Date: February 21th, 2011
Lecturer: Master Zheng-Yan
Subject: Respecting the Life of All Creatures(六道輪迴互為親)
See how impermanent life is.
Yesterday, in Keelung City, Taiwan, a landslide occurred on a major road.
The landslide happened due to abundant rainfall.
So, people living near the mountain areas should be on guard for potential landslides.
When Tzu Chi volunteers learned of the incident, they immediately went to the site.
They visited people who live close to the mountain area, asked them to evacuate to a safe place, and gave comfort to the people who were affected.
Moreover, they provided hot beverages to the rescue workers.
We have to be on guard for such falling rocks or landslides.
Everyone needs to reflect.
I kept telling everyone that we must truly repent from the bottom of our hearts.
In our everyday life, our food, clothing, and shelter are procured in ways that harm others and create negative karma.
We need to realize this and rethink what we do.
The Buddha said that we reincarnate in the six realms sometimes as humans, sometimes as animals.
The people and animals in our lives now were our family in one lifetime or another.
These relationships can be based on love, hate, gratitude, indebtedness, etc.
The people and animals in our lives have karmic ties with us and in one lifetime or another, they may have been our parent or child.
There was love between us but there may also have been hate and resentment.
This love and hate tie us to another so that across different lifetimes, we continue to meet.
It’s not only in this lifetime.
Such entangled relationships carry over into future lifetimes carry.
The Buddhist sutras include many stories that illustrate the law of karma and how a person who did good unto another was repaid by that person in a future life and the same when evil was done.
So, in daily life, we must be vigilant about what we do.
We see recently that there have been protests occurring in many countries, causing a lot of social unrest.
Such unrest is caused by humans.
Human beings have the power to cause social unrest and oust a country’s president.
Human beings can even interfere with the animal world and disrupt the animal’s way of life.
When humans become greedy they’ll harm and even kill innocent creatures for the sake of their fur and skin.
Aren’t we so blessed already to be born as humans?
Why should we still want to dress like animals?
Why do we sit chairs covered by tiger skin?
And why do we drape ourselves with rabbit fur?
Some people do cruel acts to gentle and tame animals like rabbits.
They knock the rabbits unconscious with electric shocks and skin them sometimes alive.
How painful it is after they regain their consciousness.
It feels worse than death.
Such acts are truly cruel and inhumane.
It’s truly uncalled for.
This is why the Buddha was grieved to see people’s delusion and ignorance.
See, even animals have feelings and family love.
Look at elephants.
A baby elephant accidentally got electrocuted when foraging for food.
When the mother elephant tried to save her baby, she also got electrocuted and died.
There’s also a story about a mother monkey.
A group of hunters went hurting in the mountains.
As one hunter was aiming at a baby monkey, the mother monkey noticed this and rushed to rescue her baby.
But the hunter’s weapon was too quick so she wasn’t in time to save her baby.
The mother monkey rushed over to where her baby was lying and gave out a wailing cry.
The cry was so piercing and filled with pain.
Suddenly, the cry stopped and there was silence.
The hunters went over to the mother monkey.
To their shock, she was dead.
How did the mother monkey die?
When they cut open her body, they found that her internal organs had ruptured.
The hunters suddenly realized that the mother monkey had died of heartbreak.
They realized that even animals have love toward their young.
The Buddha came into this world to explain the Truth to living beings but it is to us to wake up to the Truth.
We must wake up.
We must mindfully observe life around us and contemplate the life of human beings and animals.
Actually, whether humans or animals, all are living beings and in the cycles of reincarnation, our karmic ties cause us to be parent and child, bound together by love or hate.
This is what our relationships are based on.
As human beings, we should respect the animals’ world and not encroach upon them.
If humans don’t harm animals or keep them as pets, the animals can live freely on their natural habitat.
Wouldn’t that be wonderful for all?
If the animal is in danger and you save its life, it’ll be grateful to you.
But if you purposely separate the animal from its family, keep it as a pet, limit its sphere of activity, make it lose its ability to survive in nature, and restrict its freedom, that causes misery to the animal.
So, we should truly mindfully observe the life other creatures and understand them.
The Buddha wished for us to deeply observe and contemplate such relationship,
The fact that people nowadays were the fur or skin of other animals to keep warm or for other reasons and harm and kill these animals---given the law of karma, someday, they may find themselves reborn as one of these animals and truly wearing such skin or fur.
This is the law of karma that we should understand.
I n a word, all living creatures have the Buddha nature and share the same life essence.
So, we must respect the life of all creatures.
(Source: Da Ai TV 人間菩提)
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