Patrul and Ad.z.m R's

[Desmond Dekker, Rude Boy Ska]

I've been intermittently reading Patrul Rinpoche's The Words of My Perfect Teacher, lent to me by Lisa, a lay attendant to Ad.z.m R. She's also friends with my pal, Olivia Bartlett (who met her while studying in there). On his way, he'll be stopping in Chengdu for a day after leaving his monastery in Chamdo, and I hope to meet him in the city. I've been trying to get through Words, a commentary on the preliminary practices of a Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism, before I leave. In my brother's words, the book "contains everything you need to know to become enlightened."

I recently stumbled across a mention of the town Dartsedo, the Tibetan (and proper) name for Kangding, the city half an hour from the college. The context in which Patrul Rinpoche brings it up reminded me of a number of things, which I'll get to after sharing the passage with you:

Where tea is grown, in China, the number of small creatures that are killed while it is planted, while the leaves are being picked, and so on, would be impossible to count. The tea is then carried as far as Dartsedo by porters. Each porter carries a load of twelve six-brick packs, taking the weight on a band around his forehead which wears away his skin. But even when his skull shows through, al white, he carries on. From Dotok onwards, dzo, yaks and mules take over, their backs breaking, their bellies perforated with cuts, patches of their hair chafed away. They suffer terribly from their servitude. Bartering the tea involves nothing but a series of broken promises, cheating and argument, until finally the tea changes hands, usually in exchange for animal products like wool and lambskins. Now wool, in summer before shearing, is crawling with fleas, ticks and other small creatures as numerous as the strands of wool themselves. During shearing, most of those insects are decapitated, cut in two or disembowelled. Those not killed remain stuck in the wool and suffocate. All of this can only lead to lower rebirths. As for lambskins, remember that new-born lambs have all their organs of sense, and they feel pleasure and pain. Just as they are enjoying their first instants of life, in perfect health, they are killed. Perhaps they are only stupid animals, but nevertheless they do not want to die--the love life and suffer as they are tortured and slaughtered. As for the ewes whose little ones have been killed, they are a living example of the sorrow experienced by a mother who loses her only child. So when we think about the production and trade of such products, we can understand that even a single sip of tea cannot but contribute to rebirth in the lower realms.

I used to think about these kinds of things quite a bit during the summer of 2001, my first stint guiding in New Mexican woodlands. That was when I stopped eating meat for two years. At the time I felt that there was a way to reduce the suffering of animals, at least, little by little. The wheel of death could be slowed in time, eventually halting, upon all ills would be undone.

The following summer significant areas of the ranch for which I guided suffered from forest fire. Alternatively hiking through restricted blackened areas and places that hadn't seen a fire for half a century provided stark contrast. Neither represented especially healthy forests; the under-burned areas were chillingly grey and orange from the accumulating largess of fallen tress and their resulting decay. I found a certain peace, however, in the face of such destruction, which relieved any guilt about my hand in death.

I disagree with some literalist Christians that believe that Man's divinely imparted stewardship over the animals gives him carte blanche when it comes to ecology. On the other hand, there can be no Absolute Zero with respect to the food chain and the natural events of birth and death. The process can never grind to a halt. Perfect equilibriums never last in natural systems. I'm reminded that when I was a child I thought that the Theory of Relativity meant that if the Earth ceased moving and spinning, Time would also stop. I'm not sure if that's wrong, but it certainly is absolutist.

Contrary to what you may think, the above passage by Patrul Rinpoche does not necessitate vegetarianism. His aim in pointing out the resulting carnage of such a mundane and basic activity is to remind the reader of the suffering that is everywhere in life. In Buddhism, we are held accountable for even the above actions via karma. I find the transmigration of souls to be at best irrelevant, though, and at worst empty threats to encourage moral action.

This does not mean we can hope to completely stop the chain of good and evil that tethers our mind to the conventional phenomenology of this world. It does mean that there are causes to our every action. It also suggests a way out; by taking responsibility for results of the things we do, and recognizing their impact on our way of thinking and our attitudes, we can discover the antidotes to our misdeeds to effectively become liberated from ourselves.

Sorry for sounding preachy. I'm really only trying to convince myself.

[Mountain Goats, Nine Black Poppies]