I too have done similar under similar circumstances. It is not an easy thing to do, but I desired to relieve the suffering of the creatures in question. I, however, am not a yogi, although I strive for enlightenment. |
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Me and my wife are on vacation and just walked a botanical garden. On the path was a beautiful rat. It was breathing, but was paralysised. I figure the poor beautiful creatures came out to beg for a cracker and some jerk stomped him. Ants were swarming around his face. He looked fine but was obviously suffering a broken spine. |
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Last edited by Sivason; 10-27-2013 at 08:49 AM.
I too have done similar under similar circumstances. It is not an easy thing to do, but I desired to relieve the suffering of the creatures in question. I, however, am not a yogi, although I strive for enlightenment. |
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I am not a Buddhist, though I have looked into Buddhism, and find many of its ideas appealing. My thought is that if it was done out of mercy, and if you do not regret doing it, then it won't be bad karma because it was done for the right reasons and should not haunt you. However, if you think about it and regret and wish you had made a different choice, it may create bad karma. The question should not be whether you should have done something else to that rat, because that rat is dead, and thinking about it anymore will not change that. The question though is if now you encountered a creature that was suffering, and you knew it would suffer for the rest of its life, would you be justified in killing it with instant death of mercy killing? And frankly, I think that is a question that everyone should answer for themselves, and I think either answer can be justified, but whichever of the two answers you choose, I think you have to be convinced yourself at it is the right answer for you, or else regret and doubt may result in bad karma. |
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You may say I'm a dreamer.
But I'm not the only one - John Lennon
Every murder is secretly an act of mercy, anyways. If you did the right thing you should welcome karma's reaction, not fear it. Sometimes the consequences to acting justly are negative. Since history, people have been tortured and killed for trying to help others and heal the world. But they act anyways, knowing full well the consequence. Living according to what you think karma will do to you and you gain little wisdom. To learn, one must act according to their own insights, not what they're told. |
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Everything works out in the end, sometimes even badly.
My Indo-Aryan history is a bit rusty, but given the time and place of the probable roots of Yoga, and indeed the nobility from which Siddhartha himself emerged, which if I remember correctly was a warrior class, I find it extremely unlikely that killing was seen as always bad in the roots of the philosophy. If we really wish to understand these things, I think we need to go back to the time when the philosophy was more practical (the time of the Vedas for example) and use our common sense, using the ancient texts and those of surrounding civilizations as a guide. Cowardice at this time was not easily forgiven like it is today. Even Gandhi wrote about cowardice as being a contemptible weakness. Of course, Buddhists and Yogis do not abstain from killing out of cowardice, but rather discipline, and in Yoga this pacifist ideal is much less universal. Still I think the point stands given the time these philosophies were created. The real truth seeker, the true Yogi, would understand that killing can be necessary even very frequently; depending of course on the time, the amount of danger and harshness of survival; though it must be avoided whenever other means are available to resolve a situation. |
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Last edited by Meskhetyw; 10-27-2013 at 08:43 PM.
I personally think such a killing will bring good karma. However I really like what JoannaB said about how one's own feelings of guilt could be the very cause of some negative karma. |
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I'd want someone to put me out of my misery instead of barely hanging on to life with a broken spine and a smashed head. That's just me. |
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<Link Removed> - My website/tumblelog
“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.” - Albert Einstein
I'm stuck in a spiritual framework where the only way I can make use of any given concept is to understand it metaphoricaly. My idea is that karma is the psychological ramifications of one's own (and others!) actions. As such, karma is what one thinks it is. Whereas literalists balance discrepancies and karmic injustices by invoking past lives, I think that individual subjective interpritations, which are known to be imperfect, explain these discrepencies much better. They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions, but I don't believe that karma is the kind of concept that is supposed to save us from hell, the way some of it's Judeo-Christian counterparts are. Good intentions bring about good karma. Or, to translate that metaphor, good intentions bring about positive psychological ramifications. |
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Depends on what your goals are. If your goal is to end the suffering of others than you should kill the rat. If it is to avoid suffering for yourself then go ahead and run away. I dunno what I would do, I would have to be there to make that kind of judgement. I can see myself not caring but if the rat really looked like it was in pain I would probably take notice. |
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157 is a prime number. The next prime is 163 and the previous prime is 151, which with 157 form a sexy prime triplet. Taking the arithmetic mean of those primes yields 157, thus it is a balanced prime.
Women and rhythm section first - Jaco Pastorious
While I personally don't believe in karma, it was the right thing to do, in my eyes. The poor creature was suffering, so you relieved it of its suffering. I don't see it as any different from euthenizing a dog who is so sick/injured that it will die anyway. |
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The moment and your actions obviously stuck with you, which is to say you have not seen through them. So yes, they are shaping your karma beyond your control and will continue to bear fruit. Bad karma? Karma. |
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If you have a sense of caring for others, you will manifest a kind of inner strength in spite of your own difficulties and problems. With this strength, your own problems will seem less significant and bothersome to you. By going beyond your own problems and taking care of others, you gain inner strength, self-confidence, courage, and a greater sense of calm.Dalai Lama
That is true and a good observation. I am one of those types that has no intrest in escaping the physical world and removing myself from reincarnation. In that vein, I am all for good karma, and in my mind, this act is a decent and kind thing. I simply wonder at the preception of those who feel all killing is bad karma, or even those who choose not to interact with the world to avoid all karma. |
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The truth of violence is not in the action taken.. |
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Signature work courtesy of Cloud
It depends on the intention of the killing. My feeling is that you are fine. In a previous life the Buddha killed a pirate who was going to kill the crew of the boat and take it over. The Buddha killed the pirate in order to save the others, and also to save the pirate of the bad karma of killing all those people and being reborn in hell. To do what you feel is the right thing, even if you will be punished for it by rebirth in hell, is selfless action for the benefit of others. There have been Buddhist monks in Tibet who joined the Tibetan resistance to the Chinese invasion and killed Chinese soldiers, not caring if they were going to be reborn in hell, all to save the dharma and their fellow tibetans. Also, even Tibetan monks eat meat, because honestly there isn't much anything else available to eat in Tibet. They figure that as long as they have to kill, it is okay to kill one cow to eat than to kill hundreds of earthworms to dig up a garden... lol... But the climate is not that conducive to growing vegetables. |
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Spoiler/disclaimer/caveat emptor: this post contains gory descriptions. |
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You guys must remember that karma isn't really good or bad. There is no good and bad in Buddhism, only cause and effect. Bad karma is from destructive acts that promote pandemonium, good karma is from constructive acts that promote peace. If all aspects of it were done in a peaceful nature, it is good karma. If you killed the rat because you intended to make it suffer more (despite whether or not killing it would make it suffer more) that would be bad karma, because you are doing it with destructive intent. |
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Birds of the night..
I don't know much about karma, but I have chosen both: two of my pets were put down, but also I have been a foot away from a cat like the one mentioned above...broken beyond repair but still breathing. |
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"you will not transform this house of prayer into a house of thieves"
I might be disrespectfully late commenting on this thread but let it be... |
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Last edited by Occipitalred; 01-12-2015 at 02:30 AM.
Thanks for the thoughtful answer. |
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