Apr 28, 2011

(By Tsem Rinpoche)

Dear Ooi Beng Kooi,

I saw your name as a contact person for Tsem Rinpoche and his center. I am an American who believes in Buddhism. Two things that mean a lot to me are Buddhism and animals and when I did a search on the internet on both Buddhism and animals I found Tsem Rinpoche. I have watched several videos on You Tube and I am very thankful for the teachings. I watched one video about being happy and have learned a lot. I now just apologized to my sisters in which we are arguing. I would like to thank Tsem Rinpoche for his kind teachings that he shares on the internet. This is a blessing.

I am seeking advice on something that is very painful to me. If Tsem Rinpoche or you, or anyone at the center can give guidance on this it would be most appreciated. I realize that everyone must be very busy with very important things and that I am just one sentient being but this problem is holding me back and maybe if I can resolve it I can be of help to other sentient beings…

I have always loved dogs. I had one german shepherd dog who died young at 8 years old from lymphoma cancer. I was heartbroken and felt that I must have done something wrong to bring on his cancer. I felt very sad because I always thought that I was taking good care of him. I vowed to never adopt another dog again as I must be a bad dog owner and do not want to go through the pain of losing another dog. A year and a half later my sister found another german shepherd dog in a shelter. No body wanted to adopt him as he was old and had a fierce temperment. I agreed to adopt him as I said that he has no hope anyway of another home. As soon as I rescued him we saw that he too was not well and could not walk. We took him to a vet and they said that he has cancer and then they urged us to euthanize him. This was withhin 24 hours of adopting him. I was very sad and my husband told me that we should adopt another dog, a younger dog and give him a chance for a good life so that he doesn’t have to face a life in a shelter like the one who just died. . I adopted then a one year old german shepherd (I feel loyal to that breed). He was a sad dog who was apparently abused. He was afraid to eat, afraid to be pet and didn’t even know what a toy was. We gave him a happy and secure life and very quickly bonded. I named him Buddy. I was super careful to take good care of him. I was so fearful of dogs getting cancer that I analyzed everything I did. I even cooked his food for him rather than give him dog food.

When he reached about 8 years old he too got sick. The vet and I did not realize what the illness was. We did not know it was cancer. On the last day of his life he collapsed and they did a sonogram and found a rare stomach cancer that spread through his body. As compassion to him the vet urged us to euthanize him. Buddy died October 14, 2011.

It is now 6 months since his death. I am still heartbroken and cry every day missing him and praying that he is well. I want to help animals but don’t feel confidence. I want to feel that my dog’s soul is well Is it my karma to experience this loss of losing my dogs when they are young? Was it my dogs’ karma to both die at age 8? I always second guess myself and like to feel that I like to have control over things. Is that a wrong way to be? If I have a sincere heart should I adopt more dogs?

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this email. Buddhism makes so much sense. I am grateful to learn it.

Thanks, Jill Carroll

Dear Jill, I have recorded a message for you below. I wish you the best and continue to love, Tsem Rinpoche

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Transcript: To Jill Carroll with Care

Transcribed by: Wei Tan

Checked by: Sarah Yap

Hi Jill, I have received your email via my assistant Beng Kooi. You did the right thing by writing to Beng Kooi because she will systematically submit different requests from people around the world. I read through your email carefully, about 2, 3 times and I thought about responding to you through Beng Kooi by email, but I thought it’d be better if I just speak it and put it on a video. I’m going to put your letter up on my blog and I’m going to put this video response on my blog and the reason for that is very simple. I think that the story that you told, in your letter to me, is a story that would be similar to millions of people around the world. Thousands, millions, tens of thousands. So if they read your letter, I’m sure they will be able to relate to you and the situation and what happened, and also my response perhaps could give them some solace.

I wrote down some notes regarding your video. First of all, I wanted to say that we have some things in common. I am an American also and I love Buddhism and the two things that are very important to me are Buddhism and animals, so we’re quite similar in that way. Very, very similar, so I wanted to just let you know that I can understand what you’re saying in your email and I can relate, and I can feel and I can definitely 100% understand what you’re saying.

When I was 7 or 8 years old, I was living in Howell, New Jersey, and my step mother would like to go to this flea market that was 45 minutes drive away. I think it was called Farming Dale Flea Market… I forgot because it was 3 decades ago and I was a child. Anyways, the flea market was huge, it was outdoor, it was indoor and they sold everything that you could imagine. I was just huge, it was a huge event on Saturdays and Sundays, and I looked forwards to going to it because it was fun, and I remember one weekend my mother took me there and we came across a bunch of puppies that were in a cage, and I was looking at them and I really fell in love with one dog, and I was begging my mother to get me one. And she did. My step mother has always been very generous. And so I named the little puppy ‘Princey’, and I just loved him.

