(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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He who leads Must then be strong and hopeful as the dawn That rises unafraid and full of joy Above the blackness of the darkest night. He must be kind to every living thing; Kind as the Krishna, Buddha and the Christ, And full of love for all created life. Oh, not in war shall his great prowess lie, Nor shall he find his pleasure in the chase. Too great for slaughter, friend of man and beast, Touching the borders of the Unseen Realms And bringing down to earth their mystic fires To light our troubled pathways, wise and kind And human to the core, so shall he be, The coming leader of the coming time.
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risk is full: every living thing in siege: the demand is life, to keep life: the small...
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Consider a man riding a bicycle. Whoever he is, we can say three things about him. We know he got on the bicycle and started to move. We know that at some point he will stop and get off. Most important of all, we know that if at any point between the beginning and the end of his journey he stops moving and does not get off the bicycle he will fall off it. That is a metaphor for the journey through life of any living thing, and I think of any society of living things.
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Let no one regard as light the burden of his responsibility. While so much ill-treatment of animals goes on, while the moans of thirsty animals in railway trucks sound unheard, while so much brutality prevails in our slaughterhouses ... we all bear guilt. Everything that lives has value as a living thing, as one of the manifestations of the mystery that is life.
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If you look at the course of western history you'll see that we're slowly granting basic rights to everyone. A long time ago only kings had rights. Then rights were extended to property-owning white men. Then all men. Then women. Then children. Then the mentally retarded. Now we're agonizing over the extension of basic rights to homosexuals and animals. We need to finally accept that all sentient creatures are deserving of basic rights. I define basic rights as this --the ability to pursue life without having someone else's will involuntarily forced upon you. Or, as the framers of the constitution put it, the ability to have 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness'what criteria can you justify denying basic rights to any living thing? Realize that by whatever criteria you employ someone could deny basic rights to you if they objected to your species, sexual preferences, color, religion, ideology etc. Would you eat your housecat, or force a mentally retarded child to ingest oven cleaner? If not, then why is it ok to eat cows and test products on sentient animals? I believe that to knowingly commit actions that cause or condone suffering is reprehensible in the extreme.I call upon you to be compassionate and treat others as you want to be treated. If you don't want to be beaten, imprisoned, mutilated, killed or tortured then you shouldn't condone such behavior towards anyone, be they human or not.
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Never again may blood of bird or beast/ Stain with its venomous stream a human feast,/ To the pure skies in accusation steaming. “I wish no living thing to suffer pain."
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The whole earth, perpetually steeped in blood, is nothing but an immense altar on which every living thing must be sacrificed without end, without restraint, without respite until the consummation of the world, the extinction of evil, the death of death.
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Never again may blood of bird or beast/ Stain with its venomous stream a human feast,/ To the pure skies in accusation steaming. “I wish no living thing to suffer pain.'
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They devoted the city to the lord and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it - men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys.
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Genesis 3:14:
So the LORD God said to the serpent, 'Because you have done this, 'Cursed are you above all livestock and all wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life.
(NIV)
And the Lord God said to the serpent, Because you have done this, you are cursed above all [domestic] animals and above every [wild] living thing of the field; upon your belly you shall go, and you shall eat dust [and what it contains] all the days of your life.
(AMP)
And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life:
(KJV)
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'As a necessary component of the living world, we must extend compassion to one another and to every living thing.'
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The pre-human creature from which man evolved was unlike any other living thing in its malicious viciousness toward its own kind. Humanization was not a leap forward but a groping toward survival.
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Every living thing is a sort of imperialist, seeking to transform as much as possible of its environment into itself.
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Friendship is a living thing that lasts only as long as it is nourished with kindness, empathy and understanding.
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A dead thing goes with the stream. Only a living thing can go against it.
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A living thing is distinguished from a dead thing by the multiplicity of the changes at any moment taking place in it.
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Genesis 1:28:
God blessed them and said to them, 'Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.'
(NIV)
And God blessed them and said to them, Be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it [using all its vast resources in the service of God and man]; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and over every living creature that moves upon the earth.
(AMP)
And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
(KJV)
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The power in which we must have faith if we would be well, is the creative and curative power which exists in every living thing.
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We cannot treat any living thing callously, and we are responsible for what happens to other beings, human or animal, even if we do not personally come into contact with them.
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Love does not die easily. It is a living thing. It thrives in the face of all of life's hazards, save one -- neglect.
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