Spread compassion towards animal life

By Kumudu Gunatilaka

All life is a part of the whole oneness of life, is the basic tenet of the sublime teaching, disclosed by the Thathagatha. There exists a tremendous spiritual issue in this. The Master acted and spoke for all life from mighty cellestials to the lowest insect. The great stanza of the sublime teaching on compassion delivered by the Master, includes all sentient life, even those awaiting births. The essence of the teaching is universality. The Master categorically denounced violence in every form, and taught the practice of non-violence. It is the brotherhood of all humanity with all nature, at every level.

The Master made the prohibition against animal sacrifice and flesh eating more prohibitive, by denying all killing. The first precept of every lay follower, a novice of the order, and a monk, is the precept of abstaining from taking the life of anything that breathes. Just keeping the precept is not enough for a true follower. He should take active part in showing compassion towards animals, promoting their standard of living, security and growth. Most of the herbivorous animals possess clean, delicate bodies, and gentle in them nature, while carnivorous ones give out offensive smell, unclean, and ferocious in their nature. All herbivorous animals are really useful, and friendly with man. A true follower of compassion towards all sentient life, never cause pain to other creatures, or encourage others injuring them. He is aware that the animal world does not exist to satisfy the cravings of mankind, but, has a growth of their own towards higher stages of development. Their growth to higher levels depend on the development of the brains, through their association with humans, as domestic animals.

The beasts in the wild, come to birth gradually among domestic animals. The domestic animals serve man, become familiar with the manners, habits, speech of humans, and acquire the ability of following them, and establish bonds with them. They come to birth gradually in human dwellings, as their children. These transactions take place all over the world, between both realms. Though animals lack speech, and their thinking process different; in their pains, fears, affections, frustrations, terrors, devotions, gratitudes and other emotions, they are similar to humans, in a less complex way. Animals are telepathic and pick up human thoughts quite easily. Animals like dolphins are more intelligent than humans, in certain ways. If we had those particular sense vibrations, that some animals and insects possess, our range of knowledge would be broadened. They sense the magnetic affinity of our earth better than man, and escape natural disasters. Animals determine their abodes by following the magnetic affinity. Man chase them out of their historical abodes, and most species such as elephants, will become an extinct species, during this generation.

Edward Rhemus was driving through Vancouver, Doxie, his dashshound became excited, and leaped out unhurt, and ran towards a farm they have passed. He got down and chased after her. An old lady came out and Doxie sprang upto her with passionate licks with joy. Then she rushed off to the barn, and without any doubt, climbed to the top of the ladder fixed to the barn, as she had done it everyday of her life. With excitement she sniffed all over, till Edward brought her down. When all became little calmed, the old lady said about her foxterrior Queenie, had given birth to a litter of puppies, up in the loft, the safest place she selected for them. Robert trained Queenie to climb the ladder. About six years back, when Robert was at school, her husband met with an accident, and she locked the kitchen in a hurry, and rushed into the hospital. They were away from home for a couple of days, forgotten all about Queenie, who was eating in the kitchen. The moment she opened the kitchen door, Queenie was frantic to return to her puppies. In her excitement she slipped the ladder and fell onto a hook, and died on the spot. The puppies had died later. Doxie happened to be Queenie’s rebirth.

So many previous births of the Bodhisatva refers to innumerable instances of practical compassion towards animals. The Bodhisatva took birth as a sacred elephant on 13 occasions, as deer for 11 times, as birds, monkeys and other animals on so many occasions, shows the possibility of rebirth of a human in a sub-human animal form. In each birth his thinking capacity superceeded that of others, and led them to safty from danger. There are instances where animals simply heard the voice of the Thathagatha teaching the sublime law, were born into heavenly spheres. The followers of the sublime teaching should not destroy, cause, nor allow to be destroyed, any living thing. Some people refer to Jeevaka Sutta (55 of M.N.) as a permission to kill and eat meat. Here, the Master made no exception on the killing, and not on the eating of meat. Five of the ten verses of the great stanza of compassion’, which knows no injury, and always compassionate. It says “as a mother at the risk of her life protect her own son, so everyone cultivate a boundless love to all creatures, not even forgetting those awaiting birth.” “Do not kill a living being. You should not kill, on condone killing by others. Having abandoned the use of violence, you should not use force against either a strong, or the feeble” (Sahassaragga-16). “Let the householder not kill, nor cause to be killed any living being, nor him approve of others killing” (Dhammika Sutta-14 Chulavagga of Sutta Nipata), declared the Thathagatha.

The Thathagatha was the first reformer in history to oppose animal sacrifice in temples, and killing of animals for food. During the time of the Master, bulls, goats, rams, horses etc. were slaughtered in places of worship.

The Master stopped such slaughter, and spoke against all cruelties to animals. As a result, the learned religious sectors in India accepted the Thathagatha as the manifestation of God Vishnu on earth. They gradually deviated from animal sacrifices in their places of worship. The most erudite Brahmins become vegetarians, “Salutation to the Buddha, who despised the Vedas, as he felt in his tender heart, for the animals in sacrificial rites” - (Padma Purana).

The right livelyhood, the fifth step of the Noble-Eightfold-Path disclosed by the Master, imparting the four Noble Truths, advise the follower to refrain from trading in arms, in living beings, in flesh, in intoxicating drinks and in poison. Professions of a soldier, hunter, fisherman, meat-seller, butcher, manufacturers, distributers, agents and sales reps, sellers of insecticides etc. are involved. The Master once advised those troubled by cleansing their household of vermin, to emigrate to a more desirable location. Charles Darwin observed that in a single year more than ten tons of dry earth per acre, passed through the digestive system of earthworms as natural fertilizer, producing an inch of top soil every five years. On inspection of jingle soil with decaying leaves, another expert found more than one thousand five hundred specimens of life. In one grain of soil treated with farm yard manure, more than twenty million bacteria, and myriads of other microscopic organisms, were detected. The Master advised monks never to drink water, without filtering. The use of chemical fertilizer kill all these, and leave the soil hard.

Farming is very attractive today, as a money spinner. This trade has been proscribed to the followers of the sublime teaching, on good reasons. When we aborts and interferes with the birth process of animals in the mass, when the karma of those animals are interfered, the very things we wish to control in another, will be the very thing that will destroy us. Who slaughter animals including fish in the mass for trade, will have their Karmic debts to pay. In the unfertilized egg, the principle we call ‘being’ is artificially aborted, and prevented from taking root in it. The egg, whether fertilized or not, is a living substance, still as a living substance, inherent life is sustained in it. All living things have primary perception. A body can be structurally complete, and its organic life process functioning, without the presence of the Dweller to animate it. By destroying the unfertilized egg, one destroys life. A chain of sinful events, is associated with it.

Animals feel that they are not cared for, that they are not taken for walks for which they yearn, that they are slighted, that they are rejected, and unloved. There are circumstantial evidences regarding their rebirth, as well as their rememberence of past life. Animals are a people like unto us, needing our friendship, interest and compassionate assistance, in their difficult and tragic life situations.