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*splat*
SillyPutty
Veteran
As I was driving to help out some wildlife tonight, I noticed how sad and counterproductive my mission was. How so? Well, as I was driving to save one life, I was also witnessing numerous bugs splat against my windshield. Is this why monks/nuns don't drive (at least I haven't seen them do so ever)? I've even heard of many practitioners not even walk on grass. It just seems like such a hopeless situation... there's this parasitic never-ending circle of life feeding off of another entity's death-- even if it's not intentional. How is enlightenment ever to be achieved if we're unknowingly squishing bugs and purchasing items that contribute to others' demise? If one is truly enlightened does that mean their karma is forever-more perfect and that they don't even accidentally kill the tiniest of insects?
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Intention is everything. If we keep our intention pure then no negative karma is sowed.
Karma requires three conditions. Intention, action and satisfaction of action.
So if you kill an insect with the intention to do harm and then do it and become satisfied then one creates an imprint on the mind. This becomes a seed for negative karma to ripen in the future.
If you cut the intention then there is no cause for further seeds.
So for instance if you accidentally killed insects then there is no seed for negative karma.
And even if you intentionally killed an insect and you regret and remorse for the incident then that can become positive karma.
So it all depends on how you interpret and what you do with that interpretation that propels the momentum of the mind into the future.
When I kill something accidentally or when I see road kill I do some mantra and then dedicate my practice and merits to them. I strongly wish for them to be reborn in a pureland or any buddha field. So this seemingly negative fact of life can become a strong cause and condition for one to activate the heart, see the others suffering and then to dedicate our practice to something other than our own personal suffering.
Inevitably no matter what you do or don't do something or someone is harmed.
The first noble truth is that life is suffering.
And that is true on all fronts. Its something that should pierce our hearts and make us weep. Everything we do and try is hopeless, trite, and truly not going anywhere unless it is found in the dharma of our hearts/minds & practice.
There are infinite ways we can deconstruct and interpret the issue of killing a bug. People argue morality and ethics all the time. They justify their action based on the bias held by their subtle views be it material or non material. There is not a shred of objectivity when it comes to this kind of stuff.
So really what it comes down to in any practical/pragmatic sense is how can this help you for your liberation so that you can benefit beings?
And my answer to that is that suffering is unavoidable. We must refrain from harm as much as we can but we will harm beings. And if we do we should honor them by doing practices to benefit them, to hold them in our minds and hearts and strengthen our resolve to attain Buddhahood. Then we will be able to project infinite wisdom to all those beings who you created a connect with. Esoteric enough? Don't underestimate the perfection of compassion and wisdom. Anything is possible.
Hell if I could go back in time I would even slap the Buddha in the face just to create a stronger connection and karmic bond with him. Haha just kidding.
This is all meaningless quibble. What you need to do is digest the act of harm in the heart. Feel the tenderness, the saddness. Feel how vulnerable things are. We truly are no different than the insects. We too will be hit by a car be it metaphorical or physical. Death approaches all of us. Suffering is unavoidable. This perfect human body and opportunity we waste. Karma is real and unvoidable. We need to use all the resources to motivate and propel our practice so that we can truly benefit this burning world.
Use your experience and life as a conduit for the expression of understanding samsara with true knowledge. The burning tender heart that weeps yet responses.
Good luck.
So let's say you drive and simply think that you are driving in order to get to your destination so you can help some wildlife and there is no desire to kill bugs along the way whatsoever. Then in such case, what is your state of mind while driving? It is in a state of compassion and there is lack of ill-will/aversion. So compare that with squashing the bug with a piece of paper where the state of mind is one which is full of ill-will/aversion.
In the Mula Sutta, the Buddha said:
Another way of looking at it is this, which is what the Buddha said in the Dhammapada: So, in the case of squashing a bug with a piece of paper, that is something done with a "corrupted heart", ie. a heart corrupted by ill-will/anger/aversion which will therefore lead to suffering, whereas driving in order to go help some wildlife and without any desire to kill bugs is done with a "calm, bright heart" ie. a heart that lacks ill-will/aversion and is also full of compassion which will therefore lead to happiness.
