Introduction(3)

For centuries, if a man wanted to eat meat, he went into the forest and shot maybe one or two animals with bow and arrow-piitchhuu! Then he went home and ate it with his family. This animal died. But there was some kind of relationship between the animal and the person who killed and ate it. Their karma was somewhat clear. When the animal died, it could perhaps understand a little of what was happening: “Oh, this man will eat me! Maybe next life I will get him!” so the karma was very simple: it was only between this one man and this animal. It could be resolved between them and eventually brought back to a balance through the simple operation of cause and effect. In the twentieth century, however, human technology has grown up too quickly. Many special guns and techniques have been created to kill a greater and greater number of animals. Every single day, millions and millions of animals are routinely and mechanically slaughtered all over the world just to satisy human beings’ desire-minds. Now one man pushes a button in a factory, maybe far away from the animals. When these animals die, many consciousnesses are suddenly and violently released from their dying bodies. These animals’ consciousnesses then wander around and around and around, looking for a new body. Where they go, they don’t understand.

The Buddha taught us that everything comes from primary cause, condition, and result. When so many millions of animals are killed this way every year, some of their consciousnesses are inevitably reborn as humans. Perhaps only 0.00001 percent become human beings, but that is still a lot of humans that have some kind of animal consciousness operating inside them. If you look at humans in this world nowadays, you see that while they may all have human faces and human bodies, their consciousnesses are not completely human. Some people have dog consciousness, some have cat consciousness. Others have rabbit consciousness or snake consciousness. Cow minds, pig minds, chicken minds, lion minds, tiger minds, and snake minds are all mixed together. Most people live with perhaps five or ten percent of our original human consciousness functioning inside them and the rest is some animal consciousness controlling their mind. Instead of having the original human capacity for love, cooperation, and compassion, people nowadays only fight with each other and with this world. They cannot do correct together-action with other human beings.