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1、Save all Life in the World- of man and bird and beastProfessor Bhikkhu DhammavihariAll beings dread death. It is also true that all dread being battered and beaten. This, we must remember about ourselves as well. Therefore we shall neither kill nor bring about the death of others. This idea is beaut
2、ifully expressed in the Buddhist Manual of Good Living called the Dhammapada as follows.Sabbe tasanti daassa sabbe bhyanti maccunoattnam upama katv na haneyya na ghtaye. Dhp. v.129This Buddhist attitude of living in friendship with all else that lives everywhere, i.e. both on this earth and in the u
3、niverse as a whole, is comprehensively covered under the terms mett in Pali and maitr in Sanskrit. It is often referred to as universal loving kindness. It is, in other words, the spirit of friendliness expressed without any reservations towards all living things. This magnanimous philosophy of amit
4、y or friendship in Buddhism is fully enunciated in the Metta Sutta of the Buddhists Sn. vv. 143-152 and Khp. p.8f., and brings within its fold all grades of life, of man and bird and beast, no matter how large or small they are. Seen or unseen, near or far, all life is encompassed within thoughts of
5、 loving kindness. In displeasure or in ill-will, one shall not long for or plan for the destruction of another. With more or less maternal affection, one is called upon to look at all life in the universe = Mt yath niya putta yus ekaputtam anurakkahe / Evampi sabba-bhtesu mnasa bhvaye aparimnam. op.
6、cit. This attitude to the vast world we live in is expected to pervade all areas of Buddhist life, both religious and secular.World Trends TodayAs we take into consideration this wide concept of the universe, we discover that life on earth, has to be a co-operative process, based on the principle of
7、 inter-relatedness, not only of mutual assistance but also of mutual non-interruption and non-interference, in order that serious imbalances and consequent destruction of parts or the whole might not be brought about. The scientists of the world today emphatically announce the disastrous movement of
8、 man, unwittingly though, in the direction of destroying the biota of the world we live in. Note what the men, whose thinking in the world matters, say on this subject.The one process now going on that will take millions of years to correct is the loss of genetic and species diversity by the destruc
9、tion of natural habitats. This is the folly our descendants are least likely to forgive us. Although oft-cited and reported, the scale of the unfolding catastrophic loss of many and varied ecosystems through human activity is still only dimly perceived, for the link between the degradation of the bi
10、ota and the diminishment of the human prospect is poorly understood.The Biophilia Hypothesis. Edited by Stephen R. Kellart and Edward O. Wilson, Island Press, 1993,. The protagonists of the idea of biophilia hypothesis whom we have quoted above are laudably moving today in the same direction as espo
11、used in Buddhism. This is already in the spirit of the teachings of kya Muni Buddha who expressed them more than two and a half millennia ago. These thinkers of today whom we would unhesitatingly call philosopher scientists, reiterate the utterances of this ancient wisdom. But they cannot emphasize
12、it any more than what their Sri Lankan predecessors have implicitly done more than a thousand years earlier. The contemporary stress on this kind of thinking, namely that the desire for the survival of man must go closely hand in hand with an equal degree of respect for the survival and well-being o
13、f the animal world around us is boldly reflected in the writings of todays philosopher-thinkers like Peter Singer Professor of Philosophy at Monash University, Australia. One must co-operatively read his Animal Liberation 1975, 1990 and his Save the Animals co-authored with Barbara Dover and Ingrid
14、Newkirk, 1990,1991, with an appreciable measure of sympathy, to comprehend the total dimension of this line of thinking and to meaningfully relate it to the Buddhist concept of love or universal loving kindness mett. In a beautifully written brief FOREWORD to the small book Save the Animals referred
15、 to above, Linda Mc Cartney writes the following with a remarkably disarming candour.A long time ago we realized that anyone who cares about the Earth - really cares - must stop eating animals. The more we read about de-forestation, water pollution, and topsoil erosion, the stronger that realization
16、 becomes. Of course, anyone who cares about animals must stop eating animals. Just the thought of what happens in a slaughter house is enough. We stopped eating meat the day we happened to look out of our window during Sunday lunch and saw our young lambs playing happily, as kittens do, in the fields. Eating bits of them suddenly made no sense. In fact, it was revolting. If you want to live a
