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Killing Insects
Since I've been home for the summer, I've gone out and worked in the garden a couple of times, pulling weeds, planting flowers. I have cut some worms right in half, completely by accident! It made me feel awful because I imagined what it would be like if I were cut in half. And it's not like all of these bugs out in the garden are lesser than I am. They're just smaller and vulnerable to being chopped in half. But if I am very careful, it takes a really long time and seems kind of silly. Plus I'm afraid of bugs...although at least in theory, that fear has lessened since I realize they are just creatures like me that want to be happy. It makes them cuter, haha. Oh also, my mom said there are these beetles or larva or something that destroy plants and obviously people spend lots of time and money spraying pesticides and things to protect their plants... And what if a bunch of ants infest our house? What do you do? I don't want to kill, but a lot of times it seems unpractical. Or what if your dog gets fleas? What do you do about cockroaches and termites? It's one thing to remove a spider from your home and place it outside to be kind to the spider, but it's another thing when you actually have a bug problem.
So, what do you all think?
So, what do you all think?
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Comments
But I do eat meat (I try to each vegetarian as much as possible and otherwise biological meat), and yes I do treat my dogs if they get fleas or ticks, to protect them from getting sick. So, when no alternatives are available, sometimes I just have to.
(I got them before becoming interested in Buddhism, I might add)
When you kill a worm or something else by accident, it's not bad karma. You have to do it intentionally. It's still pity for the poor creature though
I always make sure to not kill anything, not even plants - intentionally (except when feeding the ants).
But pests in your house? I thought about this when visiting my mother-in-law today. She has a lot of ants in her house. In Denmark the largest ants living near people are 5mm at their largest, so you can just let them be. But in other countries they can be a real pest, and sting quite painfully too! Not to mention termites and other critters who like to eat the homes of people...
When attacked, you have to defend yourself. That is preserving life, and countering suffering. But when your home is attacked by unknowing, destroying insects?
I sincerely cannot come up with a good solution. I would hire someone to get rid of them.
That would make me responsible for contract-killing the animals, but at least not really killing them..
So why not release these ants? Why keep them?
But really, I rationalize a lot for myself to live with this. I'm searching for a lasting solution, where I get free of feeding them live insects.
I don't find this to be true.
When you kill something, it is possible to do so without karma... but most of the time when you recognize that your unskillful actions were the cause of the killing, there are some twangs in your compassion. That's your karma. It doesn't mean you're planting bad futures for yourself, but it is important to improve from your mistakes, and stay emotionally present in the moment. Don't go crazy about it, just feel the pain of guilt and loss and move on.
I feel that the only "threat" in the garden is to become desensitized, which leads away from compassion.
With warmth,
Matt
How about if you take the top off of the "formicarium" and put it under ground in soft soil so that it is easy for the ants to reach the surface without being over-exposed to the elements. That way they get to stay in their home as a colony and you don't have to kill anything.
"No, lord."
"Wouldn't they eat that food simply for the sake of making it through that desert?"
"Yes, lord."
"In the same way, I tell you, is the nutriment of physical food to be regarded. When physical food is comprehended, passion for the five strings of sensuality is comprehended. When passion for the five strings of sensuality is comprehended, there is no fetter bound by which a disciple of the noble ones would come back again to this world.
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn12/sn12.063.than.html
The couple in the Buddha's story, coming near starvation, eat their own beloved child. It is a gruesome and seemingly fantastic story indeed. But knowing from the records of history that, at times of famine, war or shipwreck, men did resort to cannibalism, we have to admit that what our story tells may have substantially happened ever so often, in one way or another. In his incessant search for food, or for better food or for control of food resources, how often has man killed, cruelly crushed or exploited his fellow creatures, even those who are close to him by common blood or common race! And is there not close kinship between all that lives? These last words are not merely a sentimental phrase (as which they are mostly used); but they are also a hard and cruel fact. Are we not akin to the voracious greed, the cruel rage and the destructive stupidity, which we encounter in life and of which we become victim or perpetrator in the struggle for food or power? If we were not akin to it, could we encounter it, in one way or another? For an unfathomable time, caught in the ever-turning Wheel of Life, we have been everything: the prey and the devourer of all, parent and child of all. This we should consider when contemplating the nutriment of edible food and the Buddha's simile for it.
If we wish to eat and live, we have to kill or tacitly accept that others do the killing for us. When speaking of the latter, we do not refer merely to the butcher or the fisherman. Also for the strict vegetarian's sake, living beings have to die under the farmer's plowshare, and his lettuce and other vegetables have to be kept free of snails and other "pests," at the expense of these living beings who, like ourselves, are in search of food. A growing population's need for more arable land deprives animals of their living space and, in the course of history, has eliminated many a species. It is a world of killing in which we live and have a part. We should face this horrible fact and remain aware of it in our Reflection on Edible Food. It will stir us to effort for getting out of this murderous world by the ending of craving for the four nutriments.
