Best Of

I have found bumblebees around here to be very laid back and never adversarial unless physically threatened. This is probably a good thing because bumblebees have the capacity to sting multiple times, unlike the more common honey bees whose lives are ended by any successful stinging action.

What it all comes down to is that people think these things are so important: what language you speak shouldn’t make such a difference, its not a big deal to learn multiple languages? If people were more forgiving, less inclined to be ruthless, more heartful, kinder. The world could be a better place.

I had a similar experience recently with ants I had killed in my kitchen. It made me question how many were too many. I think I reflected on my reasoning and determined I killed them out of emotion. I live my amends through mindfulness of the new ants and various bugs in my home, by finding some balance and extending myself a little further to not cause harm from emotion going forward.

When I keep my kitchen a little cleaner, they don't flood in any more. Just a few small search parties from time to time. I think we can both live with that.

Did you intentionally kill these flies or were their deaths accidental?

If it was intentional then trying to address the causes for that killing intent is just as important as a purification restoration of that vow.

Screen doors?/ parting bug screens for doors?/pet doors?/live-fly capture & a safe return for them outside?/ limiting open food, water & fly odor attractants?/or being as tolerant of the fly's comings and goings as you are of your other pets.

Not intending to kill, restores a not killing vow. Understanding and mitigating where possible all the causal factors behind why this vow ended up being broken in the 1st place will go a long way toward not repeating the same type of vow breakages in the future.

Yes, you can do purification prayers. If you practice Mantrayāna, ask your guru as primary opinion.

It is sad how social media is spreading hate so fast. I know a few UKRAINIAN Russian-speakers who are afraid to speak Russian. In a village -cannot disclose- Jewish Ukrainians were calling for the death of Russians just for their supposed ethnicity, and its "obvious" ties to evil. Identity politics are confusing and can generate a lot of abstract nonsense. Also the reason I mention that they are Jewish, is not to pin point them as the evil enemy, but as an example of how even groups that you would suspect of having certain "immunity" to this barbarism are not safe. Let's recall how Ukrainian nationalism actually took sides with Nazi Germany during the war. In other words, total delusion.

Also...if Putin wanted to "protect the Russian people living in Ukraine " he has done a lot to give the anti-Russian sentiment in Ukraine -which started growing particularly after the Euromaidan protests in 2014- a lot of back-up and "evidence" to feed the flames of hate. He has done very well.

My partner is Ukrainian, Russian-speaking too. She says it was terrible the build up to this. How everything related to Russia was being deleted and this nationalistic ideal based on Russophobia is getting deeper and deeper.

In Spain, we have something in a "similar" vein (not as extreme of course). Cataluña -eastern region which speaks a different yet similar language, Catalan- has some issues regarding what language should be used and a lot of people are literally advocating for the end of Spanish because of this same rhetoric -generalising all Spanish speaking people as "oppressors, killers, fascists, resentment for Franc's dictatorship-. This has even led to what should've been a resolution to this issue. The Judicial system provided the following guarantee people in Cataluña: if requested to the school authorities, they had to provide 25% of the school hours in Spanish, the rest in Catalan.

While this still needs work to be done and it is far from a resolution to the Catalan question, there was a case where a boy from a village (called Canet del Mar) was openly targeted by adults as an enemy and calling parents to not allow him be friends with their children and isolate him JUST BECAUSE his parents had requested that his son received 25% of the school hours in Spanish.

These are examples of DELUSION. But if you give DELUSION more material to feed on, like invading a country or sending anti-riot police to beat people up (like in Russia and in Cataluña), you won't end it.

Peace!