The little things

We all need as many reminders to be compassionate as we can get. Living the joke about Buddhists not killing insects, I found myself this weekend cleaning carefully enough not to disturb active spider webs, reminding me of this summer’s practice of doing a better job than ever releasing far more house flies than killing them. A reminder that real power is the affordable power to affirm life.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 15th, 2005 at 6:28am and is filed under Zen principles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

3 Responses to “The little things”

  1. Kathryn
    August 15th, 2005 01:25
    1

    Sadly, I fail that aspiration sometimes. Interesting synchronicity, though; I recently wrote about my experience with spiders here. More power to you, Jack. And maybe I’ll find some too.

  2. jack
    August 15th, 2005 09:14
    2

    I am very fallible and imperfect in this practice. Some days, it’s enough just to have the intention working. I remember a Buddhist teacher once saying that part of compassion is doing what we need to do to keep other living beings from needlessly harming others. So as long as I’m too large a meal for any poisonous insect that I’m not threatening, I will prevent them from causing needly harm : )

  3. jaclyn
    August 15th, 2005 13:58
    3

    I’m fine with that, having watched my fair share of spiders chill out on my computer monitor or in the corner of my living room. It’s fine until it’s one of those million-legged silverfish going clackety-clack in my bathtub as I am about to get in for a nice hot shower.

    Then the Pumas come out.

    Sorry. :-\

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