In one short lifetime, how many trainloads of food have passed in and out of our puny body! How many people have had to labor in the production, preparation, and distribution of that food, for keeping unbroken the "traffic line" that runs straight through our body! It is a grotesque picture if we visualize it.
There is yet another aspect of that "life-giving" function of eating. To illustrate it, let us think of a silo, or a storehouse or food bag: after it has been emptied, a few grains or other tiny morsels of food will mostly remain in it. Similarly there will always be left some tiny remnants of food in our body that are neither assimilated nor expelled but remain and putrefy. Some physiologists say that it is this putrefaction of residual food that ultimately brings about the aging and death of the organism if there are no other causes. If they are right, then food is not only life-giving but also death-bestowing, and it appears that we have in this life of ours the choice between death by starvation or by putrefaction. "The food devours the eater!" This close connection between nutriment and death is very poignantly expressed in Greek myth, according to which Demeter is the Goddess of corn (that is, food) and of death as well. Bachofen, that great explorer and interpreter of classic myth, has expressed the significance of it very succinctly: "She feeds man as a prey to herself."
People, as far as they give any thought to the humdrum act of eating, have taken very different attitudes towards food. Some who became tired of the dull routine of eating dull food, have made a "fine art" of it and became gourmands. To them the Buddha says: "All nutriment is miserable, even divine food." Others, keenly aware of the importance of food for good health, have devised various ideas about "pure food": we have here the dietetic rules of several religions, and the belief of ancient and modern sects in man's "purification by nutriment" (aahaara-parisuddhi), of which already the Buddha made mention (adversely, of course), down to our own days with their ersatz religions of numerous food-reformers. Others, again, have tried to solve the problem of the body's dependence on food by reducing nourishment below sustenance level and by long periods of fasting. This harsh and futile method of self-mortification the Buddha, too, had tried out and rejected before his Enlightenment, and had vividly described his experience in the Discourse on the Noble Quest (Ariya-pariyesana Sutta). Also later on, the Buddha never recommended periods of fasting beyond the abstention from solid food after noon enjoined upon bhikkhus, and in the periodic observance of the Eight or Ten Precepts. What the Buddha, as a teacher of the Middle Way, advised was moderation in eating, non-attachment to the taste of food, and wise reflection on nutriment.
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/nyanaponika/wheel105.html
My teacher, a Tibetan monk since age 12 (from the Dalai Lama's monastery, Namgyal), says that when you kill there is always "bad karma", even if it happens unintentionally. But, he says, there are different degrees of bad karma, and the more you intend it and the more you rejoice afterwards, the worse the bad karma.
Now, this was NOT what I wanted to hear, but I can't exactly reject it on that basis. Sigh ...
I don't know what I should have done... Maybe put it in something and taken it outside? I've just spent my whole life being afraid of bugs...it's weird and difficult to think of taking them outside instead of getting someone to kill it.
"Nibbedhika Sutta: Penetrative"(AN 6.63), translated from the Pali by Thanissaro Bhikkhu. Access to Insight, June 8, 2010, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an06/an06.063.than.html#part-5.
Do you think that the ant was happy to be alone and in your house? The thought of another being suffering is what helps me to overcome my fear of spiders and daddy long legs. Last summer there was a huge house spider (the type I'm most afraid of) trapped in a sink at work. I knew that if I left it there someone else would probably kill it, or it would starve. It took a while and I kept shuddering and having to stop but I managed to put a glass beaker over it and slip a piece of card underneath to pick it up and release it. I was terrified, but I did it!
The reason I'm telling you this is let you know that you can deal with these things - especially as you have compassion for them.
Metta
I understand your fear. I was terribly arachnophobic (spiders) for most of my life up until about 10 years ago (I'm 43 now). It was an extreme fear, and an extremely irrational fear. If I saw a spider in my room at night while I was reading before bed I had to leave the room and sleep elsewhere. I'd been known to throw up and/or cry when confronted by particularly large spiders. It was crippling at times. A true nightmare.
The simplest thing got me over the fear almost completely. One day when I'd had enough I decided to look at what was really happening when I came across a spider. I don't mean what was happening in my mind....I mean what was actually physically occurring in that moment during that interaction.
