GET YOUR HAPPY ON! - a meliorist worldview

The other day, on my parents’ driveway, I observed a dead baby bird on that seemed to have fallen from an overhead tree branch nest. A few ants were insepecting the unfeathered chick. What should one do and think when one sees something like that?

I didn’t know what to do, but I didn’t want anyone to step on the dead bird. I picked the little chick with a piece of bark and placed its body beneath some leafy undergrowth near the tree. I don’t know if I took the most appropriate action, but I did what I thought was best at the time.

Karma is like that. In a lifetime full of split-second decisions, it is difficult to KNOW what is the best action to take at any specific moment; we are all geniuses in hindsight. The Eightfold Path is useful in this instance, because it suggests that you probably won’t make the wrong decision if you act with a heart full of loving-kindness toward every living being.

Many years ago (before I even became a Buddhist), I witnessed one of our cats crushing an ant as she stepped outdoors. She did not notice that she had stepped on the ant; she simply began her morning patrol of the yard.

The event was remarkable in my mind. Why had I witnessed the event? The cat is so nimble, so preternaturally aware of all around her, yet she took no notice of the ant she had crushed with her foot. It wasn’t as though the cat knew and didn’t care, nor did the cat notice the ant and play with it as was her wont. I never forgot about that moment. Maybe it was an insignificant event in the grand scheme of things, but for some reason, it met something to me.

After I had been studying Buddhism for a few years, I asked my dharma teacher, the abbott of a Theravedan monestary, about the event. He said, “Well, of course, the Law of Karma applies differently to animals.” Duh, right? Well, it really helped me have a fuller understanding of the integrated relationship of all things.

Because they lack cognition, animals are unable to conform fully to the Noble Eightfold Path, so they are trapped in the cycle of suffering — ironic, considering that one of the objectives toward achieving Enlightenment is maintaining the mind in a concentrated state without cognition.

To become Enlightened, one must have the mind of a loving animal, and an animal must be reincarnated as a human to escape the cycle of suffering (by reacquiring the loving mind of non-thought).

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