So whenever you are doing something and unsure whether it is right/skillful or wrong/unskillful look deeply into your heart with honesty. Are you doing something with a corrupted heart or a calm, bright heart? In this particular case, while you are driving, if you look into your heart and you know that it is somehow corrupted then you should think about what you need to do to make it truly calm and bright. If you feel that the only way you can make it truly calm and bright is to choose a different mode of transportation then by all means do so. But that is something only you can know and decide.
But as it is, it all happened in the blink of an eye and I could sit here with could haves and would haves but decided to forgive myself instead... Pay attention another day... Still try to do my best to ease suffering.
Intention is what matters. You cannot prevent all suffering. Even running is likely to crush insects beneath your feet. Inevitably, the building you live in once broke the ground and countless insects and animals along with it. How far would you like to take it? Don't discourage yourself. @taiyaki gives great advice above me.
Incidentally that is one of the main differences between Buddhadharma and Jainadharma..The Jains teach that even unintentional actions create karma.
Which why their monks wear masks and carry soft brooms to sweep the ground in front of them.
NB Many Vajrayana and other Mahayana monks do drive.
I am not sure that Theravadin monks do though.
Rather, the precept functions as a lens, to raise your awareness of the suffering around you-- not in order to feel bad about it, but to help purify your intentions. The things we normally take for granted lessen because of this raised awareness, and we act compassionately out of that lucidity.
Just try to minimise your intentional killing and you're doing well. Although it might not hurt to drive the minimum you have to too, if not for the bugs then for air quality reasons.
People have "good intention" all the time yet cause suffering by their actions. In fact, people almost always justify their actions as necessary. Suicide bombers will tell you theirs is a noble act, sacrificing their lives for a noble cause. People picketing against gay marriage right now believe theirs is a noble action, defending the sanctity of marriage against "those deviants and their gay agenda". So how can you use intention as a guide?
Right intention will always be a source of harmlessness and goodwill to others.
Suicide bombers do not act in a way consistent with doing no harm to others.
Those picketing gay weddings are not acting in goodwill to the individuals who have made that choice.
In both cases the wider intention is inconsistent to the actuality of the actions.
If the people picketing against gay marriage actually dug through their feelings on the matter they should come to realize that they can still live by their ideal morals without inflicting them on other people. That they do so and feel they are doing right doesn't excuse the behavior. They use very little personal reflection and instead just spout the same words they hear from church leaders. Sometimes it is easy to see that you are truly using honest introspection to realize intention. Other times it is less clear and requires more investigation. Other times yet we realize the intention and choose the less pure path anyhow. All the people who don't even know how to investigate themselves are already living in hell. Funny that they worry about going there if they don't hold up signs.
Sorry for the detour..
_/\_
Now what?
There is no karma that cannot be purified.
Responsibility first.
Purification later.
Same with people picketing against gay marriage. They may subjectively believe that theirs is a noble action but that too is their own delusional thinking which is inconsistent with the Dhamma. In fact, it is most likely that they are also acting out of aversion/ill-will towards gay couples and this would be another cause for them to accrue negative karma.
Obviously for a lay person it's not realistic to think that everyone can do what they need to do in their daily life without a car/bus/train/plane/bike. Some people do live in cities/towns where everything is in walking distance and it's great. But I'm sure they still step on bugs and kill things unintentionally.
So the point of this wasn't really asking how to avoid unintentional killing, because I know killing is unavoidable (even as someone pointed out, our own bodies are killing bacteria every moment of the day). My question really was two-fold:
1. Is (trying to) save one life more important than the possible hundreds that I'm killing on the way to my destination?
2. How does unintentional killing relate to "enlightened" beings? I read somewhere that supposed enlightened beings don't even accidentally/unintentionally kill things... they don't have the karma to do so.
