--- In [email protected], "Joe" <desert_woodworker@...> wrote:
I think one must, should, and CAN weigh the total good done, against any harm.
Overall, the avoidance of starvation and disease in 6 or 7 offspring kittens
can count more on the cosmic brownie-point-scale than fright given to the
potential parent, and a sore pubis for 3 days or so.
Jim::: I fully agree with your idea of balance. One can even kill a person in
order to do him or her good. The problem is that I don't know, so I can't just
do something. If I don't know for sure that killing someone would help her or
him, I may not kill that person, and since I am at a point where I never know
for sure, that becomes an absolute for me personally at this time not to kill.
If I ever become advanced enough where I can in actual reality kill someone in
order to take his or her mind to a pure land, and can actually take that mind
there, then things could change. Not just Amitabha has a pure land, by the way.
Sometimes this gives me problems. For example, should I gently take a spider
out of the house? If I do, the spider will eat a number of insects out there.
If I don't, the spider living in my house won't have enough to eat. I tend to
just do nothing in those cases, but that of course isn't really satisfactory
either. The only satisfactory thing would be to enlighten the spider, or at
least move the spider to one of the pure lands where it could practice
meditation. But that isn't something I can do, nor do I think just saying a
ritual wish to do it would be sufficient.
Joe::: I'll say frankly though, to emphasize: I think it is immoral to feed the
starving females without having them neutered, first. Feeding them makes them
fertile if they are not first spayed.
Jim::: It's immoral to feed cats at all because they go out and eat birds,
mice, etc. So again, what to do? I just respond to the wishes of the cats for
food, and the suffering when they don't have food, but that's not fully
satisfactory. I make it a little better by forming a karmic connection so I can
help the cats later on. But once I become advanced enough, I will also be
helping birds, mice, etc.
Joe: (my conscience tells me neuter them, or never, ever, feed them; thus, I
neuter them, because I want them to live).
Jim::: I'm not saying that your unsatisfactory answer is in any way worse than
my unsatisfactory answer. I don't think neutering them would cause them to live
longer here in Hornbrook, although it might do so in the city. There are too
many wild predators in this rural mountain valley so the feral cats who don't
die from disease are evidently eaten. Thus, I have them only long enough to
establish a karmic connection.
This actually started about ten years ago and at this time, I am feeding just
over a dozen cats, and decreasing. Their numbers fluctuate up and down, but
never get all that high nor stay at a peak number.
Jim
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