The First Precept (Harmlessness/Not Killing)

[Daniel Ionita]

I really need to look into metta meditation. I've only been practicing breath meditation. Any pointers on where I could start reading about it?

Metta,
Danial

[Bo Schafers]

Yes....

Here (quick and easy) and Here (very very detailed)

[Alex Rogolsky]

Many doctrines, including Ahimsa, can be taken to ridiculous and impractical extremes. The most dramatic illustration of this is in Jainism, in which the most devoted adherents apologize for killing microscopic life-forms and commit suicide in order to avoid harming others. Should one take an anti-biotic when one is sick and thereby kill millions of bacteria? Obviously, self-preservation must come first, unless one wishes to commit suicide via misplaced compassion.

I live in a ground-floor condo bordering a forest. Aside from the usual mosquitoes and gnats, I've been subjected to mice, fruit flies, and crickets, and I have absolutely no problem killing any of them, because there's no practical alternative to doing so. Mice carry disease, fruit flies become a swarming infestation if ignored, and a single cricket can keep me up all night with its constant chirping. Unless I smack one the moment that I see it (rather than trying to gently and compassionately remove it and release it outside), it'll get away and I'll be up all night. They're very fast.

If one includes plants (and there is some evidence that plants have feelings, too), then obviously it is impossible to live without killing other beings. I think that the true meaning of the doctrine of non-harming is that we should try to progress towards a minimization of suffering (i.e. liberate the most evolved creatures, like humans and other higher mammals, first), and then gradually move down the ladder. Perhaps in ten or twenty thousand years we'll have bodies of pure spirit and be able to feed ourselves simply by absorbing starlight, but I wouldn't recommend trying it now.

Best,
Alex

[Dee Randell]

Your circumstances sound difficult Alex. We get the occasional fruit fly infestation but have found keeping food waste outside the house, keeping fruits and juices locked away, we minimise it. They can literally breed in damp cloths though, so I use a dust buster vaccuum if we get a lot, it doesn't kill them and I just suck them up and release them in the garden.

[Thomas Nelson]

I live in the forest, so there are critters everywhere, all the time, so Alex, I can relate to your situation. It is hard for me to not kill when I find a deer tick (the kind that carries Lyme Disease) attached to my daughter. The way I heard it explained by Ajahn Brahm was that the spirit of the precept, if you read it in it's original form and language, means "animals". In other words, it is okay to kill microbes, plants, fungi, etc. In my heart, I feel it means any sentient being. Something that has a "mind." I capture crickets and release them outside. But whether or not they have a "mind" is debatable. The only time I would kill and animal is if I had to eat in order to survive, or in defense of myself or my family. That has not happened yet to me, but it does for many peoples.

[Daniel Ionita]

@ Alex

I share a line of thought similar to yours, my thoughts go from wether it is alright to kill the mosquito in my room which won't let me sleep if i let it live and which I can't capture alive to thoughts that go as far as even thinking of wether i would be able to kill or harm a human being in order to save another.

On the other hand the percepts as I find them, are not meant to take people to extremes. Many times we have no choice, many times saving a creature might bring harm to urself (spending time trying to catch the cricket alive for example, and not sleeping as a result) and sometimes killing something might just seem practical. In the end it all comes down to the interest and effort you put into trying to make the best out of a situation, without over-sacrificing yourself.

For example you might have to kill a cricket tonight because it's 24PM and you have work tomorrow and the circumstances of either letting it sing or spending the time to capture it alive might have bad circumstances to your personal or proffesional life, but when you have the time you should try and figure out how the cricket got in and if there is any way to prevent others from coming into your home, for example getting nets for the windows or sealing up cracks. This is just an example I don't know your situation. But I'm trying to illustrate what i think keeping this percept is about.

[Alex Rogolsky]

Thomas-

What if all living things (including plants and lower organisms) are sentient to some extent - that there is a continuum from the most evolved to the least, rather than some having no mind at all?

If that is the case, would it not make sense to see the doctrine of non-harming as representing a kind of moral evolution, in which humans learn to treat each other more humanely, and then gradually, progressively move down the ladder, to mammals and other beings?

-Alex

[Thomas Nelson]

Good points. I have no answer for you. My opinion is that to be "sentient", an organism must have a nervous system. But I am a Biologist by training and might be totally wrong about that. As to your latter point, it makes perfect sense to me. Let's face it, you cannot live without taking the life of other beings, be it plants or fungi or whatever. No food, no life.

An interesting tidbit of information... humans have more micro-organism cells in and on our bodies than we have our own cells. So just the act of living results in the killing of billions of microbes.

