a different way to look at things. So my intention would not be wanting to kill somebody, just because they are trying to kill other people. But my intention might be that I'd like to try to help the other people, I might stop that person, but if I can't I'm not going to want to kill them.
This is interesting, too, in another way. Many years ago when I was a young man I learned some martial art practice, and in the first book that I read before starting the actual practice, techniques and such, it had a little saying. I can't remember exactly, but it said something like "Maim, but don't kill." Maim means to beat them up, break their bones, whatever - but don't kill. "Hit them, but don't maim; talk, but don't hit; run away if you can." That was an interesting way of looking at it, that even though the book was going to teach me and other people how to defend physically in a skillful way, it was still teaching "don't do it if you don't have to do it".
As far as intention goes, we have to look at it deeply. What is good intention? This can be different for different people, but the intention to stop someone to help others is one type of intention; the intention to kill that person because I hate that person, you see that is different, that is a different attitude in the mind.