Pests

The TV was on this morning (it is sometimes like another ‘monkey mind’ in the background as emails are read) and there was this commercial. The commercial was for a new mouse trap which looks like an A frame house – “Look,” the young attractive housewife says to her hubby, “No fuss, no muss, just pull the lever and dispose of the trap in the garbage. You never have to touch the mouse or get your hands dirty!’

You never have to see or become aware of the suffering of another sentient being.

Like an execution

Like abandoning a child

Like swatting flies

This, I think, is the opposite of mindfulness. We do not need to dirty out minds with thinking about another being, no matter how small or inconsequential or no matter how abhorrent that other being is to us.

And I am as guilty as anyone else: how many wasp traps have I hung over the years? Or moth traps have I placed in the cabinets? Are these pests’ not sentient beings also?

Does not all life have a purpose?

So these are my questions on this morning.


And from the ‘Path to Enlightenment by H.H.:
The nature of samsaric evolution is not such that death is followed by nothingness, nor that humans are always reborn as humans and insects as insects. On the contrary, we all carry within us the karmic potencies of all realms of cyclic existence. Many beings transmigrate from higher to lower realms, others from lower to higher. The selection of a place of rebirth is not directly in our own hands but is conditioned by our karma and delusions. They who possess spiritual understanding can control their destiny at the time of death, but for ordinary beings the process is very much an automatic chain reaction of karmic seeds and habitual psychic response patterns....
Our repeated experience of frustration, dissatisfaction and misery does not have external conditions as its root cause. The problem is mainly our lack of spiritual development. As a result of this handicap, the mind is controlled principally by afflicted emotions and illusions. Attachment, aversion and ignorance rather than a free spirit, love and wisdom are the guiding forces. Recognizing this simple truth is the beginning of the spiritual path.
The Path to Enlightenment

Peace...Peace ...Peace