Hate Bugs :[ (advice)

PeaceOfMe

I hate bugs, I can't stand them an have had a fear of them since I was a kid but at the same time I hate it when I kill them an always feel super guilty. Problem is right now my house is infested with ants which is normal during the summer but I'm going crazy an yesterday I killed a buttload but every now an then I'll let some get away or leave them be but today I saw an ant half smushed an he was suffering I felt horrible, someone musta stepped on him or something well I tried to kill him to put him outa his misery but he just would not die! I couldnt take watching him scramble around anymore so I flushed him :[ an my guess is the poor little guy drowned..how do I go about this?? how can I change my way of thinking about these little creatures, I mean if there outside I have no problem with bugs an try my best to not harm them but when theyre in my home, on me or around me I can't help but hate them! I really would like to embrace all forms of life especially on this path but it seems impossible. any input or advice?

lamaramadingdong

Bugs are just trying to make a living like everything else living on earth. See them as a fellow traveller.

Jeffrey

The problem is that they are in the house and you view the circle of the house as having a cleanliness and some kind of non-bug 'sanctity' lol not sure what to say. The bug is in contrast to the values you have of a house. Whenever a circle or mandala has something that is contrary to it's central principle it is always emotional to either lose the central principle or expel whatever the central principle says should be outside the mandala.

You have to decide what is and is not allowable inside the mandala of your house. Most people do not want bugs in their house. I have a pest control service but the end result is still killing bugs.

At what stage is a being sentient? There are more bacteria cells by far in your body than human cells so it's interesting to think that our ideas about cleanliness aren't taking into account modern science.

With ants I would clean out the cupboards and in future store anything the ants can get at in vacuum lock or some such tupperware. Things like cereal or noodles or rice.

If you are going to kill them make sure to control their food and water in the house so that they don't return and necessitate more killing. As I say I kill bugs in my house but it's your decision.

person

What usually works for me on getting over fears is to learn about something. Read some easy bug books, watch a few documentaries on them, etc. Finding out weird or interesting things about bugs may help you see them in a different way.

Here, I did a quick look around and found a doc on ants. Not sure what its like but anyway.

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/ants-natures-secret-power/

Cinorjer

Sure. Read up on how to keep bugs like ants out of your house to begin with, how to minimize places for ants to move around and live under the sink and such, and when you do have to terminate the critters inside your house, do so and then get on with your life.

karasti

I don't have a hatred of them, but when there get to be too many in the house despite prevention, I do take action. I just worry about them getting into food and such. After spending 3 hours trapping and releasing a total of 3 very small house flies, I gave up and hung a fly trap tape to get rid of the 10 or so flies that were circling all the lights in our house. We usually do alright keeping them out to begin with, but sometimes not amount of preventing works.

If you can tell where the ants are coming in, there are things you can put there that will deter them from entering.

SillyPutty

I used to hate bugs, too. As a matter of fact, last night I had a stinkbug fly on my arm and scared the bejesus outta me and I accidentally swatted him. He was still alive and okay, but stunned and fell to the floor. I scooped him up and took him outside to fly away, as I do with all the bugs who make their way in here (and in the summer, it's a lot, trust me on that).

What I did to combat my disgust of bugs is just exactly what you said you did yourself above in your post: empathize with them. I remember throwing a log into the fire and saw a little ant scurrying on it as it went into the fire. I remember watching him trying to find a way out of the heat, so I helped him get off of the wood and took him away from the stove. It was too cold to put him outside (he would surely die), so I told him "please do not have any babies" and let him stay inside on the rest of the wood pile for the time being. Ever since then, I've just had a problem with killing bugs... even though they still tend to creep me out and give me the willies.

So, yeah... empathy... and also assuming that, hey, rebirth could be real and that could be a parent of mine from a previous life! So when I saw that ant panicking on that log, I was like, "Wow... how awful it would be to be burned alive like that... what if that was someone I truly loved... poor thing." And that was the last time I ever intentionally killed a bug (even though mosquito season is coming up and I know I'm probably going to be tempted to mace the lil' bastards... my legs always end up looking like they have chicken pox when the summer is through, and I take the rest of the year healing my scars until it's time to start the vicious bug bite cycle again).

Silouan

The fact is that despite whatever our good intentions may be we do displace other beings with our existence as long as we are in this world, but we try to do our best to minimize the suffering we cause others.

I remember reading about a Buddhist monastery in New York that was overrun with cock roaches. The monks tried everything to remove them, but in the end had to call an exterminator, and they were heartbroken about it. However, they didn't just leave it at that, as they took responsibility for the care of those creatures and prayed and chanted for their future well being.

The way I look at it is that God has sent his little Angels to help you develop patience and a compassion heart, but perhaps instead for you they are little Bodhisattvas who have manifested to provide you the same opportunity.

lobster

You could learn to speak ant. I speak fly and wasp.
http://www.khandro.net/animal_insects.htm

John_Spencer

PeaceOfMe said:

Problem is right now my house is infested with ants

You need a myrmecophaga tridactyla.

Trust me.

Cinorjer

Heh. Reminds me of a time some years ago, on my job. A buddy and I were getting into a company truck and I found a huge spider crawling up the front of my shirt as we drove away. So I stopped, got out of the truck and brushed it off into the grass, then continued on my way. No big deal.

My buddy, who knows I'm a Buddhist, said "So, what, you don't kill the spider because it might have been your grandmother in a previous life?"

All I could say was something like, "No, it's just that killing the spider never occurred to me."

I wonder what you folks would have done and said? Of course, I also have no phobia against spiders although I don't exactly have warm fuzzy feeling for them, either.

karasti

Every once in a while one of my kids gets frustrated and asks me a similar question (when I'm chasing them to grab the fly swatter from them, lol) and I usually just tell them that we respect ALL life in our home and that we always do our best to let other living things get on with their life. I give the same answer to pretty much anyone. If someone has a problem with the fact we respect life, well, then that is their problem.

Some things are more problematic. Yesterday when I was standing in line at the baseball concession stand, I found a wood tick crawling on my neck. I couldn't exactly let it loose on the baseball field or the city park and still feel ok about what I did because of their risk of carrying disease. So I put it in the trash can, lol. It probably took about 2 minutes for it to get out of the can and into the park, but it was the best solution I could think of at the time. On the plus side, after spending an hour hiking, having only one wood tick on 3 people means our preventative tick spray worked pretty well.