Releasing Living Creatures

...On the day I was born, I think that I don"t know what I have to do to offer to my parents and it just comes in a sudden while thinking.

Supposed when you were born

Supposed somebody drops the gossipy words 

Supposed hatred is accumulated

Blood was flown, tears were rolled down

Without  parents in the world

You are only alone

With many dangers spy on you

You cry and scream in the middle of the deserted forest

But your parents cannot return

How is the poor baby ?

And how would  we think, if we were this poor baby?

 

One beautiful day, the sunshine in the early morning went through the slit of window, wind blows very lightly, birds twitter softly, a dew-drop is glittering, the scenery seems safe and tranquil. Welcome you come to the Hoang Phap beloved pagoda !. Nearly three hundred of students and teachers in high school attend the retreat of cultivating and improving virtue as in the sentence "Learning politeness first, and then knowledge" which becomes the slogan in schools. After having breakfast, all gathered at monastic dining hall 1 to listen to a moved story about the love between mother and baby birds. My teacher in his kind-hearted eyes, lectured in his leisure and gentle voice, his warm smile and the story began. One day the mother bird flew away finding food for her young birds; unluckily, she is hit by the hunter's arrow. Young birds waited for their mother since they were too hungry with their mouths opening out with feeding food. They waited forever but being in despair. Listening to the story in this stage I was unable to hold my tears. The sunset and the mantle of darkness let down together with rain and a biting cold, which caused the young birds to die in hunger and cold, lack of warmness and love from their mother.

 

I sought for Buddhism in a reluctant case without any choice. But at last I believed in something which would not be different. If there had not been such reluctant things, now I would surely be a hunter, a butcher,  a mudderer or any bad and corrupt person. Though I still have many bad habits, the dress I'm putting on to be rid of worldly dust at first, all thanks to Buddha.

 

In 2008, I came home after going to church, I was too hungry; when I looked at the rice bowl in which there were three sardinellas above. Naturally, I imagined the image of fishes swimming in the ocean. It was hard to describe my horrifying feeling. Heaven! Why I stopped the lives of those fishes? I found to be cut on each of my muscle fibre and from then I had vegetarian diet. In a month, I returned to eat meat and fish again - I couldn't bear the craving for eating flesh.Then one month later, I turned round to eat vegetarian diet until now, it has nearly been eight years. At that time, I had vegetarian diet not for causes and effects or keeping precepts, but for my not learning Buddhism yet. Maybe this was causal condition. The different feeling in first stage between having vegetarian diet and eating meat commonly includes eating a vegetarian diet  has a gentle and good mannered conduct, a bright expression on face (it is not used to have vegetarian diet yet so a little weak body) and the body emits a little of odor (according to toxicology, there are too much toxin or bad air in meat of animals). When I returned to eat meat and fish, my conduct went by contraries, many acnes arise, etc..Today, many Westerners tend to have vegetarian diet to reduce of sickness and fatness, protect nature, environment and animals. Maybe this is the best choice of Westerners.

 

Understanding the Buddha's teaching and his doctrine, Hoang Phap pagoda continuously organizes many times releasing and charity every year, being in charge of by Junior Venerable Thich Tam Hue. He often teaches us about the sin of killing sentient lives and spreading the loving kindness to save lives of all beings. That each person himself does not kill even an ant cannot kill a person. However, though there is a person who can't kill an ant, he/she eagerly kill a human being because he is drunk. If a lay person knows to keep clean of the Three Refuges and Five Precepts, he/she will avoid the following vexations. After death he will be reborn in human body at least with enough blessings. Human society murders to each other. It cover human beings and animals killing one another for food. Any beings have the reason to justify for their actions. Happiness to a poor person is a plate of chicken or a plentiful meal, but to a dog that sometimes is only a bone. There is no absolute standard to evaluate all things and phenomenon in the tangible world. They are mutual relying on comparison or evaluation in relative measure. Generally all things are of two sides, a harm in advantage and vice versa. We try to limit the evil of killing in maximum; especially to human being and many kinds of big animals such as buffalo, cow, pig, cock, etc..  For example, sometimes vegetables hand no sooner planted for eating than mouse and insects ate them all. How must people do? Don't tell that they might give up and go without eating. I think that we need to protect and respect lives due to the fact that all beings want to live as a matter of course. Animals have been coming  from their ignorant karma and no one knows among them who are parents, brother, young brother, etc.. And no one knows that they used to be animals in previous lives or will be in future. We eat a piece of meat and lavishly praise on the best dish but we do not know that it is from our parents or our lovers in many lives. There is no holy soul without being sticky in blood and tear. Knowing to love, the soul becomes holy, body and mind are also light and easy, and lovly sleep appears in a gentle and cheerful features. Bloody debt must pay by blood, which is a rule of life. The Newton Law said "power interacted is equal to responding power". In life, there are some sickness because of evil of murder, there are also some of sacred sources. Science says that is the phenomenon without explanation; But to Buddhism, the phenomenon without explanation was answered in two thousand and five hundred years ago by Sakyamuni Buddha.

