I had a very easy time following this rule until my houseplants were attacked by spider mites and almost simultaneously my rats attacked by a different species of mites. How does one watch the beings (I don't apply "being" to the plants but do to my rats) they love be drained of their vitality by other beings and refuse to intervene? Is it right?

My wife, who is not a Buddhist, intervened, and both rats and plants survived but this experience deeply shook me. One might say I am experiencing a crisis of faith.

“The strings break,” the musician replied.

“And what happens when you string it too loosely?”

“When it’s too loose, no sound comes out,” the musician answered. “The string that produces a tuneful sound is not too tight and not too loose.”

“That,” said the Buddha, “is how to practice: not too tight and not too loose.”

I'm a strong atheist but Buddhism has always been the religion I've respected the most. At least the philosophical aspect of it.

I used to struggle with this too. To this day I use a box to pick up spiders or mosquitoes and take then outside instead of killing them. But I wouldn't doubt killing termites to save my plants.

We kill everyday. When we walk, or drive the car. We're powerful giants. But we can be respectful giants.

It doesn't absolve us from our "sins", but it's far better than nothing.

I think it can be narrowed down to "be respectful". Letting your rats die would be disrespectful to them. Killing a spider that isn't harming you is disrespectful to them. Walking on top of ants you know are there is disrespectful to them.

[1] http://venyifa.blogspot.com/2008/09/story-of-compassionate-s...

I'm kind of surprised that this is a dillema for you. I.e. that you would rather watch the pets under your care, potentially in a confinement you placed them in get eaten up by mites, than intervene.

And that the driving force for that inaction is somehow compassion. It sounds more like confusion.

There are thousands of years of analysis by Buddhist theologians on these and other subjects. One critique against intervention is by denying or cutting short the acute suffering of another one denies that being's opportunity to learn the truth of their experience: that what is suffering is independent of a lasting self and temporal.

I do not subscribe wholesale to beliefs because they are believed. The Buddha himself encouraged such critical analysis for oneself. And other religions do the same, though they are often passed over for what is easier: unthinking adherence. From the Quran, "reflect; you have vision."

I am not perfect and I am not blameless. My conflict is a thing I must clarify. Its resolution is wisdom.

To be precise, the monks do this, and the laity work as jewelers in Manhattan and support the monks financially.

The monks had a kind of sieve to filter out small animals from drinking water. There is a famous story when some of them developed extrasensory perception and realized the water they had been drinking contains millions of tiny beings invisible to the naked eye. They went to the Buddha and asked what they should do. The Buddha answered, if you cannot see them, that is fine.

I like this story because it shows there are some limits to how much we can avoid taking life, otherwise we couldn't live at all.

Thank you for this story. I wasn't able to find it myself. Do you have a link?

I did find the story of Thera Cakkhupala, a blind monk who was observed treading on insects [1] but because he was blind and could not see them was blameless. Could this be the story you were thinking of?

[1] http://www.tipitaka.net/tipitaka/dhp/verseload.php?verse=001

Does the dog has the Buddha nature? The answer to that is neither 'yes' or 'no', because neither will lead you where you want.

Beyond that, your rat depends on you as a pet. I’m afraid that, if you can’t adequately look after your pets because of your beliefs, then you shouldn’t have pets.

There's the obvious self-defense exceptions, if a lion or a person would attack me or my family I would shoot him, but an enlightened being may act differently because they may understand something we don't.

If everything dies, at some level killing isn't such a sin. There are real practical populations if people use that as a serious philosophical starting point though.

I definitely recommend https://www.amazon.com/Guide-Good-Life-Ancient-Stoic-ebook/d....

I agree and should have agreed differently that an absence of attachment does not mean an absence of love.

of course, I'm no Buddhist, and I'm sure you have another point of view about the matter.

It is not generally seen as morally acceptable to crush/kill a dog under the same circumstances that you would crush/swat a mosquito, so there needs to be some differentiation between these two in law. Both have protections, but the dog has more protections because it has been put in the category of sentient creatures.

It’s worth noting that both rats and deers on your list are already classed as sentient in the existing legislation passed in May (at least as far as I can tell, as it covered all vertebrates), and it’s clear that from a practical standpoint ants, termites and mosquitos need to be treated differently.

Above all else though it’s a legal definition rather than a social or biological distinction.

A counter argument is that absolutely everything in nature at some point dies and it tends to be unpleasant. Dying of old age, surrounded by and cared for by loved ones is kind of really unusual for most things that live. Being mauled to death by some inconsiderate predator is much more common. Whether that's us or some other predator does not really matter all that much. The end result is the same.

Lobsters don't generally die of old age; they get nibbled on by predators as soon as they stop being able to defend themselves against that sort of thing (hence the claws). Same with most other things we eat. Most grazing cattle descends from animals that move around in herds that will have the weaker/older animals picked off by predators. Nature can be cruel and we're part of nature.

So, my admittedly simplistic reasoning is that if you eat meat and have some respect for what you are eating and how it lived and was killed, it's fine. The animal you are eating would have died no matter what at some point and probably not in a way that is appreciably better and potentially much worse. Additionally with most farm animals you can make the point that it would not even have existed if it wasn't for the fact that we were going to eat the animal. We've literally created species and subspecies of animals that are optimal for breeding and farming that would not stand much chance surviving in the wild. These species would likely go extinct if we'd stop breeding them. A consequence of us being less cruel by not eating certain animals might cause that entire species to stop existing. There's some food for thought.

So catching a lobster in the wild and then eating it is fine. But maybe give it a quick stab with a knife through the brain stem before you throw them in the boiling water. Also, keeping them in the fridge shuts down a lot of their brain activity. It's a decent thing to do. A quick death and a tasty meal. Nothing wrong with that.

But we (humans) do exclude ourselves from being part of nature like that. If you believe that this is morally correct, how would you define the general criteria for this exclusion?