The other way to look at life - How-To

During the past couple of days, I'd have given a thought to two seperate issues. The first story was with a story published on pantip. The second was with friends of mine.

The first story is about a doctor who saved a pig from being slaughtered. This doctor was driving a car when he saw a pig fell off the truck. This pig was injured and it couldn't walk back to the back of the truck. So he offered to buy this pig and put it in his house. Later he found out that he could donate this pig to a monastery so the pig could have spent the rest of its life in a monastery far away. He and his girlfriend then proceeded to donate this pig to that monastery. However, he was still attached to the pig. Later he went back to the monastery to find that this pig was killed for meat the day he donated it. He felt he was betrayed so he started an internet discussion regarding this pig-killing monastery. He created hate e-mail and people started to forward his e-mails all over the country. Thousands of people were upset.

I have a different point of view. From the way I look at it, the monk did order the pig to be killed. This is not typical for a buddhist monk. However, it's not a far-fetched idea. Human race kill millions of animals everyday. This pig has to face its end at the holy place. So we have one wrong-doing monk and one angry doctor. This doctor (even though he already donated the pig) still has "ownership" feeling over the pig. This is not the right mindset. When you donate anything, your relationship with that thing must end. So this doctor should not feel that he still owns the pig.

So what do we have from this story? One wrong-doing monk who killed animal and One angry doctor. The doctor went on to write about the story to the public on the Internet. In buddhism, this doctor has created at least 10,000 angry people (2% of people who read this Internet site per day - this site has more than 500,000 readers per day). So if 1 of 10,000 angry people stop believing in Buddhism because of him. He already commited a bad karma without his knowledge. What if 10,000 angry people talk to their friends, this number multiplies very quickly. So the doctor has commited bad karma - much more than the monk - who ordered to kill a pig. Who knows what reasons that monk had when he ordered the execution?

The way i see is this:
1. The doctor committed bad karma
2. The monk committed wrong doing
3. The pig's karma designated that it had to be killed - no mattter the external factor - the doctor's help - can not change the outcome.

In summary, we can not change karma, we can only postpone. Maybe if I can, I'd like to suggest the doctor to:
1. Accept that he felt betrayed
2. Realize that he could only forgive the monk - the pig must die anyway - its death is caused by its karma
3. Realize that he can not change the pig's karma
4. Forgive the monk and let go the feeling
5. Continue to do good things
6. Let karma to work its magic with the monk - karma will eventually come back to the monk anyway

He should rather think this way. So he wouldn't create hate e-mails, heated discussion on the Internet board. He wouldn't make 10,000 people angry. He wouldn't make monks at these two monasteries uneasy. He could easily make 100 monks feeling bad.

So whenever you are in pain, anger, or uneasy feeling, you need to remember Buddha's teaching:
1. Pain
2. Realize that you're in pain
3. Think of the way to go out of pain
4. Move on and get rid of the pain

The second one is about the chieftain of a clan. This chief recently sold his bread shop to another chieftain of another clan for 73 breads. More on this later.