Introduction(4)

This is not to say there is something wrong with animals. But when you look at this world you see that animals tend to act together only with their own species, and don’t like other animals. Dog-minds like dog-minds; they do not act with cat-minds. Snakes and lions and rabbits do not get along with each other. A snake-consciousness only follows other snake-minds, and has no compassionate action that can connect it with the suffering that someone else is experiencing. Birds also don’t like other species of birds, so they make groups of their own species and fly around together in these groups. If somebody attacks one of them, often the whole group will attack back. That is the nature of this animal-mind. The political situation in the world today is the same. We now live in a world filled with many smaller countries and political and ethnic groups-many with private militias-all fighting each other. Children become involved with guns and other forms of violence at earlier and earlier ages, doing things to other human beings which were unheard of just ten or twenty years ago.
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This all comes from having too much animal consciousness dominating our minds. Nowadays, many, many human beings are like this. They have some kind of animal consciousness inside, so there is a great deal more suffering because they cannot connect their consciousness to human life in a crowded world. Most people only look after their own interests. There is a greater tendency for some fighting-mind to appear. They only follow their own particular ideas and opinions, no matter what is going on around them. Something is out of balance, so naturally suffering appears.

I had one student in America in the 1970s who owned several exotic pet snakes. She loved these snakes very, very much. She would carry them around on her neck wherever she went. Many people were afraid of them, but she was very natural with these snakes. They would even sleep in her bed at night. One day, she came to the Zen Center. I asked her, “Will you sit the three-day retreat this weekend?”
“No,” she said.
“Why?”
“I cannot find someone to take care of my snakes. I love my snakes very much. But no one can take good care of them while I am at the Zen Center. So I cannot do meditation.”