How to help sentient beings in the animal realm who are destined to be?

question:

Hello, Master! The disciple is moving and wants to find an adoption for a stray cat he has been feeding. But then I thought about it, it was an animal that could not hear the Dharma and could not change his destiny. If he found adoption and let it live a good life, it could only consume its blessings but not cultivate blessings. If he had used up his blessings, he would still suffer. ； If you don’t seek adoption for it, and ask it to continue wandering and endure more hardships, perhaps it can eliminate more karma. Similarly, our dog lives a life of luxury every day, but I am worried that it will suffer after exhausting its blessings. Even if I recite the Buddha's name every day, what's the use of chanting sutras? It will never have the chance to learn Buddhism and practice like a human being in this life. So if you want to treat them worse, maybe you can help them eliminate karma. I pray to Master for mercy to teach you how to help these sentient beings with fate? Do you need to find an adoption for stray cats? Will they hate if they are not good to them?

Master Kuanjian:

You have been feeding a stray cat and want to find an adoption for it. I admire you very much. I think you are a responsible Buddhist. You are compassionate. When you see sentient beings feel pitiful, you are willing to express compassion to help them.

Can sentient beings in the animal realm not be able to listen to the Dharma, so can they grow good relationships? You can see on the Internet that there are many spiritual beings in the animal realm, such as cats, dogs, and cows. They are even very pious. They are spiritual! If you are that stray cat, you are pitiful. Do you want someone to adopt you? If you see someone getting sick, should you help him? Do you want to help someone when you see him lying on the ground? But he did not believe in Buddhism. Even if you save him, he will not listen to the sutras and Dharma, and he will not be able to change his destiny. If he should have died, would he not be able to save him? Have you helped him eliminate his blessings? Should we be kind to those around us? Is this helping them eliminate their blessings?

If we follow your logic, we should let the stray cat continue to wander, and even find ways to make it frozen and hungry, make its conditions a little harder, and find ways to hone it. Is this better?

In fact, it is easy to solve many things by thinking from the perspective of others: Do you need others to help you in your suffering? Aren’t you afraid that others will help you lose your blessings? Do you want the people around you to be nice to you? Aren’t you afraid of eliminating your blessings? Do we hope others will seek trouble from us and temper us, so that we can survive and die and eliminate our karma? There is really something wrong with our logic.

All the Dharma we have learned is used to measure ourselves, not others! But I have really seen it, and some people are afraid that their blessings will be lost. Even if your blessings are lost, but you have added blessings to others, isn’t it because you are kind-hearted? It’s good to sacrifice yourself to achieve others. In fact, many times we are just lazy, or we have not started the bodhicitta, but we have found too many reasons.

The key is your first intention. Ask yourself, are you laziness or greed? The two are different. Some people are just greedy for this cat, but in fact, this cat may not have so much need, which makes the cat eat very, very fat. Dogs can eat vegetarian food. Dogs raised in temples eat vegetarian food. They eat whatever people eat. Dogs don’t think their owners are poor, and cats are a little trickier, but they have to eat even if they don’t have to eat. Why do they have to feed them meat? We people eat whatever we eat, and we just give them vegetarian food.

A while ago, an animal protector, a very compassionate old woman, raised hundreds of dogs to find me. She has a lot of expenses every day, and she is also very worried about buying meat and feeding dogs. I told her that dogs can eat vegetarian food. She said: Yes, they are cute and eat steamed buns. If they are cute and eat steamed buns, they will save a lot of money! Moreover, the meat she bought was the kind of chicken hatched from the laying hen farm. If the little rooster hatched in the laying hen farm, it will be crushed directly with a crusher and made into some feed, such as cat food and dog food.

To follow the middle path, it depends on whether your intention is because of greed and pampering, or because you are lazy, unwilling to develop the Bodhicitta, lack compassion, and lack of care for other sentient beings. Of course, sometimes it is not easy to distinguish, but the principle is here. We should ask ourselves and observe ourselves carefully. If we can’t observe clearly, we can ask a good teacher to help us observe which side we are biased towards. If we are following our own attachments, then we should be vigilant and correct them.

You should ask yourself about these questions, how can you help these sentient beings, just like to your own children, how can you help them? Now it is easy to raise your children into little emperors and little princesses, and this kind of love will be gone. But what about you to other people's children? Just hey, I must not spoil him. In fact, you don’t really care about other people’s children, right? A true practitioner can try to raise other people's children as their own children, and raise their own children as their children, and may have different gains. If you raise your own children as other people's children, it will just break your persistence ； If you raise other people's children as your own, it will increase your compassion.

Whether you need to find adoption for stray cats, or whether they will be hated by them does not matter. The key is whether you are good or evil. Sometimes when pampering children, they will be hated by them, so this requires compassion, and more importantly, wisdom and skillful convenience.

The article is reproduced from the WeChat official account: Tiankai French Hall