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Spiders and karma
Hello I was just wondering
Is killing a spider that is about to bite you bad karma becouse if it is my comp is gona explode.....soon enough
Is killing a spider that is about to bite you bad karma becouse if it is my comp is gona explode.....soon enough
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Palzang
And remember that that "lowly" spider eats all the other "lowly" bugs in your home and could prove very useful in your life if you don't kill it. The spider could prove more useful than myself when it comes right down to it! I'm just sitting here being a lump typing at a computer. What am I doing for anyone? The spider is hard at work eating "lowly" bugs.
Palzang
According to the teachings on kamma, intentionally killing any sentient being is considered to be unwholesome or unskillful kamma (akusala-kamma) regardless of the extenuating circumstances. The main reason is that the intention (cetana) to kill itself is unskillful, i.e., arising out of the mental defilements of greed, hatred, and delusion. Essentially, unskillful intentional actions have the potential to give rise to unfavorable or unpleasant results. Unfortunately, it is difficult, if not impossible, to speculate about what the specific consequences of a specific action might be, but I doubt that it would manifest as an exploding computer in this case if that is any consolation. In my opinion, the best recourse in this kind of situation, at least from a Buddhist perspective, is to make the determination to refrain from killing living beings in the future, and escort spiders outside if they are considered unwanted guests.
Best wishes,
Jason
My parents are not Buddhists but they basically told me not to kill spiders and crickets on many occasions when I found them in the house, precicely because they do eat other, more troublesome critters...
EDIT:
THis may sound really strange, and I've gotten looks for doing stuff like this :rolleyesc
Anyway . . . I don't like killing most bugs just 'cause I think they are cool. When you find a spider in your house try catching it in a clear glass jar by putting the jar over it and sliding an index card or something similar under the opening. Pick it up and take a good long look at it--a lot of spiders are actually quite lovely when you get to know them. (Maybe I'm just wierd
Once a wasp got into the kitchen at my parent's home. Usually my first response would be to go for the fly swatter, but this time I just sat and watched it. It landed on the table and I got close enough to see that it was sticking it's mouthparts on the table for an odd reason. My mother suggested maybe it's thirsty, so I tried putting a damp paper towel on the table. To the surprise of both of us, it actually went for the paper towel, and then flew to the window. At this point I caught it in a glass and let it go outside. I really couldn't kill it at that point--I was way too involved
Thanks
If you tell something that you fully believe to be true (assuming you have checked and the check has confirmed your belief) and it turns out to be false after all, does that have any effect on karma? I'm asking because even mistakes such as this could be the cause of bad consequences--and is this not what karma is about, cause and effect?
Unintentionally killing a bug is not likely to bring any serious consequences, but mistakenly telling an untruth could.
Methinks the answer remains the same, Starstuff: it is intention that has to be considered.
In some respects, this is another of the crossroads that pilgrims encounter. Some believe that all that matters is the action, some the intention and some of us don't know but keep on putting one foot in front of the other.
You might like to consider the Hoffmansthal version of the Parsifal legend which Wagner set to music: Parsifal is guilty even though he didn't know he was sinning. Or Oedipus: he didn't know that he had killed his father, nor that it was his mother that he had married. All the same, Thebes was punished by the gods for the miasma incurred by Oedipus well-meaning actions.
The question is: is this how you see the world working?
I think buddha said that intention is all that affects your karma. So if you do something that does not follow Right Speech, but you don't do it on purpose, then it does not change your karma.
However, I think there could still be consequences for your action, whether you accumulate karma or not. At first, this sounds confusing. But if you look at karma as what you get back for your action later, it could still work. Maybe the consequences for your current, unintentional action are actually the karmic consequences of some other action entirely.
Hrmmm... This is a great thought! Thank you for bringing it up.
Boo dearest,
I am hoping, next week, to have a few days' retreat at Emmaus House, a favourite place of mine. Last time I was there, a couple of months ago, there was a nun from Cameroon to whom I was introduced. My anam cara's introduction went something like this: "Sister, this is Simon. He says the prayers for the dying over our dead goldfish." True: he caught me doing so on one occasion, by the pond in the herb garden.
