Kill life to get long life?

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"杀生求生，去生远矣。"

sha sheng qiu sheng, qu sheng yuan yi.

"Kill lives get lives, near life far off."

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If we kill animals and eat them to nourish our own bodies, then we are actually further away from the righteous concept of  'life', and thus our health deteriorates and life gets shortened.

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In the preface of SUN Si Miao's book 《备急千金要方》 (Essential Prescriptions Worth a Thousand Gold for Emergencies), he said:

"Many great ancient physicians used animals to treat acute and dangerous illnesses of emergency. Even though it's said that animals are inferior and human beings are superior; when it comes to appreciating lives, humans and animals are the same. Hurting others and benefiting oneself is commonly disgusted by all animals; let alone human beings. When we save ourselves by killing animals, we're really departing away from the definition of 'life'. This is the reason why I don't use animal products as herbs/medicine in my prescriptions."

In short,

eating animals to nourish our bodies will simply make our health worse and shorten our lives... 

PS:

-- 孙思邈, SUN Si Miao, SUN SiMiao, 581-682, Tang dynasty, China. Renowned physician and Taoist. A great medical physician and herbalist. Well regarded as “药王” (Yao Wang, The king of medicines). Main achievement: Author of 《备急千金要方》 and 《千金翼方》.

-- The book 备急千金要方, Bei ji qian jin yao fang, Essential Prescriptions Worth a Thousand Gold for Emergencies.

-- The book 千金翼方, Qian jin yi fang, Supplement to the Essential Prescriptions Worth a Thousand Gold.

-- By the way, he spent 10 years on 《千金要方》, from age 60-70 years old. And he spent another 30 years finishing 《千金翼方》, at the age of about 100 years old...

-- Original explanation: (simplifled characters): “自古名贤治病，多用生命以济危急，虽曰贱畜贵人，至于爱命,人畜一也。损彼益己，物情同患，况于人呼!夫杀生求生，去生更远。吾今此方所以不用生命为药者，良由此也。”(《备急千金要方》)

-- Original explanation: (original characters): "自古名賢治病，多用生命以濟危急，雖曰賤畜貴人，至於愛命，人畜一也。損彼益己，物情同患，況於人乎！夫殺生求生，去生更遠。吾今此方所以不用生命為藥者，良由此也。"(《备急千金要方》)

Ants move house

Ants move house

This is children's naughty act? Small stools lined up as road barriers blocking pedestrians? Or some sorts of children games? The boy and the girl use stools acting like daytime soap series? For behaviours of children, many adults who are busy making a living usually don't care, don't notice, don't understand about what children do.

Oh you, busy walking by, please bend down your body and take a good look. Underneath the row of stools is a team of living life force full of discipline and marching spirits. Ants are moving family/house! Up front are leaders with sharp destination in mind; no distractions get in the way. And follow by soldier ants of strong forces, many of whom carry heavy loads of grains.

These two children are setting up corridors from stools in order to protect the ants crossing the middle of the street safely. In the world of tens of thousands of climatic scenarios, there are many 'normal scenes' which get ignored by human beings. And thus many small and minute lives get jeopardized. In the journey of life, the weak life forms need to be protected. And that the sacred hearts of children, and children's behaviours that are full of love and care, need more nurture and encouragement!

Please praise and encourage children games such as this one that helps ants move house!

NOTE:
+) Comic: Comic drawn by the late Mr. 丰子恺 / 豐子愷 (FENG Zi Kai) in his book 《护生画集》; hu sheng hua ji; Protecting-lives-drawing-collections. Original writing in the comic: 蚂蚁搬家, Ma-Yi Ban Jia, "Ants Move Family/House".
+) Writing: Original writing in Chinese edited by 宋慧燕 (SONG Hui Yan), Sin Chew Plus， July 20th, 2011, of Sin Chew Daily, a Malaysian daily newspaper in Chinese language.
+) Translation: By John Lew, trying to keep the original tones and grammar patterns intact.

The eel that arched her abdomen

In ancient China (Song dynasty? (960–1279)), there lived an educated man named 周豫(Zhou Yu). One day, his friend brought him some fresh eels, a delicacy that Zhou Yu liked very much. Having little to do that day, Zhou Yu wanted to try his culinary skills, which he had long left unused, and prepared to make a batch of unseasoned eel stew.


