An Expression of Compassion
(By Tsem Rinpoche)
Animal liberation is an expression of compassion for other living beings that cannot protect themselves. Due to wrong view and ignorance, human beings have been using animals for food, entertainment, sport, medical research and games. Many animals have been killed and tortured to fulfill these needs. It has become such a norm that many people do not feel there is anything wrong with it. In fact, in some cultures, people believe that animals exist to serve the needs of human beings.
It is important to correct this wrong view and create mass awareness that inflicting pain on other living beings just to serve our needs cannot be the right thing to do. This is especially so when there are so many other alternatives available. Living beings other than human beings can feel pain and suffering too.
From a Buddhist point of view, although animal liberation does prolong the life of animals, that alone does not ultimately help them. Therefore, the Buddhist way of animal liberation incorporates circumambulating the animals around holy objects and blessing them with mantras and prayers before releasing them. This is to create causes for their good rebirth and happiness in their future lives and to plant the seeds of enlightenment in them.
I would like to share with you an article by Daily Mail Reporter on a group of Tibetan Buddhists from Kurukulla Center for Tibetan Buddhist Studies in Medford, Massachusetts which is a town just outside of Boston. This group recently released 534 very expensive live lobsters into the Atlantic Sea. I really rejoice to know that there are people whose compassion extends to beings that are totally helpless and cannot reward or thank them in return in any way. This is truly compassion in action or helping someone without any agenda to receive. I hope you will be inspired by them too.
That’s some pricey karma! Group of Tibetan Buddhists buy 534 live lobsters and free them off a boat in the Atlantic
By Daily Mail Reporter | Last updated at 11:48 PM on 4th August 2011
Instead of plunging headfirst to their death in a pot of boiling water, 534 live lobsters escaped the dinner plate and belly flopped to freedom into the dark waters of the Atlantic Ocean.
A group of Tibetan Buddhists flanked the sides of a whale-watching boat at dusk on Wednesday, sprayed the lobsters with blessed water, clipped the bands binding their dangerous claws and gently released them one by one into the deep water below.
The 30 Buddhists of all ages trekked to the North Shore beach community known for its massive lobster hauls to purchase 600 pounds of lobster from a seafood wholesaler and save the critters from imminent death.
Tibetan Buddhist monk Geshe Tenley releases a lobster back into the ocean from a boat in the waters off Gloucester, Massachusetts.
30 Buddhists made the trek to buy and then free 534 live lobsters from a seafood wholesaler during Chokhor Duchen, the anniversary of Buddha’s turning of the Dharma Wheel.
Lobster goes for about $11 a pound. The lobster liberation was scheduled specifically for Aug. 3, which is Wheel Turning Day on this year’s Tibetan lunar calendar, the anniversary of the first sermon Buddha taught. On this holiday, the merit for positive actions is multiplied many times.
‘Even if they get captured again, they’ve had a longer life,’ said Wendy Cook, a yoga instructor and former director at the Kurukulla Center for Tibetan Buddhist Studies in Medford, Mass., a town just north of Boston.
If not for the liberation, ‘you know they are going to be shipped to restaurants and headed to the boiling pot,’ she said. Buddhists from the Kurukulla Center typically liberate masses of the expensive seafood a couple times each year.
Geshe Tenley has a lot to be happy about as compassion for the welfare of all beings – like lobsters – will help him accumulate karmic merit, and the merits are multiplied if they are performed on Chokhor Duchen.
The Buddhists prayed over the lobsters – which would have cost about $6,000 – before they boarded the boat to free them. They said prayers, mantras and walked the 13 boxes of lobsters in circles around a display of blessed objects.
Cook led a ceremony ahead of the liberation that included prayers, mantras and walking the 13 boxes of lobsters in circles around a display of blessed objects. These important steps develop a karmic connection for the animals’ future lifetimes and help ease future suffering, she said.
Among those setting the lobsters free was Vikrant Bhasin, a chef from Cambridge, Mass., who called the life-giving experience ‘beautiful.’ Bhasin no longer cooks live shellfish.