And here's what I finally saw: A massive, monstrously strong being suddenly found herself in close proximity to a tiny and completely vulnerable fellow being. Here I was, this huge person, at least a few thousand times bigger than the spider and totally invulnerable to anything this tiny creature could ever throw at me, and here was this tiny little spider who could be killed so easily by me, even without my even noticing because I'm so big in comparison to it, and I'm afraid of it??? I'm the monster. I'm the one with all the power, who poses all the danger in this situation, not the spider. In fact, the spider doesn't even have malicious intent. It would probably only bite me, if it even could, in self-defense. I, on the other hand, am perfectly capable of malice and prejudice and of fearful, irrational, knee jerk reactions. And so on, and so on and on.....
Once I put my fear on hold and really looked at the reality of the situation I started to laugh my ass off. And that was the beginning of the end of my arachnophobia. All that fear that I'd been suffering for so long was all predicated on believing a lie I told myself over and over. I created that fear in myself. It was all of my own making which meant it could be all of my own unmaking as well.
Our minds before we really start to get into Buddhism are always filled with horrors that don't happen and often don't exist in reality at all. Our fears are always worse than reality. Always. We're still children. That's why it's so important to practice Buddhism because it brings our minds, our thought processes, closer and closer to reality and reality is so much easier to deal with than our irrational thoughts and fears.
I didn't mean this to be so long and I've kind of neglected to talk about what you were really asking. But for me, seeing the reality I saw that day was my first step towards feeling genuine respect, compassion, and empathy for spiders and insects. I still have to reason my way through things when I'm surprised by a spider but I'm getting better and better at it the more I practice. Now all I usually have to do is quickly bring to mind the image of my monstrous size in comparison to the spider's size and the fear doesn't manifest. I like to talk to them. Anthropomorphize them by calling them 'Charlotte' and by thinking about how much they want to live, just like I do.
I realize this whole thing could sound a bit silly to some but it's actually been an important part of my growth and development along this beautiful Buddhist path. To me it's been a profound attitude change and it's made me a much calmer, happier person.
Don't do it if it can be avoided. Driving a car, mowing the lawn, and just treading on grass kills insects, but it happens accidentally without wanting or possibly even knowing it.
I live in the tropics, so there are plenty of insects here. Unfortunately, some of them can be problematic. For example, mosquitoes and cockroaches can transmit diseases, termites can eat up your house, centipedes and scorpions are poisonous.
We have a termite barrier installed under our house, which is basically a hose system distributing insecticide. It makes the soil under the house uninhabitable for termites and roaches. After having seen other houses literally being eaten up, I found it to be a necessary evil.
We try to keep mosquitoes out of the house by non-violent means, i.e. by using nets, but I have occasionally killed poisonous scorpions and centipedes in our garden. They are too much of a risk to keep around, especially since we have young children.
Otherwise, I don't mind sharing our garden space with the creepy crawlies. They don't do much harm.
Cheers, Thomas
watch this (the pesticide bit is a few minutes in, but the vid is worth watching anyway!)
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/paul_stamets_on_6_ways_mushrooms_can_save_the_world.html
stamets book is:
http://www.amazon.com/Mycelium-Running-Mushrooms-Help-World/dp/1580085792
People are even giving away the type you specificially need ...
http://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/9892454#9892454
Namaste
Thanks for the tip, Daozen.
I would prefer a biological solution, but unfortunately none is available here. We have checked the market, talked to neighbours, but the hose system seems to be the current state of the art. It uses much less insecticide than conventional open spraying. If entomopathic technologies becomes available here, I will definitely look into it.
Cheers, Thomas
I'm in the same situation, having a formicarium (a terrarium for ants, an ant farm for serious hobbyists). Ant larvae need a lot of protein, hence I feed them insects.
As mentioned above, there could be a way to release the ants (it's a native species, bred in captivity though, so I wouldn't commit a crime releasing them) and thus I wouldn't have to feed them insects.
I'm too attached to my ants though, it being a long-time dream (a childhood dream in fact) of mine keeping ants. My mom wouldn't allow it.
Furthermore, it would be kinda the same as releasing a pet cat - it would possibly live fine, all it's wild instincts being intact, but you'd give it a worse life no matter where it was released. So... Well, I'll just eat the karma and keep my ants
I've been trying to avoid killing anything, but at the same time don't do anything to preserve them, I tend to have conflicting emotions on the subject. On the one hand part of me says I should help any living being, but another part says nature should be left to it's own devices. I've recently been walking around with a container to catch insects and move them to somewhere else where they wont distract me. As for infestations, I try to lure them outside with food and keep my home clean enough that they cannot survive on whats in it, therefor they don't bother colonizing.
Also, I feel the same about gardening, I feel terrible just by mowing the lawn, wondering what kind of insects I'm killing or displacing. Not sure what to do about it though...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W083nSzx1Rc
As for what you should do, do what ever you think is best. :winkc: