(1) Do not let your children make toys out of flies/butterflies or birds. Such behavior results in injury to living creatures, but also it arouses in young hearts an impulse to cruelty and murder. Stories illustrative of the commandments: (2) The wife of a soldier named Fan was tuberculous and close to death. She was ordered to eat the brains of 100 sparrows as a remedy. When she saw the birds in the cage, she sighed and said: 'Must it be that 100 living creatures are to be killed that I may be healed? I would rather die than permit them to suffer.' She opened the cage and allowed them to fly away. Afterwards she recovered from her illness. (3) Tsao-Pin lived in a ruined house. His children begged him to have it repaired. He answered: 'In the cold winter the cracks in the walls and the space between the tiles and between the stones provide a shelter and a refuge to all kinds of living creatures. We should not endanger their lives.' (4) Wu-Tang used to take his son hunting with him. One day they came upon a stag that was playing with its young one. Tang took an arrow and killed the young one. The frightened stag ran off with a cry of anguish. When Tang concealed himself the stag returned and licked the wounds of its fawn. Tang again drew his bow and killed it. He then saw another stag and sent an arrow towards it, but the arrow was deflected and pierced his son. Tang threw his bow away and tearfully embraced his dead son, when he heard a voice from the air: 'Tang, the stag loved its fawn as much as you loved your son.' (5) Meng-tse praises King Suan of Tsi because of his compassion in freeing an ox that was to be sacrificed at the dedication of some bells. Such a sentiment, he says, should suffice to make one king of the world. Monastic Taoism & Kan-Ying-P'ien. From the commandments for monks: (1st): Thou shalt kill no living thing nor do injury to its life. (2nd): Thou shalt not consume as food the flesh and blood of any living creature. (34th): Thou shall not strike or whip domestic animals. (35th): Thou shall not intentionally crush insects and ants with thy foot. (36th): Thou shalt not play with hooks and arrows for thine own amusement. (37th): Thou shalt not climb into trees to remove nests and to destroy the eggs. (63rd): Thou shalt not catch birds and quadrupeds with snares and nets. (64th): Thou shalt not frighten and scare away birds that are brooding on their nests. (68th): Thou shalt not dig up during the winter months animals hibernating in the earth. (112th): Thou shalt not pour hot water on the ground in order to exterminate insects and ants.
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Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race. Even before there were large numbers of Negroes on our shore, the scar of our racial hatred had already disfigured colonial society. From the sixteenth century forward, blood flowed in battles over racial supremacy. We are perhaps the only nation which tried as a matter of national policy to wipe out its indigenous population. Moreover, we elevated that tragic experience into a noble crusade. Indeed, even today we have not permitted ourselves to reject or feel remorse for this shameful episode. Our literature, our films, our drama, our folklore all exalt it. Our children are still taught to respect the violence which reduced a red-skinned people of an earlier culture into a few fragmented groups herded into impoverished reservations.
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Through the gates that stand between the mortal world and the immortal Realm of Chaos are now closed to me, still I would rather die having glimpsed eternity than never to have stirred the cold furrow of mortal life.
I embrace death without regret as I embraced life without fear.
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Hebrews 3:1:
Therefore, holy brothers and sisters, who share in the heavenly calling, fix your thoughts on Jesus, whom we acknowledge as our apostle and high priest.
(NIV)
SO THEN, brethren, consecrated and set apart for God, who share in the heavenly calling, [thoughtfully and attentively] consider Jesus, the Apostle and High Priest Whom we confessed [as ours when we embraced the Christian faith].
(AMP)
Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Christ Jesus;
(KJV)
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When a husband is embraced without affection, there must be some reason for it.
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Adventure must be held in delicate fingers. It should be handled, not embraced. It should be sipped, not swallowed at a gulp.
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Hebrews 11:13:
All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth.
(NIV)
These people all died controlled and sustained by their faith, but not having received the tangible fulfillment of [God's] promises, only having seen it and greeted it from a great distance by faith, and all the while acknowledging and confessing that they were strangers and temporary residents and exiles upon the earth. [Gen. 23:4; Ps. 39:12.](AMP)
These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.
(KJV)
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Experience - the wisdom that enables us to recognise in an undesirable old acquaintance the folly that we have already embraced.
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If you have embraced a creed which appears to be free from the ordinary dirtiness of politics - a creed from which you yourself cannot expect to draw any material advantage - surely that proves that you are in the right?
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His intelligence seized on a subject, his genius embraced it, his eloquence illuminated it.
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