Everything in nature has its own way of life. Listen, you can hear the chirping of the birds. Birds build nests. Why do they build nests? The mother bird is about to lay eggs, so she gathers grass to build a nest. After she finishes building the nest, she will lay and then incubate the eggs. After the baby birds are hatched, the father and the mother take turns caring for them. They train them as they grow. They raise them and teach them. They teach them to fly and then to find food.
Different birds have different ways of life. Their relationships are like human ones. So, the love in our hearts must extend to all sentient beings. We should treat their worlds as ours. Just as we wish to live in suitable conditions, we should likewise wish for all sentient beings to able to live in suitable environments. This is the true meaning of love.
As Buddhist practitioners, we often talk about karma from killing. It does not only refer to killing another human, we create the same karma with killing an animal.
So the following passage says,
“Perhaps we worked as a butcher or executioner, cooking or killing living beings. We may have done it reluctantly or we may have done it out of anger.”
What this means is that, in order to make a living, people engage in many different trades. Some people learn to be butchers. They slaughter animals and create killing karma. Or people may be employed as executioners. In ancient times, criminals were killed on the execution grounds or tortured for confessions. This is what happens between people. Some torture is the result of hatred. Some torture is legal punishment. No matter the process of punishment, whether people hire someone else to do it or are themselves hired by others, their actions create the same karma. This is also a type of killing karma.
“When cooking and killing, some are reluctant.”
Some people are hired to cook for others. They have to cook whatever their employer buys and brings home. If their boss brings home something alive, whether it is chicken, duck, fish, or shrimp, they have to cook it. To cook it, they first have to kill it. That is unavoidable. So, this creates karma.
In Master Lian-Chi’s Essay on “Liberating Life and Not Killing”, there is a story:
It is about a husband and wife who especially loved to eat turtle meat. Once they bought a huge turtle. They brought it back and ordered the kitchen servant to kill it. This would be a lunch delicacy. The servant looked at this huge turtle, which was alive and struggling and looking at her with a pair of shining eyes.
The servant thought, “Can I kill this huge turtle today? He seems to be suffering. He is struggling to live.”
The servant could not bear it. She thought, “I’ve killed many times in the past. Today, while my masters are out running errands, I will take it to the pond and set it free. Even if my masters beat me, I will willingly endure the pain.”
So she made a decision. She was ready to accept whatever punishment her masters would give her.
So she took the turtle to the pond in the backyard and released it.
When the husband and wife came back for lunch, they wondered why the turtle was not served yet.
The husband asked the servant, “Is it not ready yet?”
The servant replied, “I was absent-minded. So it escaped and I cannot find it.”
The master was very angry. He brought out a whip and beat her until she was covered with wounds. He hit her until he was no longer angry. The servant just endured the pain and let him beat her.
A few days later, this servant contracted an illness. It was a plague that was going around the village. Her masters were afraid of keeping her indoors. What if she died and infected someone else? So they asked someone to carry her to the pavilion by the pond so she could die there. The servant felt she could not last the night. But at night, she suddenly felt something climb out of the pond. This creature brought some mud to smear against her head, face, neck. She felt a coolness. Her entire body was cool and comfortable. She regained consciousness and begun to recover. The next day the masters sent someone to see if she was dead. She had actually recovered her strength.
They asked her, “You were almost dead. How did you recover without taking any medicine?”
She said, “I don’t know either. I think that last night something came out of the water and smeared mud or something all over my body, neck, head and face. So I felt very cool. Then I woke up and slowly recovered.”
Her masters did not believe her. How could something so strange happen? They continued to feed her. So that night, they hid in the corner to see for themselves. Did something from the water really save her? In the middle of the night they actually saw a giant turtle.
Wasn’t it the one they bought from the market? It seemed to be holding something in its mouth Trip after trip, it smeared something on her head, face and neck. So, from this incident they began to believe that animals are sentient; they are grateful and repay the kindness of those who liberate them. From then on, the couple did not dare to eat turtles. They dared not eat any living creature. They dared not eat any living creature.
Many similar events happened in previous eras. So people felt connected to the animals. They truly believed, so they advocated liberating living beings. Among Buddhists, Master Lian-Chi advocated refraining from killing. So he gathered many of these stories that we see often today.
This section, “When cooking and killing, some are reluctant.”
They are hired to do these things. If their employers bring home something living, they have to kill it. Because it has life, they find the task unbearable and are reluctant. But some people are not reluctant. They are not like this servant, they are neither paid nor forced to cook what their employers bring home. If they truly cannot bear it, that means they still have a good heart.
But some act “with anger and violence”. They often lose their temper, and like to kill. They get angry at and dislike animals. They just want to kill them. The bad karma from violent anger is tremendous. If only they could be compassionate! Even though the servant created this karma, she was forced to do it by her employer and could not bear it. Though she killed many lives in the past, when she liberated this turtle, it repaid her.
Good and evil are clearly distinct. The more we kill, the more karma we create. The more grace we show, the more will be repaid. Good and evil are mixed together, but they can be clearly distinguished. So we must always cultivate a loving heart, one that cannot bear to kill. This is very important.
The next section says,
“We may brandish an axe or knife to chop or stab”
“We may push someone into a trench”
This happens when two sides battle. For example, in the past, the wealthy try to protect themselves from robbers, who invade people’s homes. So, they build very high walls. Sometimes high walls are useless. The robbers bring ladders to scale them. So besides building walls, they used to dig moats. They surrounded the house with water. Sometimes people would fall in while trying to cross. This is one way to protect the family. They also set up traps, like digging pits at the base of the wall. Cities did this to protect their territories. So when there are two opposing sides, they may brandish axes and knives. Or they “chop or stab”. Killing, stabbing setting traps by digging trenches or moats, etc., all happen when two sides oppose each other. Battles were fought to the death. This is also a type of bad karma.
It is best for people to get along peacefully. Why fight like this? Why use knives, staffs, guns? Why decapitate or stab or push someone into a ditch? That is a very cruel gesture. It is also murder. People are like this. They kill and hurt each other. Of course they also kill animals that goes without saying. It happens all the time.
Then the text says,
“We may fill burrows or destroy nests with dirt or stone wedges, or use thundering carts and horses”
This is also destruction. Burrows and caves are used by rats, for example, or other animals who dig tunnels. Some people fill them so they cannot escape. Others destroy nests. When they destroy the nest, the bird’s eggs fall out and they have no home to return to. Or they may fill it with dirt, even though there are living creatures inside. Some use carts. The wheels are loud and can run small creatures over. These are actions that kill or hurt others. They are all harmful to life. They also hurt our own Wisdom-life because our Wisdom-life comes from love. We must love people and animals and cherish our Wisdom-life. Let us view all life as our own. Then we will know to cherish all life.
So, when we learn the Buddha’s way, we learn to cherish ourselves and care for our own hearts. Then we can love all life and respect the world of all sentient beings. Please always be mindful.
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