Lecturer: Master Zheng-Yan
Subject: Uphold Precepts and Love Others (守戒互愛)
Respect life, uphold precepts and love all sentient and non-sentient beings. All beings that move and possess life seek survival and fear harm and death. This is the nature of things.
So, everyone should respect life. We must love and cherish all beings. All sentient and non-sentient beings have life, so we must especially cherish sentient beings. The birds rest happily on the trees. They have families too. The male and female birds protect their offspring, teach them how to fly and find food. If someone tosses a stone at them, they will fly off. Afterwards they may seek their own families and return as a group. Sometimes we see a group of birds fly in a “V” shape form behind a leader. They are so orderly.
Think about it; they are all alive. These beings have their own world, their own rules, their own order. They also seek survival and fear being harmed. So, we must always protect life with love. In our daily living, we should uphold precepts and love others.
The Water Repentance states, “Don’t kill or abuse animals. Although they vary in form, their instinct to survive and fear of death are the same.” This passage is telling us that we should not kill. Some people kill animals with a knife, some people beat them with sticks or clubs.
When I was young I heard that people would slaughter cows after beating them unconscious. I am not sure how it is done nowadays. In society today, many homicides are committed in the most gruesome ways. It seems that life is really brutal. A killer has to pay for the life he took. The legal punishment one receives is brief, because it is over in one lifetime. Whether one receives a light or heavy sentence, the effects of karma are inconceivable. They do not just end with legal sanctions. “When we die, we take nothing with us but karma.” Karma always follows us. We should repay others’ kindness. In a harmonious family, the fathers are kind, the children filial. These nice and talented children are here to repay their parents; the relationship is mutual.
Others raise their children the same way, but their children are here to collect a debt. Despite the good environment, they misbehave and always cause their parents worry. There are many such cases. On the world’s stage, we can see the various roles that people play. We can see the helplessness of suffering sentient beings. The force of karma is fearsome. All living beings possess life. We should cherish them with love and put ourselves in the position of others.
Then we treat all living beings as our own selves. Perhaps we took the forms of cows and horses in our past lives, when we created negative karma. Maybe our children were cows and horses. All living beings, whether people or animals, are within the Six Realms. Each has taken turns beings a parent or child of others during past lifetimes. We are unaware of this because we are deluded. If we can understand these phenomena, we will naturally treat all beings as our children. We will love them wholeheartedly and protect them.
I remember one day, a resident nun was holding Shan-Lai (a cat) and told me that it had to be hospitalized in Taipei, where there are specialized vets. So the cat had to go to the hospital.
Why?
It had a tumor and might require an operation. It was quickly sent to the vet. The vet indicated that since it was so old, it might not recover, even after an operation. After analyzing the situation, we made a decision to offer Shan-Lai’s body for them to study its anatomy after it passed away. We had loved and cared for this cat for nearly 20 years. 20 cat-years is probably equivalent to over 100 people-years. So it was already old. It also underwent birth, aging, illness and death. We cherished and treated it as human. When it was ill, we sent it to an animal hospital in Taipei. Since medical treatment has limitations, and all creatures’ lives are also limited, we wanted to allow the cat to make a contribution, by donating its body for research purposes. Shouldn’t we treat these animals like our children, parents and most beloved family members from our past lives? If we can cherish them this way, how can we bear to kill or eat them? We cannot. So, we should treasure all living beings as our own children and family.
In this way, we can realize that all beings, no matter how small, possess the Buddha-nature. So, with a mindset of protecting the Buddha, we will not violate the precept of killing. There are many methods of killing, using knives, staffs, rods or bare hands.
There are indeed many tools for slaughtering, which are cruel and brutal. The karmic retribution of killing will inevitably arrive, whether sooner or later. When one creates karma, one receives retributions. We should know this. Animals have many different physical forms, cats have the form of a cat, dogs the form of a dog, cows the form of a cow, horses the form of a horse, birds the form of a bird, and so on. Whether they fly in the sky or run on the ground, though their forms are all different, “their instinct to survive, their fear of death is all the same.” They all wish to live. Being the most intelligent of all animals, we should protect the lives of all beings. Whether they fly or walk, we should care for them with love.
