a buddhist perspective

I confess. I'm not a spider person. No, don't worry. I'm okay. I just mean that I'm not crazy about spiders. Or at least not Australian spiders. I'm fine with Daddy Longlegs. We had them in New York where I grew up. And I loved the movie Daddy Longlegs with Fred Astaire. But I'm talking about serious spiders. Big spiders. Lots of big spiders. I mean, I'm a Buddhist—I like everything in moderation. And that goes for spiders, too. Especially big ones.

So if I don't like spiders, why my preoccupation with them? I'm glad you asked.

As I said there are lots of spiders in Australia and I'm currently in Australia. To my great good fortune, Celine, the woman I am staying with, likes spiders. (No, don't start worrying again. She has a healthy, compassionate fearless view of spiders and admires their web-building genius. I do share her admiration on this.) So for the first week or so, I would call out "Celine—spider!" and she'd quickly come with a cloth to catch the spider and gently escort it out of the house.

Today as I was working and gazing out the window (strictly for therapeutic reasons to rest my eyes—honest), I noticed a bunch of white dots all clumped together next to a large white spider that had been fighting with another spider a few days ago in the same spot. (Apparently, I rest my eyes a lot here.) I got up and looked more closely. It looked like there were about a hundred little white dots. Oops.

I went to Celine and asked her about the wisdom of spider eggs on the outside of the window (with the screen that our cat Kahleen likes to climb to gaze in at me at eye level. This unfortunately has left many tears in the screen that are just the right size for playful baby spiders to use to come in to scare the Buddhist nun). Celine smiled comfortingly and said, yes, it was best not to have a hundred spiders hatching outside my room. (She was probably also concerned for the thunderous effect my "Celine—spider!" would have on baby spider ears. If spiders have ears. Trust me, I have NOT gotten close enough to see if they do.)

Anyway, Celine cleverly found a large leaf and scooped up Mama and her babies and walked out on to the grass. Celine then commented that she didn't want to put them down on the grass because the ants would eat them (Honestly, it's like a nature reserve here!). So the spider family was gently relocated to a safer location where the new babies would not be eaten by ants or deafened by the unusually loud vocalizations of Buddhist nuns...

Question: I work in the field.  Most often in bad areas where dogs are abandoned, hurting and abused.  Today I found one who's pelvis had been broken and her little leg.  There is no telling how long she'd been this way, how many people had passed her by.  I had to put her to sleep which has hurt me so much all day.

Please help me to understand why people do this.....why they would let this poor little dog suffer like this, living on the street unable to walk.  I carry each of these homeless and neglected animals with me and they stay in my head burdening my heart and mind with horrible sorrow.  I cannot let them go.

Response:  It is terrible how people can be cruel to animals or simply uncaring when they suffer. What you did for that poor dog was truly compassionate, wanting to alleviate the suffering of others, even though it caused your own suffering.

You asked how this can happen. Obviously there are people whose thinking is so disturbed that they need to hurt others. Then there are those who, unlike you, do not have the courage to become involved. Or perhaps who feel that they do not have the time. I imagine there are many different reasons, but they come down to people being in too much pain themselves to be able to take on the suffering of others. And so they inflict pain or block it out.

You do not block the animals suffering and thus you take on their suffering. But once you have helped, you need to let go or it will haunt you and, as you said, stay with you. May I suggest trying a small ceremony. Light a candle or incense and say something meaningful as a wish for the animals happiness. A Pure Land Buddhist, for example, could chant "Amituofo."

Then speak to the animal, saying it is time to move on to the next birth and that your wishes are for it to have a better next life. Than, knowing that you have helped the animal physically and spiritually, you may be better able to "let go."

Having a change of heart towards another can require much patience and effort. Or it can happen in a flash of empathetic understanding.

Picture yourself walking down the street. You're running late as usual so decided to carry your handbag, laptop case, the new reference books you need to use today, and a large cup of coffee rather then make a second trip from the car. Suddenly, you are pushed from behind. Your bag, laptop, and books go flying, and you spill the coffee down the front of your best suit.

