Life of Animals

Last Monday, our pet rabbit “Daisy” died and, just two days later, our other rabbit “Floppy” died. The fact that these sudden deaths came only a few days after my entry on impermanence was a poignant reminder that the temporal nature of physical existence was not merely an abstraction but a daily and tangible reality. However, I felt strangely saddened by the death of Daisy and Floppy as if I had developed a special relationship with these creatures. I also must have grown used to seeing them every day and, in many ways, grew attached to a life that included them.

If I think about it, we do have a peculiar rapport with animals. Some animals we would eat without question - unless you’re a vegetarian, and, a few chosen ones we consider “pets”. In fact, we also name our animals using a variety of names ranging from the creative, to the mediocre the exotic. But, most wouldn’t identify with the pig that gave them their bacon, the cow that gave them their beef, or the chicken that gave them their chicken nuggets. Thus, the leap that turns animals from food to pets is, in so many ways, simply an artificial product of the mind. In the real world, there is no distinction between the cat and the cockroach, the dog and the fly.

Why do I choose cockroaches and flies? Because I admit, I had an irrational fear of roaches since I was younger and well, flies, are annoying. But, then, as I reflected about my perceptions on other animals and living beings, we think of some animals as worthy of our love, care and attention, only if they fulfill our purposes and needs. As a consequence, life becomes of value depending on the role we impose on living creatures.

However, if one claims to believe in animal rights by opposing animal cruelty, abuse or testing, one is only partly addressing the issue. In the West, for example, we tend to have an idea of ourselves as mostly in favor of animal welfare. But, which animals are we talking about? Isn’t the list of animals that we purport to “defend” defined by our culture and beliefs. As a result, by defining which aninals are worthy of rights and which are not, we are replicating the conviction that as human beings we have a dominion over the world and its creatures.

I don’t mean to judge or make readers feel guilty about the attitudes we have to life. I just wanted to express my inner concerns as I meditate on the sudden death of two rabbits that I grew attached to. If these were just any other rabbits, honestly, I might have eaten them in a stew. In Malta, we do eat rabbit once in a while. And that makes me wonder whether the distinction I thought existed between food and pets is really real or just a fabrication like so many concepts and ideas we have of the world. The fact that I still consume meat is problematic now as well. 

For inasmuch as we think we are  better than animals and other living beings, we will have to die like the rest of them. And while we may have greater self-awareness than other living creatures, we still are too immersed in our individual bubbles without appreciating the essential inter-dependence  of worldly life and the essential nature of who we are.

Nothing Lasts Forever - Part 2

Continued from Part 1

A fundamental question to ask before understanding our fear and avoidance of the subject of death is one concerned with what acknowledging our own end would imply for us. Simply put:

What does death mean for us?


Our fear of death stems from many sources. In my experience, my own fear of death is in the realisation that I will lose who I am - that I become something unknown. That I become nothing! There is a fear that I will lose control over who I am. The impermanence of death forces me to consider that, at one point in my life, I will have to give up everything I know in my life without having any say in it. But, then, as I thought about these fears, I realise that even now I am not in control of my life. My unique experience of life is dependent on my body, the food I ate, the friends, relatives and people I met in the past, the air that I breathe, and so on and so forth.

In other words, what I manifest as a human being is an existence that arises out of so many factors. The miracle of life is not that we exist but that we exist at all. The factors that are required for us to be here need to be in place for us to speak of ourselves. In turn, these factors that give rise to our being are dependent on many other factors for them to exist. This state of impermanence is a natural and essential part of the cycle of life. And, we no reflect on two reAalisations that we may extract from this meditation on the nature of impermanence and dependent arising:

• Connectedness: Life as a web where everyone is interdependent and inter-connected because, we need each other and affected by other beings and things in how we perceive reality and who we are. Our fear of losing our identity at the point of death is a natural response but can we exist independently of life? 
• Commonality: The appreciation that we share in the experience of impermanence and death. That whatever we own, whatever status we hhave, etc, we must one day leave this world. However, the awareness of a common death should make us appreciate the uniqueness and preciousness of the life we have. After all, even if we come from different realities, everyone must come to terms with their own finality.