This reminds me of that scene in the beginning of the movie Me, You & Everyone We Know. There is a dad and a little girl driving. They just bought a goldfish, but dad left it one top of the car and now they are driving. One of the main characters and her passenger try to help the fish, but ultimately wind up saying some nice words about it's life. Great movie about life, love & our odd connections to others.
As for intention, I think intention counts when you know what you're doing and know what the consequences are. Intention doesn't count when you have know way of knowing that what you are doing is actually wrong, or what the consequences would be for what you did. Even if there are very few situations I could think of for the latter.
It's also a post that would have calmed my fears considerably had I read it while I was still an arachnophobe. Actually, it's calming me down right now anyway. Lol!!
Dearest Simon,
I have the loveliest picture of you in my head conducting a gold fish funeral...
Marvelous!
I, too, have added "situational awareness" to my vocabulary. It perfectly summarises what I think of as informed mindfulness and explains how it is possible to assess a situation and act without the action being based on "situational ethics" but where one's ethical choices are a second step in the decision process.
Here is my question; If one knows there action can or will cause death to a living thing, one should not do the action correct?
This thread was about killing spiders, what about when somebody cuts there grass in the back yard / lawn? That kills many living things.
Palzang
If I go fishing for a meal, I may not like the fact that I will have to desptch the fish to eat, but I know I'm going to have to....
If I go for a drive, and I know that my screen and car are going to be plastered in splatted-bugs by journey's end, there's a difference....
And if, whilst driving (as happened to me once) a swooping bird chances to come too low and is hit by my car as it flies across, this is even more 'perchance'?
I think the word 'intention' here is clouding the mirror....
I agree that intentionally killing (for example to eat) is perhaps different from accidentally killing a sentient being. But in driving my car or deciding to cut the lawn I am conscious of the fact that I MAY kill.
But what is the take on a situation where I have to make a conscious decision to kill despite my misgivings. If you wish to live and thrive, let the spider run alive, is a saying we used at home a lot - no problem with spiders.
But what about hornets? I am one of those people who could die of anaphylactic shock if I get stung by a hornet. So if I find myself in a room with one I do what I can to let it out - but if I have to kill it, I do, but am I right to think that my life is worth more than a hornets? Discuss
Palzang
And we must be the only household that do vikings funerals for mice ..... it just seems better that way.
Palzang
Pally - ya had to be there.....!!
Palzang
http://www.amazon.com/Steps-Path-Enlightenment-Vol-2-Commentary/dp/0861714814/ref=pd_sim_b_img_2
Geshe Lhundub Sopa gave a copy to my wife and me when we met with him at his residence. I’m about half way through the book and it is very interesting. I truly believe in Karma.
Which sent my mind spiraling into the technology debate: you know, to have or not to have. If we didn't have it, we'd be killing a lot fewer bugs with our cars and lawnmowers. But we'd also have to kill a lot more beings, because we wouldn't be as well equipped to be vegetarians or keep from spreading our sicky germs.
So maybe it's all just in how you play it today. Shocking thought for a buddhist forum, ain't it? ;-)
PRAISE POEM
for R. M. Rilke
Let us sing the small-pox germ
Living lonely in Atlanta,
last of its kind.
How its perfect symmetry
betrays God's hand.
And now,
imprisoning and condemning it to die,
for obeying its genetic orders,
memento mori,
humanity debates viral genocide,
without compunction,
while drooling over dolphins.
In my experience anyway
I like that Starstuff, reminds me of Issa
Don't kill that poor fly!
He cowers, wringing
his hands for mercy
If people are very concerned about killing insects and small animals when mowing the lawn or pruning trees, here's what some very pious Ch'an practitioners do (copied from http://www.portlandbuddhisthub.org/faq.shtml)
I know they do just this at a local temple.
Thanks for posting this. I think it's great.
Right at this very moment we're waiting for the "Rat Man", as my mother calls him (I think she's trying not to offend me by calling him the exterminator) to come for the third time to see if there are any mice in his living traps that he laid in our unfinished, earth floored, basement. (This house is old by New World standards, over 160 years).
