In response to a comment on my last post:
Is the karma still there if you hire someone else to do it? Cause you're only
indirectly causing the pain and suffering (which you do every time you eat meat)...I
guess I have a hard time understanding that it's ok in your world to eat chicken or
lamb but not to set a trap for a rat....but hey - we all have our hypocrisies. -- L.
Beth 'Suki "Tsunami"' Yockey
Beth and I have gone back and forth on this. For the record, she does eat fish, but I'm
sure she would have little problem killing vermin.
So the question before me is, what is the difference between eating meat and killing a
rat.
Involvement with Death
Well, for one thing, it is quite impossible to be on this earth and be uninvolved with
death. Our lives work to kill others in thousands of indirect ways. Even the vegan's
food habits involve a harvesting process that kills an uncountable amount of small
insects. I think there's a certain habit of even many people to value the life of a cow
over the life of a rat or spider or even an aphid or tick.
One could arguably say that for sheer lethality, purchasing gasoline for your car has
the most bang for your buck.
Yes, I Really Like Sausage
So when I go to the store am I hiring someone to kill the animals for me? I don't think
so, exactly. Unfortunately, if I stopped eating meat tomorrow, the stockyards in
Chicago would hardly grind to a halt. Would it have some influence? Probably, but that
has to be weighed against some other factors. I do, at least, buy from vendors who
support ethical treatment of animals (if slaughtering them can, on the whole, be
considered ethical).
Traditionally, the Tibetans, who can't get much to grow up in the mountains of Tibet
except for some hardy strains of barley, live off of yaks. They eat the butter, and
they historically bought the meat from Muslim butchers. Tibetans also do seem to have
some weird guidelines. They'll buy meat, but they won't eat an animal that was killed
just for them. They prefer to eat larger animals like yaks and such, because you get a
lot more meals out of a cow than a shrimp.
However, the Tibetans also have an incredible sense of reverence towards meat, and
there are special prayers said when meat is present at a meal in order to make a
positive spiritual connection with the animal. They have an attitude that on the whole,
for them to eat meat and use that energy to benefit to benefit beings, that the eating
of meat is of a sum benefit to beings.
They're Vermin!
So why the big deal about killing a rat, then? Just do it with the attitude that the
sum benefit to beings will be greater than letting it live, and then it's easily
justified, right?
Well, everyone has to make their own choices. The way my lama presented it to me was
that it was a great deal more harm to one's cultivation of meditative stability and
compassion to stalk and kill a being than it is to eat meat with compassion. No being
wants to be killed, and in a sense you have to close your mind to a being in order to
kill it.
And let me tell you about the process. It's been a difficult experience to let this rat
live, when it only grows bolder by the day, and it's a lot of work and money to try and
capture it. But I've had to take a hard look at what exactly the problem is with just
coexisting with the rat. I've had to take its needs and desires into account in some
way, and really face my knee-jerk revulsion.
That knee-jerk hatred towards another being is really an obstacle to compassion for all
beings, I think. Now, I realize that I can't in good conscience allow the rat to
continue to live here. It causes damage to property that I am renting, it is a health
hazard, and it freaks out guests.
So today we bought tupperware containers, a securable kitchen garbage can, and a live
trap. Wish us luck.
But tonight I am eating bacon. Is this hypocrisy? I guess so, but it's not just
intentional blindness. I have thought about all sides of the issue and have tried to
come to a reasonable decision. I hope I have.