And yes, even this post has to end here. What started off as a reflection on feelings of emptiness following a stressful week has given rise to a reflection on the nature of impermanence. I started by commenting on the phrase “nothing lasts forever” and now I find a depth to an seemingly simple phrase that I hadn’t expected. And, to end this post, I must tell you that not even diamonds last forever - they are also subject to the processes of impermanence and dissolution.

Nothing Lasts Forever - Part 1

Since my last entry, I was busy keeping up with my other writing commitments. The week was intense as I had to keep up to a number of deadlines. Inasmuch as I do enjoy what I do most of the time, I felt tense and stressed and didn’t feel that I could rest until I finished my tasks.

Indeed, I put much of my time and energy to complete my work. Ironically, now that all this is over, I find myself having to handle difficult situations with a sense of emptiness and boredom. This task that I put so much work in and, yet, was also dreading with every passing moment, seemed to gained a lot of value. I experienced the same feeling when I had finished writing and proofreading a long piece. Every time, I realised that I ended up asking the same questions.

• What was the point of it all?
• What did I achieve from all this?
• Would I be better off doing something else?

I did find some time to meditate during the time I was writing. Yet, my thoughts were often occupied on what I should include in the piece, whether I could express a particular idea more clearly, etc. So, once the tasks were sent off, I promised myself to sit in a quiet place and contemplate the feeling of emptiness and apathy that appeared to have taken over. It was then that I thought about the phrase “Nothing Lasts Forever.

When we say”nothing lasts forever, we often mean it as a verbal equivalent of sighing. We reminisce about the happy times that are now ended. At least what I understand when I hear that phrase being uttered. However, we forget that the non-lasting nature of things, or their impermanence, is part of reality. In this sense, while we miss those happy times, this impermanent characteristic of reality also applies for unpleasant things in life. While it is understandable that we prefer moments of happiness and pleasure, they are linked to pain and suffering in the continuum of life.

In simpler terms, impermanence allows for life and death and a cycle of rebirth that happens each day in the world. Ultimately, all of us must face our end, and beyond this life, we cannot be with anyone else living on this world. This might sound sad and death is a subject many would rather avoid. Those who know about my background know that I’m no stranger to death. I became aware of it durimg my childhood, was close to dying in my late teens and, recently, was an unaware witness of a dying man. The fact that I have thought about this topic very hard over the course of these 29 years doesn’t make me any wiser about what happens after death. I have found refuge in the past in the belief of an afterlife but there are no certainties, except that someday I’ll have to leave this body and this life.

Unfortunately, in the minority world (or “developed countries”), we tend to hide away from death. Indeed, it’s quite rare for children to come into contact with death or able to see it in real life. I am not saying that witnessing a dying person’s last moments should be commendable for children in any way. However, I don’t believe that being witness to a natural death is as traumatic as it is perceived. Yet, considering how many scenes of violence and death children in the minority world are being exposed to on the mass media and on social media, one wonders whether this is that healthy as there is no time or place to reflect about the images, sounds or experience that are witnessed. And, even though we can watch and listen to real instances of death, the reality is that these sensory stimulations fail to capture the uniqueness of each dying moment.

CONTINUES...

Celebrating HH the 14th Dalai Lama's 76th Birthday

Photo of HH the Dalai Lama

On the 6th July 1935,  a boy called Tenzin Gyatso, was born to a poor farming family  in North East Tibet. If it had not been for the fact that at around age 2, he was not identified as the 14th reincarnation of the Dalai Lama, nobody would know who this person was. In fact, many people only know him by his title. I wouldn’t have predicted that I would be writing about this man, who for the people of Tibet remains a source of hope and for many who bother to get to know more about him, like myself, cannot fail to be touched by his humanity and his genuine interest to understand other people.