This group of Buddhists buy and free the pricey crustaceans several times a year, but Wednesday night’s liberation was the most important.
Monk Geshe Tenley, Kurukulla Center’s resident teacher, who was wearing a saffron robe, was the first to release a lobster from the deck of the whale watching boat that had cruised out nearly a mile offshore, past a maze of lobster traps. He was born in Tibet in 1969 and escaped to India in 1989, where he began his monk training.
In India, Geshe Tenley said, cows, sheep and even goats are purchased and saved from slaughter. But here in New England, saving the lobsters and extending their lives — even if just for an hour — is most practical and a real way the group can make a difference in the lobsters’ existence and their own.
Victoria Fan, a graduate student from Cambridge, was participating in her first lobster liberation. ‘It’s rethinking the way you normally see these creatures,’ she said of the ceremony that took place steps away from a sign advertising lobster dinners for just $15.99. ‘You’re supposed to view them equally. Their happiness is as important as your happiness, their suffering is as important as your suffering,’ Fan said.
Please support us so that we can continue to bring you more Dharma:
If you are in the United States, please note that your offerings and contributions are tax deductible. ~ the tsemrinpoche.com blog team
It is a very kind gesture of Geshe Tenley to buy the lobsters and released them back to the sea. It may be right that they will be caught again but it is the motivation that counts. Besides, the lobsters also get a second chance to live freely.
In Buddhism, we have to view and treat all sentient beings equally. Therefore, we should not kill animals for pleasure. Inflicting pain on another living being is not right and it should not be encouraged.
Rinpoche also always teached us to be compassionate to animals if we really are practising Buddhism. The easiest way to start to be compassionate is by adopting a vegetarian diet. When we stop eating meat, we stop inflicting pain on animals.
Inflicting pain and harm on animals, abusing them, or killing them for food, as a form of entertainment or in experimentation – all this clearly illustrates how humans have such wrong views. Hence , it is important to correct such wrong views through creating awareness and educating people against such views.
Buddhists show compassion towards animals by recognising and believing that they have equal rights with us humans for freedom and happiness. Hence we practice animal liberation – releasing fish, shellfish, birds and other creatures to freedom. The release of expensive lobsters into the sea by a Buddhist group in the US, led by a Tibetan Buddhist monk, preceded by circumambulation and the chanting of mantras and the blowing mantras on them, is to create causes for their good rebirth and ultimate happiness, and to sow seeds of enlightenment in their mindstream.
Hence, at the Kechara House Buddhist Centre in Sunway Mas, on the advice of our Spiritual Guide, Tsem Rinpoche, we conduct an animal liberation event every month. Simultaneously, this monthly event is carried out by the study groups in Penang, Ipoh, Johore Baru and Kuantan.In Kechara House , Sunway Mas, the event is combined with adopting a bird in the Kechara Forest Retreat Aviary. The Kechara Forest Retreat Aviary houses birds that have been rescued and adopted, many of them by Rinpoche himself.Not only are the birds here in this sanctuary left in peace to live out the rest of their days. They are also well taken care of. There are buddha statues and holy items placed in the aviary to bless the birds. Mantras are played over the air to them. Educational gadgets are placed there for the birds too.
Hence, wherever we go, we must drive home the point that animals are not meant to be killed for food or to be abused and tortured. We should adopt stray animals in shelters for pets and not adopt them from pet-shops, which run puppy-mills!
Thank you, Rinpoche, for this lovely post.
Thank You Rinpoche foe sharing this article.Amazing what these Buddhist did by releasing 534 live lobsters back into the oceans.Animal liberation does prolong the life of animals….in a way and it is a good way to collect merit as well.Their happiness of freedom is as important as our happiness seeing them go free of pain and suffering.
Beautiful pictures shared too.
Thanks again.
Dear Rinpoche,
Thank you for sharing this news here. It is very nice to see people are engaging in meritorious activities like animal liberation. The karma of killing is very heavy and by doing he direct opposite of it which is giving life, we can purify alot of the negative karma. I rejoice in this.