I guess this all just relates back to the idea of, "What is needed/necessary for our happiness and existence on this planet?" Do we really need to live the lives we do? Doesn't all this excess "stuff" complicate matters and create conditions for more suffering and killing? For example, the wildlife I was trying to help yesterday, wouldn't have it been okay if we didn't have all the cars and roads and appointments and stress and selfish attitudes in the first place? But, as human beings, we've added these extra conditions to our lives that just complicate the hell out of everything. That's why I find traditions like Theravada Buddhism quite beautiful... specifically Thai forest tradition. They go back to a philosophy of less is more and are so aware and respectful of everything and everyone around them. They own like 3 things and that's all they need to get by. They don't impose themselves on other sentient beings/nature-- they co-exist with them.
I feel that's how it should be in this world... but then that's not how we are raised to think. We are raised to think that we and our families are more important than everything else out there... except for a few things we show a preference towards (i.e. "we like dogs and flowers and that's all we will defend since that's all our egos are attracted to"). I mean, the fact that someone hit this poor animal yesterday and kept on driving and didn't want to take responsibility for it even though it was still alive just made me so upset. I mean, do you honestly think I wanted to drive an hour away to a facility to help this animal instead of going home to make dinner for me and my family? I didn't want to be inconvienced either, but I chose to try to help the poor animal as best as I could since no one else would. My thinking is everyone and everything deserves a helping, caring hand. To me, a person is a dog is a pig is a rattle snake is a bird is a bug is a spider, you know? We're all the same. Even if you don't believe in that, why not just believe in the ol' idea that, "If that was me or someone I loved lying in the middle of the road helpless, I'd want someone to stop and help me."
I'm just sad because I'm always finding myself in these situations where I'm cleaning up other peoples' irresponsible choices, which leads me to feel really bitter about humanity and I know I shouldn't (i.e. the woman drove away and no one else stopped, but at least there *was* a nice human to take the animal to who volunteers their time to helping out). But still... I don't understand how someone could just drive off and not take responsibility. I don't get it. Unless you have an emergency of your own, do you not feel the least bit horrible that you left a poor defenseless creature in the middle of the road who needs help? And this doesn't just apply to the woman who hit the animal-- but also to the dozens of people speeding by the animal who could see that it was still alive and needed help. Why don't people care? Why is everything they are doing more important than the animal in distress or the homeless person on the street or the dirty air/drinking water in their town, etc.?
And then my sadness morphed into more sadness because then as I'm driving to the wildlife rehab place I keep hearing/seeing *SPLAT!* on my windshield. And I just thought to myself, "What's the point? I'm trying to save something that's probably going to have to be euthanized anyway, and in the process of it all, I'm killing more sentient beings." It was just a very upsetting revelation and I started to think that my driving and hitting bugs was just as bad as the woman in the mini-van who drove off after hitting the animal instead of stopping to help the animal. Isn't it the same thing? Isn't it just as bad? Then I realize that my expectations are just too high and it all relates back to my own ego and it's so difficult for me to not feel such sadness and disappointment.
Anyway... don't mind me... I'm very hormonal/emotional right now and my mind is totally out there today. Once I start getting into these existential depressions it takes a while to snap out of it.
Now, I'm not saying one being is better than another, but maybe it helps in a way to remember that bugs have a really short lifespan, compared to many other animals, and by saving one, they may go on to produce many babies over their lifetime. Mosquitoes live only about 2 weeks. Large butterflies, 9 months. Flies, 2-4 weeks. This doesn't make them less of a being, of course. But chances are they have already laid eggs and carried out their mission in furthering their species.
Every 12-13 years we have an influx of what are called tent caterpillars, or army worms. They come by the millions, you cannot walk, drive, nothing without stepping on tons of them. You run over so many you can hear them pop on the road, it's just horrendous. But there isn't much to be done about it, and at the same time if so many didn't die, they would continue to multiply and would eventually cause harm to the ecosystem because of the vast acreage of plants they eat. For all you know some of the bugs you killed were carrying diseases that would have harmed animals or people. It's just good to keep things in perspective.
Each oak tree produces hundreds of acorns that will never grow. Each May in England sees millions of Mayflies hatching from the rivers whose only raison d'etre is to breed. Most don't. Turtles lay scores of eggs, most of the minature turtles that emerge never make it to adulthood.