The Rat Man has been kind enough to honour our wishes not to harm the mice and he's gathering them in the most humane way he can to relocate them. He's already removed a few of them but I heard noises coming from the basement again last week so there are more and hopefully he can catch them and relocate them. It was minus 27 degrees Celsius last night though, so I don't know how they're going to survive outside.
But we have to get them out of the basement. Rodents' teeth never stop growing and they need to chew. Unfortunately, they can chew through electrical wires and cause fires. I fear fire very, very much. If we had a fire I don't know how I'd be able to get my cats out, especially Tom who would most likely run and hide if a fire broke out. I have a very hard time dealing with the thought that they might die in a fire I could have prevented. I know I could get my parents out, of course.
So the situation is kind of difficult. On top of that, the Rat Man is charging us $100 for every visit, money we don't have. I don't want to hurt the mice, but I don't want my concern for them to lead to foolishness that would cause even more suffering. I have to stay on top of too many other potential sources of fire in this house, like the wood stove and my space heater, and as I said, this is an old house. It's brick, but still. I never use my space heater when I go to sleep of course, and it was 47 degrees Fahrenheit in my room when I woke up this morning. That's pretty cold, for those who use Celsius. (My bedside clock has a thermometer but it's in Fahrenheit and I don't know how to translate that into Celsius.)
So that's my rant for the day!
May sound stupid but it worked with bats nesting in our old house and pooping in my bath.
47 degrees? Crivens! That's like 8 Celsius (no, I didn't figure that out in my head, I used http://www.onlineconversion.com/ ).
Don't your cats do anything to chase off the mice? Mine are fairly hopeless at actually catching anything, but they have managed to intimidate a number of wee beasties into shifting off somewhere else.
I haven't tried that but I definitely will the next time, because there's sure to be a next time. I like the idea of posting a message to them as well.
Jacx,
Thanks for that link to the conversion site. Now maybe my parents and I can understand each other when we talk temperature.
My cats do take care of any mousies that come upstairs from the basement as well as little shrews. But I'm afraid to let them down in the basement because my father put poison down there in the 70s to kill the little mousies and I don't know if any of the poison is lingering. I've thought about letting them go down there, though, to save the money we have to pay the Rat Man. But I figured it's just too risky.
The Rat Man found 8 little mousies and removed them from the basement. I don't know what he did with them but I'm hoping they're still alive and well. It's a relief to have them gone, though, and the Rat Man said he found no evidence at all of squirrels which is wonderful news because squirrels can really cause problems.
So it was a happy day!
We found a dead cat in the yard the other day and (having put on my gloves) I gave it a good inspection, decided it had died of poisoning and we cremated it with a prayer.
My biggest fear is for the owls and bird of prey - they eat the rodents once they have been slowed down by the poison but not died and they in turn are killed by it.
I'm glad my folks started to understand the dangers fairly early on and haven't used poisons on anything in the house or on the land since the early 70s. Our water comes from a well, for goodness sake. How unbelievably stupid it would be to put poison on the land and have it leech into the ground water. When a weed is choking a plant, like our orange blossom plant, we just go out and dig up the weed. It's been 36 years now and we hope the land is clean. Maybe whoever buys the house and land from us will appreciate that. Fingers crossed.
One year everything we planted came up with white flowers .... weird, but sort of beautiful in a spooky sort of way
Tc = (5/9) x (Tf-32).
If you don't subtract the 32 before you multiply times 5/9, you don't get the right conversion.
Just my 2 degrees!
Palzang
Centigrade to Farenheit?
Double it, and add 30.
Farenheit to centigrade?
Deduct 30 FIRST, then halve it....
Centiheit to Farengrade?
You're drunk, madam....!
26 decrees Centigrade to Farenheit?
26 x 2 = 52.
Plus 30 = 82 degrees Farenheit.
65 degrees Farenheit to Centigrade?
65 - 30 = 35.
35 divided by 2 = 17.5 degrees centigrade.
if you do it the wrong way (and deduct 30 afterwards, it gives a completely different result.)
For example:
65 degrees farenheit divide by two = 32.5 degrees.
less 30 = 2.5 degrees centigrade.
Wrong answer. by a whole 12 degrees C. that's 54 degrees F. out.
see wot I mean?
OK sign says 90 - I'm only doing 85 ..... why is that Gendarme flagging me down?????