[Buddha-l] Re: on eating meat and pets (I'm against eating pets)

[Richard P. Hayes]

The pinto beans I just told Brother James I was going to eat still
aren't quite cooked, so I'm going to respond to Sister Laura while the
beans cook some more. Some time ago I apparently said this:


>  >My aim now is to progress to the stage where I
>  >can just watch the cat catch birds that I feed and feel simultaneous joy
>  >and commiseration.

To which on Mon, 2005-10-24 at 09:39 +1000, Sister Laura wrote:

> are you serious? (I am really not sure! so I may be silly in my reply to 
> this but I'll have a go anyway).

If even you can't tell whether I'm being serious, how am I supposed to
know? I just say things. I really can't be bothered to figure out
whether I mean for what I say to be taken seriously. But since you
brought this delicate issue up, let me try to say some more.

Some years ago I was invited to lead a workshop on mettaa-bhaavanaa
(cutivation of loving kindness), a practice I have been doing pretty
consistently for close to forty years. (If you think I'm an abrasive
asshole now, you should have seen me BEFORE forty years of mettaa
meditation made me so mild-mannered.) As I was on my way to the
workshop, I was waiting for a bus and happened to see a big raven trying
to get some baby birds out of a sparrow's nest that had been built in a
hole in the wall of an old brick building. The mother sparrow was doing
all kinds of fancy flying to distract the crow from her babies. My first
reaction was to think "I hope those baby sparrows get away!" But
immediately I realized I also hoped the big raven would get something to
eat. Now it was pretty obvious that God wasn't going to open up a can of
Paul Newman's organic raven food and put it on a china plate for my
handsome black featured friend. If the raven was going to eat, a sparrow
was going to die. As soon as that situation became quite clear to me, I
had one of those experiences that people who are trying to get some
money from you write books about. I felt a deep peace and equanimity, a
feeling that everything was really just fine and that nature is good. I
was prepared to feel compassion for either the raven or the sparrows,
depending on who got what they wanted, and sympathetic joy for the other
party. I had not the least feeling of favoritism about which party got
what they needed to survive.

Unfortunately, while I was feeling all this equanimity up their on my
spiritual peak, the raven ate a couple of sparrows. They didn't seem to
be having quite as much of a spiritual high as I was having. But hey,
spiritual highs are all about me, eh, so forget about the sparrows.

> If the cat was a wild animal and catching birds to survive, then I
> think one can feel compassion for both, the cat and the birds, but
> when we talk about cats that receive lots of love and attention and
> food, I think the only recipients of our compassion should be the poor
> birds! 

On this I will have to disagree. You and I know that the cat is going to
get her dinner tonight, but she doesn't. She doesn't know much of
anything, so far as I can see, except where to hide to be able to sneak
up on birds (who also receive lots of love and attention and food chez
moi, by the way). The cat is doing what millions of years of evolution
prepared her to do, and she shows every sign of getting a lot of joy out
of doing her job well. She also shows a LOT of signs of suffering when I
intervene and bring her indoors. Cats are outdoor animals. It's insane
to keep them indoors, looking pathetically through a window at birds
that are out of reach. Making a cat stay indoors and look at birds that
remain out of reach is every bit as inhumane as locking up people in
Guantanamo because the president of the United States has decided they
are vicious terrorists. That notwithstanding, I do try to keep this cat
indoors. But I am not so sure it's a good idea. The cat certainly
doesn't seem to think so. A the birds don't seem to care much. They
watch one of their mates get pounced on, and they just keep eating,
probably thinking "Better the cat got that drab female house finch than
ME!"

As I said before, birds in nature never live to get old. Damn few of
them make it to the stage where they reproduce themselves. Most of them
become links in the food chain very early on in their careers. It's in
the nature of birds to try not to become meals before they replace
themselves. It's in the nature of cats and other predators to get a
regular meal. 

And we human beings? What's our nature? Well, our nature is to think
about all these things and to try to interpret the text that nature
provides for us and to figure out our place in this whole sad situation
and to make decisions about what is good for us to do. Like Socrates, I
never let a day go by without thinking about where I stand with respect
to the good. And, like Socrates, I have only questions but never find
answers.

> I don't think the cats should be judged,  if we think about it, we as
> owners need to take the blame for our cat's behaviour

If cats shouldn't be blamed, why should we blame ourselves? Because
blaming is our nature? Perhaps it is. But I would also say that it is in
our nature to strive to transcend the shallowness that manifests itself
in praising and blaming.

And perhaps we should remember that there is quite a bit of evidence
that human beings and dogs and cats have been keep each other company,
apparently by mutual consent, for a very long time. Taking care of
animals seems to be, well, part of our nature as human beings. And I'm
glad it is. I like most dogs and cats quite a bit more than I like most
human beings. (That's because, as Brother James will tell you, keeping
human company just ain't natural.)

Now while you're figuring out whether I was being serious, I'm going to
go eat my beans and rice and watch my canine and feline friends eat some
bones and mice.

-- 
Richard