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about karma: What does a snail have to do to reincarnate? Leave the perfect trail of slime?
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here is a quote from the movie the bucket list: What does a snail have to do to reincarnate? Leave the perfect trail of slime? yeah it is funny quote but meaningful. what can animals do for good karma? you know, they don't have own self self awareness, and from the six realms that deva, asura, human, animals, hungry ghost, and hell can only mankind do good or bad karma? how can other beings if that don't have consciousness do action with their own ? if some carnivorous animals kill other animals to eat doesn't it mean they do bad karma right. so how are other beings do karma?
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But did you know that a snail can cross a razor blade without injury!
:eek:
Before I had empathy, I found it fascinating to cut slugs open and examine the crazy shit that was their innards. I will probably spend a few lifetimes coming back as a slug in a duck sanctuary.
So if I die and have the seed of dharma interest but I develop ignorant qualities I am born a fish. Then that ignorance is not infinite in length so eventually there is no more animal karma. Then at rebirth the seed from the dharma interest sprouts and I am born a human with dharma in the world.
I suspect the deep unpleasantness of the experience was my "Instant Karma" for running carelessly, with no need for next life payments.
I hope so... it still makes me shudder...
don't forget we are talking about beginningless time, that snail was probably your mother a billion years ago on some alien planet LOL, it will have a chance to become human again eventually and hopefully be able to learn and practice dhamma.
However, I suspect at one time, we were little more than the rocks.
However, we obviously have a great influence on our environment and the creatures in it, and we can influence the more intelligent creatures to do things that are contrary to their nature, so if we then perceive them to be behaving badly with these circumstances in mind I would say we are ultimately accountable and they blameless.
If I believed in the doctrines of kamma and rebirth I would say that a snail would be reborn as a snail again and again over enumerable lifetimes, because it doesn't have much opportunity to change its behavior, but it sure knows how to be a snail.
I remember hearing a story about a priest and a goat. The priest would perform a sacrificial ritual using a goat. That goat was reborn over successive lifetimes and was sacrificed. One day when he was about to be sacrificed he was very happy. The priest asked in astonishment why he was so happy when he was about to die. The goat told the priest that he had been reborn again thousands of times as a goat and had been sacrificed, but now he will be reborn as a priest. The priest was horrified, because he realized that if that was possible so too that he could be reborn as a goat after he died.
so conclusion is being as a animal means only living for repay and can intelligence beings can do karma, is it right?
If you have even a slight inclination that rebirth is real, this song should give you some chills, i like it.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=RlgYxbtJb1Y&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Thanks, I liked that.
Brings me back to reading about the eternal champion books by Micheal Moorcock. More along the lines of incarnations but I never bothered to memorize the distinction between the two concepts.
And I actually do think rebirth makes sense.
Personally, I have had some somewhat convincing memories but I realize they could have been conjured up. I leave it at that but I got a sneaky feeling...
I don't follow the notions of kamma and rebirth, but my religious tradition places great importance on relationship, so the way I understand them then is not just simply on individual micro experience, but part of an integrated whole, so it would make sense that compassion given another being would have some kind of impact or influence on the rebirth of the receiver and giver, and in turn even the entire cosmos.
Also, just think of all the beings that you share your body with that you are dependent upon and them on you. What a microcosm.
So to steal some terminology from the discipline of economics there is micro-kamma and macro-kamma, and each are not independent.
Its hard for me to describe that it has always just "felt" right to me, it makes the most sense to me, it has the only thing close to what could be considered verifiable proof(see prof ian Stevensons work). It also makes more sense with science in how energy is never destroyed, just changed.
I cant say i truely fully believe in rebirth without doubrt, but if i were a betting man id bet on it. I even agree with a movie like what dreams may come where there is heaven but you can also choose to come back, why not?
And if there is nothing after death, at least i lived a good life. Either way im happy.
If an organism does what is natural to it in it's efforts to survive how is that bad karma?
Doing what is unnatural is bad karma, like hurting children or eating your own. That sort of stuff also comes with shame and regret. Organisms rise and fall. One species consumes another in a natural process of survival. How can this be wrong or create bad karma. Should (could) we say plants are beneath consideration so we can eat them but not animals? That seems like lopsided thinking. We wouldn't think that way if we were trees. If you can't consume something you will obviously die. Rules should not go against common sense or natural processes. The Buddha doesn't.
One image I heard - I don’t remember where – is of a turtle swimming in the ocean. Every minute or so the turtle comes to the surface. Somewhere in the entire ocean there is one floating rescue belt.
The chance of rebirth as a human being is as dim as the turtle surfacing with his head in the rescue belt.
The explanation for this stroke of luck comes from a past we cannot see - as always in questions of karma.
Somewhere in beginningless time there was a life, an event that accounts for the extraordinary luck of the snail to be reborn maybe as a pet first and after that as a human being.
If we can’t explain something we can create a fantasy around it.
"Imagine that the whole earth was covered with water, and that a man were to throw a yoke with a hole in it into the water. Blown by the wind, that yoke would drift north, south, east and west. Now suppose that once in a hundred years a blind turtle were to rise to the surface. What would be the chances of that turtle putting his head through the hole in the yoke as he rose to the surface once in a hundred years?"
"It would be very unlikely, Lord."
"Well, it is just as unlikely that one will be born as a human being. It is just as unlikely that a Tathagata, a Noble One, a fully enlightened Buddha should appear in the world. And it is just as unlikely that the Dhamma and discipline of the Tathagata should be proclaimed. But now you have been born as a human being, a Tathagata has appeared and the Dhamma has been proclaimed. Therefore, strive to realize the Four Noble Truths." (S.V,456)
Posted by Shravasti Dhammika at 1:21 AM
I love the buddha, he doesnt sugar coat anything hahaha.
Snails are people, too.
Although, I find it hard to believe that pet animals, at least some of them, are not making some kind of good karma. Like service dogs that help disabled people, etc.
All i know is supposedly we have little actual choice in our rebirth even depending on how we live this life. I could become a very virtuous monk who practices a lot and does good things, and still come back as possum becsuse of kamma in the past. Eventually though my kamma from this life would bear fruit and id come back as a human.