This isn’t meant to be a biographical account of the Dalai Lama’s life  and there are many sources to get this information. However, what I can say is that though it was unfortunate for the Dalai Lama to have to flee Tibet following China’s invasion in 1949, his refuge to India helped to raise awareness about the Tibetan cause, as well as introducing Tibetan Buddhism to the West. Not only that, but the Dalai Lama has been open to new knowledge gained from scientific enquiry and has met top scienties from around the world across various areas to discuss  what makes us, basically, the nature of reality. In addition, I admire him because he denies that he is a god-king and, recently, he gave up his role as a political leader and declared that the people of Tibet should elect their own leaders. Moreover, while retaining his position as the spiritual leader of the Tibetan people, he does not exclude a time after his death when there will be no longer the need for the institution of the Dalai Lama. 

I think the first time I recall seeing the Dalai Lama was when I was about 14 years old. Even if I couldn’t understand it, I sensed this man projected something unique that you rarely witnessed in daily life. A feeling of authentic engagement with the audience, a sense of unconditional acceptance and a feeling that he was talking to you on a human level. My interest in Buddhism would grow from there but given the mixed information about Buddhism I got from those who should have known better, I always held back from delving into understanding what Buddhism was about or to read works by people who practice and teach it. Perhaps I was afraid of going against the faith I was brought up to believe and, honestly, I was still rather young and immature in certain matters - even if I had always struggled in knowing why people die or suffer in this world.

In addition, there are still plenty of misconceptions about Buddhism that people in the West have. While it’s true that Buddhists believe in cyclic existence or reincarnation, it would be wrong to reduce millennia of Buddhist doctrine to just that belief without examining its basis or that the actions we do in our lifetime have consequences and that these actions will leave an impact on our current lives and possible futures. There is also the idea that Buddhism is atheistic which is only partly true because Buddhism holds that whether there exists a God is problematic as it holds that everything arises dependently on other causes and conditions and thus nothing (including a creator God) can exist as such. It has also been argued that Buddhism is nihilistic and that it denies the existence of things. 

However, the Buddhist doctrine, if you study it closely, is commenting on how reality exist and not whether reality exists. For example, you are able to read and understand this text because you have learned language, and English at that. If it had not been for you having learned toassociate the symbols of the alphabet and that each letter stands for a sound and that a collection of sounds and letters produce words and speech, then this text would be meaningless. And while you’re there, even the words we use have their own history and we have our personal relation to certain words. This is especially true of words with strong emotional content such as “love” or racist insults. Now, nobody will contest that words do exist but Buddhist doctrine is making us aware that words depend on other factors to become what they are - in this case. Therefore, without knowing the code for deciphering language, and understanding what words represent and ultimately to understand the concept behind those words, then this text would be not better than a random patches of black shapes Z surrounded by white spaces. And then even the words “black”, “shapes”, “white” and “spaces” have more than one meaning, such as those relating to colour, race, place, form, etc.

Of course, I can’t really deal with all I’ve learned on Buddhism from my reading of the Dalai Lama’s translated works. Nor do I pretend to be any expert but just a beginner. Indeed, these past months have been literally life changing and I still have much to learn about Buddhism and the meaning of happiness. I don’t regret my upbringing and early spiritual interest in understanding the purpose of life. The more I sincerely wished to understand what other beliefs, the more I realised that there was a common longing to find “home”. I don’t even claim that Buddhism answers all the questions about life but, I feel that it has touched me in a profound way that words just cannot fully capture.

I have written a lot already. So I’ll leave you with a quote from the Dalai Lama, which in a simple way, captures the entire philosophy of Buddhism:

“If you want to be happy, practice compassion.

If you want others to be happy, practice compassion”

HH The 14th Dalai Lama (6 July 1935 - ...)

Online resources:

Office of HH the 14th Dalai Lama 

Mind and Life Institute