Furious, you turn around to demand why on earth the person did this when you find yourself looking at an elderly lady whose eyes are welling up with tears. She's muttering to herself a mantra she may often say "So stupid." She looks terribly embarrassed and seems so frail.

And in a flash, you have a change of heart. Your anger dissolves, and your only thought is to comfort her and tell her it's alright.

If we can similarly feel the suffering of those who upset us, our anger towards them can likewise dissolve.

From Sharon Astyk's blog "Casaubon's Book": 

My friend Pat Meadows, a very, very smart woman, has a wonderful idea she calls “The Theory of Anyway.” What it entails is this - she argues that 95% of what is needed to resolve the coming crisis in energy depletion, or climate change, or whatever is what we should do anyway, and when in doubt about how to change, we should change our lives to reflect what we should be doing “Anyway.” Living more simply, more frugally, using less, leaving reserves for others, reconnecting with our food and our community, these are things we should be doing because they are the right thing to do on many levels. That they also have the potential to save our lives is merely a side benefit (a big one, though).

This is, I think, a deeply powerful way of thinking because it is a deeply moral way of thinking - we would like to think of ourselves as moral people, but we tend to think of moral questions as the obvious ones “should I steal or pay?” “Should I hit or talk?” But the real and most essential moral questions of our lives are the questions we rarely ask of the things we do every day, “Should I eat this?” “Where should I live and how?” “What should I wear?” “How should I keep warm/cool?” We think of these questions as foregone conclusions - I should keep warm X way because that’s the kind of furnace I have, or I should eat this because that’s what’s in the grocery store. Pat’s Theory of Anyway turns this around, and points out that what we do, the way we live, must pass ethical muster first - we must always ask the question “Is this contributing to the repair of the world, or its destruction.”

So if you told me that tomorrow, peak oil had been resolved, I’d still keep gardening, hanging my laundry, cutting back and trying to find a way to make do with less. Because even if we found enough oil to power our society for a thousand years, there would still be climate change, and it would be *wrong* of me to choose my own convenience over the security and safety of my children and other people’s children. And if you told me tomorrow that we’d fixed climate change, that we could power our lives forever with renewables, I would still keep gardening and living frugally. Because our agriculture is premised on depleted soil and aquifers, and we’re facing a future in which many people don’t have enough food and water if we keep eating this way, and to allow that to happen would be a betrayal of what I believe is right. And if you told me that we’d fixed that problem too, that we were no longer depleting our aquifers and expanding the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, I’d still keep gardening and telling others to do the same, because our reliance on food from other nations, and our economy impoverishes and starves millions, even billions of poor people and creates massive economic inequities that do tremendous harm. And if you told me that globalization was over, and that we were going to create a just economic system, and we’d fixed all the other problems, and that I didn’t have to worry anymore, would I then stop gardening?

No. Because the nurture of my piece of land would still be the right thing to do. Doing things with no more waste than is absolutely necessary would still be the right thing to do. The creation of a fertile, sustainable, lasting place of beauty would still be my right work in the world. I would still be a Jew, obligated by G-d to Tikkun Olam, to “the repair of the world.” I would still be obligated to live in way that prevented wildlife from being run to extinction and poisons contaminating the earth. I would still be obligated to make the most of what I have and reduce my needs so they represent a fair share of what the earth has to offer. I would still be obligated to treat poor people as my siblings, and you do not live comfortably when your siblings suffer or have less. I am obligated to live rightly, in part because of what living rightly gives me - integrity, honor, joy, a better relationship with my diety of choice, peace.

There are people out there who are prepared to step forward and give up their cars, start growing their own food, stop consuming so much and stop burning fossil fuels…just as soon as peak oil, or climate change, or government rationing, or some external force makes them. But that, I believe is the wrong way to think about this. We can’t wait for others to tell us, or the disaster to befall us. We have to do now, do today, do with all our hearts, the things we should have been doing “Anyway” all along.

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