The Water Repentance goes on to say, “Since Beginningless Time, all sentient beings have been my parents, siblings and family.” Since Beginningless Time, we have continued to be reborn, taking different forms in the Six Realms. Perhaps we have played the part of parent or sibling, etc., for each other. Perhaps we have all been relatives before. Although these words are simple, they carry profound meanings. Let us carefully analyze this. Let us look deeper into the concept of the karmic law of cause and effect. Sometimes we do not even recognize our own family members.
In the Brahmajala Sutra, there is this passage. “All males are my father and all females are my mother. I have been reborn life after life, so all beings of the Six Realms are my parents.”
Form these verses we can understand that the Six Realms include not just people, but also animals. Perhaps the cows, goats or horses we see now are the children we gave birth to when we were cows, goats or horses in past lives. Though we left that body and were reborn human, we are still in transmigration within the Six Realms.
So we should develop our kindness in loving all beings in the Six Realms, whether or not they are visible in our world.
In the Sutra, there is the following story. A Sakra, sovereign of heaven, used his heavenly eyes to observe his good friend, who had been reborn as a woman. This woman managed some kind of business. Since the world is filled with suffering, Sakra thought he should help his good friend. So, Sakra transformed into an elder and stood in front of the store smiling at the woman. The woman thought he was a client, and quickly asked her son to bring a chair. But for some reason, the son was slow in fetching the chair, and the person just stood there, continuing to look at her and smile. While waiting for chair, he just continue to look at her and smile.
She asked, “Why do you keep smiling at me?”
She then scolded her son for taking so long. He continued to smile. She thought that he could be a big client, so she ordered her workers to play music. As he watched them play music, he smiled. Seeing the neighbor slaughtering a cow as and offering to help his ailing father, the elder smiled. Then a woman holding a child walked by. The child was dreadful and kept hitting his mother as she carried him. The mother held him tightly even as he scratched her face until it bled.
Seeing how he was smiling at everything and continuing to look at her, the businesswoman felt very awkward. She became annoyed and said, “What is wrong with you? You refuse to sit and just keep smiling at me. You smiled when I scolded my son and when you heard the music. What purpose do you have coming here?”
He answered, “I was your friend, but you don’t recognize me. Your son now used to be your father. You scold him the same way he scolded you. You don’t recognize your past and present lives. The drum that person is beating is made of cowhide. This young drummer was that cow in a past life, so he is beating on his own skin. The person making an offering for his father is quenching thirst by drinking poison. After his father dies, he will become a cow. The child that the woman holds was the concubine of her husband whom she had tortured. Resentfully, she committed suicide, and was reborn as that child to take revenge. The woman is willingly accepting it. You see how the child beats her. She will continued to be tortured till old age.”
The businesswoman was dumbfounded.
He said, “If you don’t believe me, I’ll return in a few days.”
The businesswoman waited for him to return. But he did not appear after a few days. Meanwhile, the king held a big event, which she attended. Among the crowd, a person in rags suddenly appeared beside her. As he called to her, she said, “What are you doing? I don’t know you.”
He said, “You don’t recognize me? I was just at your house a few days ago. We are still in this same lifetime. I just spoke to you and you didn’t believe me. Now I appear before you a few days later, and you no longer recognize me. How can you deny the existence of past lives?” Suddenly, she understood.
After finishing the story, the Buddha said, “That Sakra was me and the businesswoman was the current Maitreya Bodhisattvas. I guided him in that past life, so now he is my disciple who has vowed to return to liberate the beings of the Saha-world.”
From this passage we realize that it is truly difficult for us to recognize one another life after life. In the same lifetime, the businesswoman could not even recognize him when he appeared in rags a few days later, let alone recognize him from another life.
So, life is filled with delusions. We must treat all living beings as our family. Then we will not create negative affinities. So we should always be mindful.
(Source: Da Ai TV 靜思晨語 法譬如水)
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