Whether by car windscreen or by bird predation most insects have brief lives.
Fortunately our job is to cultivate a benign attitude to them if possible.
( If they are malaria bearing mosquitos even that might be too much. )
Nothing else..
To start thinking of ants as little future Buddhas thwarted by the sole of our flip-flop is in my view, taking things too far.
Suppose in 1940 Hitler had been attacked by a suicide bomber. The morality of the act would be a complex issue. Suppose some lobby group argued for a more liberal attitude to rape. Would objectors be guilty of suffering from a delusional mind?
To me, once we start justifying why we shouldn't help or care for another sentient being, it starts a slippery slope of only caring about ourselves, or judging who and what is worthy of compassion and a fighting chance at life-- no matter how short or insignificant it may come across to our human minds. Yes, birds eat bugs, fish eat other fish, lions ravage antelopes... but does that mean as human beings we should do these things just because we can? We should squish a bug just to squish it? Hunt a deer just for sport? Just because it has happened in the past and most likely will continue to happen in the future doesn't make it right. After all, children die every day from neglect and people kill people in a psychotic rage, too, right? Doesn't make it any more "normal" in my eyes.
It means, keep things in perspective. What good does it to you, or your family to get completely bent out of shape out of something you cannot change? The only thing you can do is reflect yourself if attempting to save one life is worth the cause of death of all the bugs. No one can tell you 100% for sure that one way is better than the other. We kill bugs every day in buying our food to keep ourselves alive, too. Just accepting that there are things we cannot control doesn't mean it is the same as not caring.
The things that @citta listed about nature, happen for a reason. Because nature just works that way. Humans are a part of nature, and while it is ideal for us to do *what we can* to be cautious with the beings and the world around us, we also have needs to survive that matter, too. Foxes eat turtle eggs and babies because it's what they do. At this point in time, humans drive cars to get to the grocery store or to bring an injured animal to rehab and bugs, worms, slugs, caterpillars, and sometimes deer, moose, bear, cougars, rabbits, squirrels and other things die as a result. We are a part of that web of life, with our cars, with our shoes and everything else the same as the fox is part of the web of life. People seem to get this belief in their minds that nature works perfectly...and then there is us, on the outside, intruding and causing all these problems. We are PART of the web, not outside of it.Yes, we changed the planet drastically when we developed agriculture and our population exploded. But plenty of tragedy happens in nature because that's just how things are Even if you never leave your house, you kill things. You step on ants you never see, you wash spiders down the drain and drown them that you didn't know were there. It just doesn't serve us to become distraught at that. It happens. It's good to reflect and see if there is something we can change to lessen our impact. But we cannot make it disappear. No being on the planet lives without causing the deaths of other beings. There is no other way, not on Earth. As I said lessening it as much as we feasibly can, is good. Being depressed and distraught because we are not gods who can simply make things be a certain way does not help anyone.
What I have been trying to ask for the past couple of posts is where do you draw the line? When is it useless to help, and when should it be expected? As humans we can make a conscious decision every day to help lessen the suffering of another sentient being or contribute to it. So was it pointless to stop and help the wildlife? Did it do more harm than good? Where do you draw the line between helping another sentient being and letting nature take its course? It's the age old question of: Is one life worth more than the rest? I guess I find difficulty answering this question because I'm seeing all sentient beings as deserving an equal chance at life. Just like the horrible scenario of choosing who to save if your house catches on fire and you can only save one person out of the 3 left behind. Who do you choose? And why? I think my questions are more rhetorical than anything, so if you find yourself getting upset with what I'm asking then it's probably best not to answer just yet. I keep asking one question but everyone keeps answering with the same bottled response of "this is life-- get over it and deal with it." I find it quite interesting, really.
You are talking about bugs splatting into your windscreen.
You nailed in on the head, zombiegirl. Thanks. That's all I was looking for. Your response has renewed my faith in humanity.