 

When I was a child, I usually caught dragon-fly and plucked its wings, head, leg; caught mantis, killed poetry, cattle, etc.. If there was a judge of cause and effect existent at that time, I was surely sentenced a "life imprisonment or capital punishment". I'm so sick that I must know what a pain”. Considering that a sramanera's fate wasgoing to finish, his master lets him go home to visit his parents in the last time. When he went through a river, he saw an ant hill sweeping by great flood and sticking above the branch in the middle of river, the sramanera saved the ant hill. He returned a time after. This time, his master was very surprised because the master clearly observed his new lifespan and figure which was changing - Why? He told his master a full story. That is as cause and effect rule. Saving others means saving you.

 

According to science, a killer as a butcher who is murderous causes dogs to bark when seeing him at any place. Why? or many souls follow and ask him of their lives. It is said that dogs’s eyes can see ghosts. Anywhere deforesting person passing by will wither plants. Once Mahamaya Queen had been changing her nature suddenly while she was pregnant  baby prince Siddhartha: she had eaten vegetarian diet, done many good deeds. Her face was radiant with smiles, etc.. That was a powerful source of loving-kindness with a large spreading  as a lamp brightly lit in darkness. The bigger lamp the larger light. When Price Siddhartha was born, he could not eat flesh, the same as Most Venerable Hu Van.

 

I read another online story  in Buddhism by chance.  I don't remember much the content of story but I have a deep impression about the love between mother and child of a wolf. Wolf mother is shot from an arrow of a hunter. Writhing because of the severe wound, the wolf mother did not forgot her youngsters waiting for food. She tried hard to walk with dragging feet even crawling. Her blood was trailing over the road. The hunter investigated following the bloody trace in thinking  that he was eagerly happy for hunting a big prey. Until he had seen the wolf mother lying in a pool of blood, nearby the naively young wolves still playing and sucking over her breast innocently was the hunter moved at this first sight. He was unable to hold back his feeling. All his hopes collapsed and the sense of repentance flooded over him. Bow and arrows were fallen on the ground from his hand as a natural reflex. His mind was woken up by the love of the wolf mother for her young wolves. The hunter gave up his job and became a monk. Later he became the great Most Venerable with religious power, moral excellence and rich loving-kindness. The more slaughtering needs the more creature release for atonements. Releasing living creatures means liberating from shackles and chains to regained  lives for all beings. Releasing living creatures is also the same meaning as eating vegetarian diet.

 

I thought what should I have to do for my parents. Fortunately it suddeny happened. Venerable Tam Hue asked: "Does anyone go and release the living creatures with me?". Because of no money, I borrowed two hundred thousand dong to go releasing in Can Tho. Asuch great happiness in my heart was not expressed in words.  On this day in thirty years ago, I was protected and beloved by my parents, grandfather and grandmother, friends, teachers; so I required the same to all beings. I wanted to bring a peaceful life to sentient beings as my life. Happiness means giving, not stealing something. My vow is to free the birds flying up into the deep blue sky as well as to liberate fishes returning to immeasurable waterways. They are free to swim here and there for fish; the lovely birds literately jump into the air and towards us as saying thanks and wishing all living beings to be peaceful. 

 

Translated into English by Ms. Giac Ngoc.