He placed the eels in a pot, and when the stew began to boil, Zhou Yu lifted the lid and saw an extraordinary phenomenon: One of the eels had pushed its abdomen upward in an arch, leaving its head and tail in the soup. With great curiosity, Zhou Yu immediately spooned the eel out of the soup and cut open its abdomen. To his amazement, he saw countless eggs inside. In order to protect its spawn, the mother eel had struggled to prevent hot water from hurting its abdomen by pushing its body into an arch.

The sight left Zhou Yu dumbfounded, and he could not contain his tears. Even an eel knew how to protect its eggs, he thought, yet he, a human being, the highest of all creatures, had not been filial to his mother. Deeply moved, Zhou Yu vowed never to eat eel again. And he loved and respected his mother evermore.

Original writing

“学士周豫，尝烹鳝。见有鞠身向上，以首尾就烹者，讶而剖之，腹中累累有子，鞠躬避汤耳… 物类之甘心忍痛，而护惜鞭子如此。恻然感叹，永断不食。” --《护生录; hu sheng lu; Protecting-lives-records》

"xue shi zhou yu, chang peng shan. jian you ju shen xiang shang, yi shou wei jiu peng zhe, ya er pou zhi, fu zhong lei lei you zi, ju gong bi tang er... wu lei zhi gan xin ren tong, er hu xi bian zi ru ci. ce ran gan tan, yong duan bu shi." --《护生录; hu sheng lu; Protecting-lives-records》

“Scholar Zhou Yu, tried to cook eels. [He] saw an eel bowed up, with head and tail fully cooked in soup. Puzzled, [he] cut open the eel, abdomen strains of eggs, bowing to avoid soup… living kinds willing to suffer, to protect babies at such. Deeply touched and sighed: Never to eat eels. ” --《护生录; hu sheng lu; Protecting-lives-records》

The story tells us:

“Animals do not live without feelings, emotions.
Neither do they live without love.”

Like you and I,
animals have mothers who care about them,
even when they die, babies come first.

Happy Mother's day
to all animals!
All living beings!

Shall we celebrate this Mother's day without taking lives? with vegetarian food?

Note:
1) I was preparing to translate this article from ancient Chinese expressions to English when I stumbled upon this writing. Apparently Sonoflight, a blogger from China, had already done the translation a while ago. Her narration of the story is of my taste and I can’t resist but to ‘borrow’ her work over here. Thank you, Sonoflight. A good job, indeed. The original article is at: http://sl.iciba.com/viewthread-85-347008-1.shtml#2625029

2) Original writing, quote from 《护生录; hu sheng lu; Protecting-lives-records》, was written probably during the time of Song dynasty (960–1279). A slightly more illustrated version (by John Lew, for the sake of more complete sense. Pin Yin pronunciation and English translation by John Lew) is shown above in Chinese language. Anyway, there is more than one version with slight difference in wordings.

3) The first illustration (首尾就烹; shou wei jiu peng; Head-Tail-In-Cooking) is by the late Mr. 丰子恺 (Feng Zi-Kai) in his book 《护生画集》第二集39; hu sheng hua ji; Protecting-lives-drawing-collections, 2nd episode, page 39. Origin of the second illustration (烹鳝; peng shan; Cooking-Eels) is unknown, though the style looks similar to that of the first one.

When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace. - Jimi Hendrix

I got to know Jimi Hendrix when I was studying in America. It was the time of ignorance for me and his music, I suppose, had some positive influence on me. Positive in the sense it opened up more rooms of contemplation.

I remember I had roughly four CDs of his. They were the re-mastered version of Are You Experienced?, Bold As Love and so on. Not all the four compilation titles I can recall. This tells how ‘ignorant’ I was with the surroundings. I’ve probably left some in Taiwan or China when I brought them along with me. What’s gone doesn’t matter (especially in the material sense); what matters can no longer be found in the physical forms, but in the mind.

Read a little about him too. I think his story can be one of the inspiring stories for us to learn something from. Not saying I know I lot about him – probably I will or I should – his going against many odds in life in the then racially unjust society with love of music must have something great for all of us.

And he died young – not that long life matters either – and he died young. Many of us live through vain and till we become Alzheimer’s disease bound without knowing what we’ve given and learnt in life. When are we human beings going to learn time and space don’t matter?

So what matters? Love and compassion. To all of us, be compassionate, for we are all one.

When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace. - Jimi Hendrix