I'm not enlightened, but I surely hope the day comes when I will be. I hope I can be like one of those lovely monks/nuns who sits and smiles and accepts the good and bad as one entity and embrace it all. They really don't cry over dead animals in the road, and if they do, it doesn't haunt them for days on end at least. I hope I can bless every blade of grass and insect as I walk and not become anxious over their fate. Hopefully one day I'll get to that point of acceptance and zen. But considering I've been super sensitive ever since I was a child, I know it's going to take a lot more work. It's just who I am. Don't know why I am that way, but I'm sure karma has something to do with it somewhere. But until that moment where it all clicks, I guess I'm just going to keep on having to do what I feel compelled in my heart to do, even though it may come off counterproductive in the long run.
I'm just sad because I'm always finding myself in these situations where I'm cleaning up other peoples' irresponsible choices, which leads me to feel really bitter about humanity
And then my sadness morphed into more sadness because then as I'm driving to the wildlife rehab place I keep hearing/seeing *SPLAT!* on my windshield. And I just thought to myself, "What's the point? I'm trying to save something that's probably going to have to be euthanized anyway, and in the process of it all, I'm killing more sentient beings." It was just a very upsetting revelation and I started to think that my driving and hitting bugs was just as bad as the woman in the mini-van who drove off after hitting the animal instead of stopping to help the animal.
For *me* I would define myself as bent out of shape if that is how I was feeling. I don't think you are annoying, nor do I think your situation, or your questions, were annoying. Not even a little bit. I didn't mean to imply that you had a god complex. It was just a general comment. We can't control everything, and we aren't meant to. It's ok to let things go sometimes.
As for picketing against gay marriage, this case is more difficult than the suicide bombers as the latter involves the issue of killing which I think is rather clear cut. Picketing as an action in and of itself is neither inherently skillful or unskillful I would say. So after some reconsideration with regard to the issue picketing, I do believe we should be more focused on whether the intention of the picketers are corrupted by ill-will/aversion rather than focusing on whether the cause being fought for is objectively worthy or not or based on delusions. Basically in these situations, in terms of kamma, even if you are fighting for an objectively good cause, if you do so with a state of mind that is full of ill-will/aversion then negative kamma would still be accrued.
I avoided addressing the point that comes up in your Q. #1, before, just waiting to see if you'd put it squarely on the table, which you did.
Actually, I'm pretty sure that in Buddhism, as grim and un-PC as this may seem, there is a hierarchy of value of different sentient beings, though I couldn't pinpoint the source of any teaching on that. But the higher in the consciousness-chain a being is, the closer to enlightenment-potential it is. So even though you're not supposed to kill anything at all, sacrificing some malaria-bearing mosquitos in order to save a Bodhisattva's life (the Dalai Lama, say) would possibly be justifiable from the standpoint of the "greater good" principle in how the precepts are put into practice (speaking of the Mahayana tradition. There is no "greater good" principle in Theravada, though, so maybe this isn't helpful to you, in the end). You squished some bugs on your way to save a deer, a possum, or someone's dog? Maybe that animal, if it survived after your intervention, went on to nurture its young, or to save a human's life.
I think if we worry about every little bacterium (think about how many lives you eliminate when you take antibiotics), we'd become paralyzed, and unable to act altogether.
Another question is: did you act skillfully? What were the chances of that animal's survival after your intervention? Did you act more out of emotion or some sort of hero complex, or anger at the callous world we live in, than out of compassion? Are you able to sort through all those feelings? idk, OP. I think there's a lot of food for thought here, and a lot to meditate on. Maybe through meditation you'll come up with an answer. Please update us, if you do.
There are no easy answers in life. You raise a lot of good questions.
What I object to is the idea that any particular action, suicide bombing or whatever, is always right or always wrong. I don't think this is how it works. The context makes a difference, and the context for any two actions is never the same in any case.
Now this is not as snappy as ' Right Intention ' and I doubt it will catch on widely
But this alternative translation does aid us in teasing out the meaning of 'samma sankappa'.
The problem with translating samma as 'Right' is the implication that other intentions or aspirations are Wrong.
What the second of the 8 FP is saying is that our actions should be informed by a complete aspiration towards Enlightened action. And complete aspiration has to be seen additionally in terms of both the rest of the 8FP and in general terms of sila.