Post by MagnetMan on Jan 5, 2009 20:47:41 GMT -5
I believe that all organic life shares the same basic awareness of the death moment.
I have experienced this with our pets when the time came for me to put them down. I have always done this myself. In that final moment, as a murmured my final farewell, they have known that the end has come.
I have a poignant tale to tell that illustrates this very well.
Back in 1979 I was a monk in Zen monastery in Japan. My visa had expired and I had to leave the country in order to apply for a renewal. The process took three months. As I had renounced all wealth, I had only an airline ticket and no money. I decided to go to Thailand and work as a volunteer in a Cambodian refugee camp while waiting for the visa to come through.
30,000 Khmer Rouge were crammed into the camp on the Cambodian border . These were the same people that had just a few years earlier participated in the Killing Fields and murdered some two million of their own people while under the rule of Pol Pot. Among the those they killed where most of their monks. Though I was not ordained as a Theravada Buddhist, under the circumstances they were prepared to listen and practice Zen Buddhism.
Everyday somebody died. Their bodies were cremated in the grounds of an adjoining Thai Buddhist monastery, which is where I was staying. One morning, on the way to attend a cremation,. a small wire-haired terrier came past me. She had a huge cyst under her belly that was larger than her. She was obviously in extreme pain. She dragged herself past me and crept into the shade under one of the monk's kutis. With me at the time was an Englishmen who was a resident Theravada monk at the monastery. He told me that the dog was the pet of the abbot. I suggested that the dog needed to be put down. He shook his head. Buddhist were not allowed to take a life. . He was not prepared to argue whether the Buddha was wrong to ban euthanasia under such circumstances. He agreed however that in England the abbot would be prosecuted for animal cruelty
I crept under the shed and spoke to the dog, gently telling her that if she wanted to die, I would try and see to it. How, when, and with what weapon I did not know. Then I went away to have a quick cup of tea with the English monk before the cremation ceremony. While sitting in his kuti my arm slipped behind the seat and landed on the hilt of a hidden machete. This happened only minutes after talking to the dog. The exact necessary instrument of death was at hand.
After the tea we went to watch the cremation. The body of a young man and a tiny child, wrapped in burial robes, lay outside the oven, I was astonished at the amount of wood required to reduce them to ashes. Minutes later I saw the little bitch dragging herself tweeds me. She came right up to me and literally sat down on top of my sandals. There was no mistaking the look in her eyes as she gazed up at me. She was frightened. She wet herself on me.
Here was the dog asking me to fulfill my promise. I had the weapon and here was the oven. The English monk was silent. Our unresolved argument about the legitimacy of euthanasia seemed to have been settled by a consciousness larger than the Buddha. I asked the presiding monk if the dog could be cremated with the young man and the child, he refused, That would be a sacrilege.
I picked up the little dog, went and fetched the machete and took her out to a field. I murmured farewell. She presented her neck and I cut her head off .
One day while sitting land istening to the Buddha talk a dog walked into the temple grounds. A Disciple asked the Buddha: "Does that dog have Buddha nature?"
The Buddha answered "Mu"
That can mean both Yes and No.
I have experienced this with our pets when the time came for me to put them down. I have always done this myself. In that final moment, as a murmured my final farewell, they have known that the end has come.
I have a poignant tale to tell that illustrates this very well.
Back in 1979 I was a monk in Zen monastery in Japan. My visa had expired and I had to leave the country in order to apply for a renewal. The process took three months. As I had renounced all wealth, I had only an airline ticket and no money. I decided to go to Thailand and work as a volunteer in a Cambodian refugee camp while waiting for the visa to come through.
30,000 Khmer Rouge were crammed into the camp on the Cambodian border . These were the same people that had just a few years earlier participated in the Killing Fields and murdered some two million of their own people while under the rule of Pol Pot. Among the those they killed where most of their monks. Though I was not ordained as a Theravada Buddhist, under the circumstances they were prepared to listen and practice Zen Buddhism.
Everyday somebody died. Their bodies were cremated in the grounds of an adjoining Thai Buddhist monastery, which is where I was staying. One morning, on the way to attend a cremation,. a small wire-haired terrier came past me. She had a huge cyst under her belly that was larger than her. She was obviously in extreme pain. She dragged herself past me and crept into the shade under one of the monk's kutis. With me at the time was an Englishmen who was a resident Theravada monk at the monastery. He told me that the dog was the pet of the abbot. I suggested that the dog needed to be put down. He shook his head. Buddhist were not allowed to take a life. . He was not prepared to argue whether the Buddha was wrong to ban euthanasia under such circumstances. He agreed however that in England the abbot would be prosecuted for animal cruelty
I crept under the shed and spoke to the dog, gently telling her that if she wanted to die, I would try and see to it. How, when, and with what weapon I did not know. Then I went away to have a quick cup of tea with the English monk before the cremation ceremony. While sitting in his kuti my arm slipped behind the seat and landed on the hilt of a hidden machete. This happened only minutes after talking to the dog. The exact necessary instrument of death was at hand.
After the tea we went to watch the cremation. The body of a young man and a tiny child, wrapped in burial robes, lay outside the oven, I was astonished at the amount of wood required to reduce them to ashes. Minutes later I saw the little bitch dragging herself tweeds me. She came right up to me and literally sat down on top of my sandals. There was no mistaking the look in her eyes as she gazed up at me. She was frightened. She wet herself on me.
Here was the dog asking me to fulfill my promise. I had the weapon and here was the oven. The English monk was silent. Our unresolved argument about the legitimacy of euthanasia seemed to have been settled by a consciousness larger than the Buddha. I asked the presiding monk if the dog could be cremated with the young man and the child, he refused, That would be a sacrilege.
I picked up the little dog, went and fetched the machete and took her out to a field. I murmured farewell. She presented her neck and I cut her head off .
One day while sitting land istening to the Buddha talk a dog walked into the temple grounds. A Disciple asked the Buddha: "Does that dog have Buddha nature?"
The Buddha answered "Mu"
That can mean both Yes and No.