Humbly,
Chris Chong
很多人以为放生一定是得要用上很多钱，必须是很大量的放。其实你如果懂得放生的意义你就会了解并不是如此！我们平常生活上都可以常做放生：例如我们不拍打蚊子，苍蝇和蚂蚁，不钓鱼，吃素，不养小鸟和乌龟，教导孩子不做以上的种种就是很好的放生了。
It’s very kind of Geshe Tenley! It’s very amazing to see the animals being released back into the ocean. They deserve to be in the ocean, where their homes are. These animals deserve to have a second chance to live, they did nothing wrong..
Thank You for sharing such an inspiring article Rinpoche.
Love, beatrix.
Oh so sweet, see how happy Geshe Tenley is after he liberated all these lobsters. Such a kind being.
We must always be mindful with our eating habits. Although there are food that some people are naturally repulsed to eating, such as the ‘Korean live octopus soup’… but lets just be realistic… the chicken, beef, fish etc did not end up on your dinner plate without being killed brutally.
Animal liberation is a way to generate compassion. All living beings fear being beaten or being killed. Saving animals from death and doing prayers for them is a practice that benefits not only the animals but also those who do or sponsor the liberation. It is a good way to collect merit and it can be helpful in removing life
obstacle such as serious illness and obtain long life.
I love animal liberation so much! These animals are indeed fortunate to be given a second chance by Tibetan monks. Ihope these monks have a very long life 😀 .
In Kechara, we have animal liberation activity on a monthly basis. This is also one of the ways to educate the young ones on compassion, love and caring to animals. When the children are caring to animals, they will be caring also to the people around them.
Many jurisdictions around the world have enacted statutes which forbid cruelty to animals. In China, it seems there were no such available laws until 2006, and yet it was passed with undue stipulated guidelines showing reluctances. Many people feel that animals have no rights, but animals like humans have lives too, which are subjected to feelings of pains and sufferings, just like human beings do! For thousands of years, humans have used and treated animals as nothing more than a mere means of raising and slaughtering them for food, and hunting them down for leisure and pleasure as well. However, as considerable long time has lapsed and the overall level of realisation and enlightening within our societies have also increased. Many people have begun to question the aforesaid practices, whether animals should have the rights to be treated like humans do, or at least to be extended humane considerations to receive more ethetical treatment morally, without putting the animals through unneccessary pains or sufferings of abuses. In this blog, “Dharma is made alive and seen as a living transformation of hope and care”, through the compassionate action of a group of 30 buddhist people from Kurukulla center in Medford, Massachusetts. 534 very expensive lobsters’ lives have been saved and released into the Alantic sea as an act of animal Liberation on August 3, after buying them out from a seafood wholesaler. This was a turning day for this year’s Tibetan Lunar Calendar, whereby the Karmic merits gain from any positive acts on this “Chokhor Dukhen” day are multiplied many times, for which they rightfully deserved. May you all good compassionate people be greatly blessed for taking up the burden of liberating them. “OM MANI PADME HUM!”
I’ve been to Kurukulla center a few times (45 minutes away from me) and they are extremely kind. I took refuge there from HE Choden Rinpoche after listening to HE Tsem Tulku Rinpoche’s talks 3.5 years ago. There are so many key Buddhist scholars there too, like Dr. Nick Ribush.
I was following the lobster story as it happened, it was on the local TV news as well, with a little “drama” when some lobster fishermen jokingly pretended to “catch the lobsters back.”
Their teacher Geshe Tsulga passed away last year, very sad. Geshe Tenley took over as the center’s teacher and I’m happy it’s working so well. Very nice people.
It is joyful to see people doing animal liberation. I have been an animal countless of lifetimes before and will be countless more so if I do not want a painful future lifetime in the form of an animal I’d best stop consuming more meat that will create the cause for me to be an animal in the future.
It is ignorance if we think that animals are made for us to dominate. They are just unfortunate beings to have ended up taking on this form. Ignorance is a main cause for an animal rebirth!