One of the mindfulness trainings I accepted at Deer Park was not to take life. Other traditions call it a precept or a vow, and if I saw it that way, I would have violated it, failed. In the tradition of Deer Park, it’s a training. It’s good to not take life, but it’s even better to understand why not take life, any life, even if it means taking a life, breaking the precept, to learn it.
In this training, killing the mosquito was still a big deal. It was a life. Here it was, just in this lifetime, a culmination of a life process, existing, metabolizing, functional. In an instant, in one swift act of god-like arrogance, I unilaterally chose to remove this life. Not to be overly dramatic, I realize that the majority consensus of the world would find no fault in swatting a mosquito. After all, no one would fault Noah if he had swatted those two mosquitoes.
Maybe no one cared about this mosquito in the way we cherish our loved ones, but cherishing our loved ones can be seen as an artificial construct. The effort going into creating a life, whether mosquito or human, and the value of that effort can be seen as the same. Who is to say that it wasn’t a precious life? How many precious human and animal lives have been taken throughout history in a manner no different than swatting a mosquito?
I also considered my killing of this mosquito as a relationship. My relationship with this mosquito. What was my role in killing it? I was the killer, it was the kill-ee. What was its role in being killed by me? From its point of view, it wasn’t a thought, there were no ideas involved. It was bzz-bzz-bzz *thwack*, and that’s all, she wrote.
As a student of the ideas in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, I have to consider what I possibly set in motion in that context. I sent it through another cycle of death and re-birth. Karma kicks in. Ordinarily, a mosquito is killed, you have your karma and it has its karma, both go on your merry way.
In this case, I have my karma, it has its karma, but now they are intertwined because of how much thought I’m putting into it, because of mindfulness. To me, it’s death wasn’t worthless. If I let it live, that would have been good, but no further thought would have gone into it, a different kind of worth but not as focused, and eventually it would have died anyway.
In meditation, I consider the life that was the mosquito. I consider our lives as energy, and I imagine generating positive energy towards this life I took and sent again through the bardo states. I don’t know the karma it’s living out, as far as I imagine it has been a mosquito or an insect since that sort of life form evolved on this planet, with no dharma affecting it to change its karma. Until now, perhaps. Just perhaps.
Walking down a street today, I saw a woman limping with some leg defect. I felt fortunate to have this human life with good health and good circumstances. I felt and generated compassion towards her. Then I sarcastically thought, “where was this great compassion towards that mosquito?”
Indeed.
April 5, riding north on the riverside bikeways to the Keelung River (Pentax ZX-5n, Ilford XP2 Super film).
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| Danshui River |
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| top of an embankment, not officially bikeway which is presumably way over on the right near the presumable Keelung River. |
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| Keelung River, |
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| Keelung River, Taipei 101 in the distance |
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| Grand Hotel Taipei in the background (the one on the right) |
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| 3:54 p.m. - I thought those were being constructed, but they must've run out of money or something because that's how they would stay for years. Maybe no money to even take them down. |
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| 4:32 p.m. - Grand Hotel Taipei and red line MRT |
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| You Are Here, pretty much where the previous pic was shot |