[Jerrod Lopes]

It always comes down to intent. You can also intend to be self-centered and careless, and this counts just as well. We can ask questions until the end of time to try and dodge responsibility for our actions, yet it remains that, a dodge. I am certain as caqn be that the vast majority of thinking adults know when they are doing something 'wrong' and when they're not. Killing a cricket is ok because one needs to sleep?! Seriously?! Oh well, then the next time the guys at the bar down the street get a live band and keep me up on a friday night it's ok to kill them because they're bothering me? How are these noisy strangers to mean any more to me than the cricket? Neither does much for me personally and I don't really need them. So why not kill the humans but the cricket is ok? What if it's a cat, meowing outside my window, as happens from time to time? Or the neighbor's dog barking at all hours (every night)? What if teddy bears secretly have feelings they don't share, and sad clown faces drawn with crayons on paper? We should never throw them away because they might be sentient and we don't want to hurt them?

Why not let the cricket live because it's not his fault we have to get up early? It is very rude and inconsiderate to kill this creature just because he's doing his thing at the right time of day for him. We are so important that all the creatures who get in our way or annoy us to any little degree must die. Yet we build houses next to lakes, knowing they're breeding grounds for mosquitos. Yet I'm a hypocrite because I kill deadly black widow spiders around the house from time to time. Yet only the ones IN the house. I figure if they're outside, it's their house. So anyway. We can make all the excuses we want and split hairs until our axes dull forever....killing is killing is killing. fooling oneself is human. Fooling others is just wrong.

Jerrod

[Sunil Dandeniya]

The argument seems to be that in our own eyes we are the culmination of evolution, the top of the tops, so we just create some more arguments to kill and torture other living beings. Whatever the argument, behind it is fear. If we really pause with metta, we can see that we need not be that afraid. Who is afraid? Our ego. So it creates nice-worded arguments like this evolution to hide the fear and cruelty behind.

with metta
sunil

[Thomas Nelson]

Living things cannot eat dirt or rocks. We have to eat other living things to survive. So was Ajahn Brahm incorrect when he said it is okay to kill microbes, plants and fungi? Is it wrong for someone that lives in the arctic to eat to survive? There are no plants to eat in the arctic, and several other habitats in the world. They survive solely on animals. And if Ajahn Brahm was correct, who decided which organisms are okay to kill and which ones are not?

[Alex Rogolsky]

Jerrod,

My point is that an ethic of non-harming can be taken to ridiculous and impractical extremes, and I used the Jains as an illustration because there are some devoted adherents among them who commit suicide, apologizing first for the lives that they've taken merely by breathing, rather than harming other beings (including the microscopic ones that many people don't consider sentient).

On the most basic, practical level, survival takes priority for most people most of the time, and that value should be taken into consideration in any realistic ethical system. It does not merely include such clear-cut issues as using an anti-biotic to kill millions of bacteria in one's body when one is sick, but also doing things which make one's survival more likely and more tolerable, such as swatting mosquitoes and killing crickets when they make it difficult or impossible to sleep.

You are correct that there is no clear line to determine when it is "right", more right, or "less wrong" to kill a particular creature that threatens, irritates, or otherwise annoys you. But just because there is no moral Rubicon - no clear line which determines whether a particular act or intent is right or wrong - doesn't mean that there isn't a continuum. The continuum which I see as viable would be that of biological evolution, since it would seem reasonable to assume that more evolved creatures have more capacity to suffer due to more evolved brains/nervous systems. It seems reasonable to assume that it's worse to kill a dog than it is to kill a chicken, worse to kill a chicken than a worm, and so forth.

There may also be an element which is, to some extent, situational and subjective. One person who has noisy crickets in his apartment may be able to sleep even with them, may not care as much as another whether he sleeps or not, or may be willing to get drunk or take something in order to sleep so that he doesn't have to hunt down and kill the crickets. But that doesn't mean that we should judge others' decisions or intents based upon the decisions of such a person.

There is a story that I recall from the Jewish tradition in which two scholars are arguing about a particular ethical matter, and one of them asks God whether he's right or not. The heavens thunder, and God proclaims that the first scholar is right. The second replies that God gave the Law to Man, and that only Man has the right to interpret it, and God backs down. The point of the story has nothing to do with whether one believes in "God" or not, but that ethics are not unambiguous and Absolute, but are to a certain extent subjective, and that each of us has to live in this non-ideal world and make our own individual judgments as to which which rules sustain us.

[Jerrod Lopes]

Thomas,

We (humans) have to eat plants to survive and incidentally eat microbes. We kill them merely by breathing, let alone eating them. But the intention is not there and the willful ignorance is not there. This simply just IS. We do not have to eat meat. I do personally, but don't need to in order to survive. I know this for certain as I experimented for some time with veganism and vegetarianism. Gorillas that are much larger and stronger than me don't eat meat, and are much like me physiologically.

Common sense dictates which animals will be killed despite our efforts to the contrary. Speaking of common sense.... humans don't HAVE to live in the arctic. Is a plant a being? If you assert so then I would say these precepts are either something youmust abandon or you will surely die..because somehow or other, you are going to kill something either willfully, accidentally, or via neglect, and last but not least, just by being. To answer your last question, it was the Buddha himself I am told that said that we should endeavor not to bring harm to anything larger than a flea ( and the flea is included too).

Jerrod

[Jerrod Lopes]

Alex,

Your way of thinking falls contradictory to the precept of harmlessness when it suits you, which of course is fine. If you don't follow the precepts, you don't follow thew precepts. But why split hairs constantly to make a point which cannot be made ( that the precept is archaic and largely useless at best)? You say that the precept can be taken to ridiculous and impractical extremes. Of course it can. But how often is it done so by Buddhists? If such a person has a true grasp of the teachings, then all of this becomes a big waste of time. Investigation and questioning is one thing, ridicule another. What is the aim? What are we hoping to achieve by speculating about extreme/fringe behaviors? Is it a search to prove that Buddhists are humans too? Because one sees no benefit in killing for the sake of one's own comfort then one must be deluded in extremism somehow? Survival doesn't require happiness or peace of mind, comfort, having one's own way just the way they like it.

Should we judge a person based on the fact that he kills crickets in his apartment in order to sleep peacefully? For all practical puposes, no; save for the fact that we are communicating in a thread, in a forum, dedicated to a philosophy/religion/moral belief system that incorporates harmlessness into its foundation and core. Just common sense. We are discussing the merits of not killing things merely for our amusement, comfort, convenience and so forth. The merits are clear. The gains for the opposite have, however, rarely come to light excepting that one may be able to get to sleep more quickly that way.

Jerrod

[Alex Rogolsky]

Jerrod,

I don't think that my way of thinking does fall contrary to the spirit of the precept, although perhaps it updates it. If it is impossible to totally abstain from taking life (and survive), and extremely impractical to even abstain to the extent that one's own life is threatened or the quality of one's life is severely degraded, then it would seem that the logical course would be to support the progress toward minimizing the taking of life, or toward the minimization of suffering, as it were.

I agree that there is a calculation that each individual makes when, for instance, killing a mosquito or cricket - that there is a moral continuum or gray area that exists between preserving one's sanity or quality of life and "having one's way just the way one likes it." Certainly it's less ok to poison a barking dog that keeps one up at night than it is to kill a cricket. I don't think that I'm ridiculing Buddhism by "speculating about fringe behaviors" when I raise these matters, either, because although I do feel that interpretation of the precept is somewhat ambiguous and even subjective, I think that it would be helpful to at least attempt to define some kind of perspective on its practical implications in life.

It may be that part of the confusion regarding the practical manner by which to abide by the precept stems from two sources.
Firstly, perhaps when Buddhism originated about 2,500 years ago, there was probably far less understanding of what constitutes a living organism than what we have now. Secondly, there is the notion, which I view as completely absurd but which I've nevertheless encountered among some Jains, Hindus, Buddhists, and New Agers, that all life forms are "equal"- that the life of a human is "worth" the life of a bird or worm, for instance. At our present stage of evolution, it is virtually impossible to conform to this view in practice, and I re-emphasize my opinion that, while all life is sacred and while all suffering should be taken into consideration, it is simply not possible to liberate all sentient beings at once. What seems more like common sense to me is a kind of moral evolution model, in which those beings with the greatest capacity for sentience (e.g. humans, higher mammals) are liberated first, and then the rest follow. I believe that this evolutionary process is gradual and ongoing and borne out by history (although with some major temporary set-backs). For the most part, we're no longer cannibals, and we don't practice human sacrifice or enslave other humans.

As I said before, I look forward to a time perhaps thousands of years in the future when humans won't harm any other organisms and will subsist on rocks and starlight, but in the meantime, I think that it is counterproductive to the spirit of the precept to simultaneously attempt to live in that ideal time now and criticize others for failing to do so, or to stifle the dynamic adaptibility of a belief system by wholly grafting onto it an obsolete literalist interpretation of a 2,500 year old text written before there was much in the way of science.

Regarding my purpose or aim in raising certain issues or asking certain questions, it basically comes down to clarification, and always has. I'm just a religion student.


Best,
Alex