I like animals quite a lot but I really love dogs, and Princey was very special because he was my first dog ever, and I kept him inside with me until he got older. When he got older I still wanted to keep him inside. He still wasn’t very big, he was a mutt. A mixed breed and he was small. Like the size of a Schnauzer, and he was very intelligent and very sensitive and very smart, but my step parents are from the old country Kalmukia, Europe and all that. And they felt that dogs are dogs and should just be kept outside and treated like dogs, but I didn’t feel like that as a kid. Even as a kid, I felt that dogs have feelings, dogs get cold, dogs get hot, dogs get thirsty, dogs can feel sadness, they can feel all of that. So I treated Princey as best as I can but being a small kid, I didn’t have much say.

So he was kept outside when he got older and we had a half acre land, which was pretty big. Unfortunately it was not gated in and I begged my parents to gate in our property but they wouldn’t, and one day he went missing. And we found out from a neighbour down the street, a very elderly lady, that as she was walking not far from our house, she found a dog that was dead on the street, to our description, and when I went there with my father, it was Princey. He was run over horribly and his body was in pieces but I knew that was him. So it was very traumatic. I took him back and I buried him with my father and I was very traumatised because it was the first time I had experienced death, of something that I really loved. Later, my mother got me another dog and my step father named him Halter. Halter is because he had a little mark here. He was a mutt also, and in Kalmuk language, halter means something that has a little mark here. So Halter was a very strong dog. He wasn’t big but he was bigger that Princey, and he was very, very energetic and he was quite hyper.

So same situation, when he was young he stayed with us inside the house, and when he was older, against my protest, he was made to stay outside. He was very strong, and my parents would get a dog house for him in the backyard which was very nice, full of trees and green and very big. And we gave him the left over food which was a lot of meat, for the Kalmuk people they like meat, and bones. They used to tie him down with a big chain at the back, but somehow he was always pull the chain out of the ground and there was many occasions that we went to buy bigger chains and we’d come back and he’d be gone. And so it was very distressful because many times we’d hear him. We had a little forest area near our house. Many times he would run into the forest area and his chains would get stuck around a tree or some big shrubs and he would be wailing and crying and disturbing the neighbours and that happened many, many times. Again I begged my parents to please put gates around our house so that Halter can be safe but they didn’t listen, they didn’t oblige and one day my mother got really, really angry and I was really in shock because she called the dog pound and had him taken away. Well I cried, I screamed, I jumped, I protested, I did everything I could. I was depressed for weeks, but to them, he was just a dog and he was disturbing everyone. To me, the solution was simple, just make a gate, but I was quite traumatised by that so after that I vowed to myself, I’m not going to have anymore dogs.I’m not going to keep anymore dogs.

So that went on for decades, but when I arrived in India, in the monastery, I had my own place, I had my own land and my own house and my students and the whole place was gated in. So I decided to have dogs again, and that’s when I started keeping dogs again and when I visited Malaysia more and more, my students in India took care of the dogs until they died a natural death. They were taken care of very well. They were German Shepherds by the way, the ones in India. So now that I’m in a Malaysia, few years back, about 6 years back, I decided to get a dog, and one of my friends gifted me with a dog but they would sponsor the dog but I said that I wanted to go pick the dog.

So I looked over. I went to many pet shops. I went to many places and I found many dogs and I bought a few and I gave them to different friends. People that I knew, that would give them a good home, but I didn’t find the right one until I came to this very dingy, small, kind of place, that was out of the way, that I found out by accident, through someone, and I found Yogi, or Mumu. And the minute I saw Mumu, I fell in love with him and I just knew he was for me, and Mumu is a very, extremely intelligent dog. I think he is just really above average because he is extremely easy to train, very cooperative, very cute, very photogenic and I love him to death. But Mumu, since he was young, has had so many, numerous, medical problems.

I never knew dogs could have so many medical problems, and it’s been just year after year of medical problems, from having fungus on his foot that makes his whole paw swell up and he has to go for surgery, from skin problems and digestion problems, you name it. This Mumu is having problems, and I was down kind of thinking, I looked at my other students and people’s dogs and they have no problems. They don’t care of them much, in the sense of not abusing them but just giving them this food, that snack, they’re not that particular and the dogs are strong, they’re fine, their skins grow very thick carpet of hair. They just don’t have any problems. But Mumu… we even cook his food to make sure he is going to get the right nutrition and also the right foods. Even still, he gets sick. The other dogs, you just give them dog pellets and they’re fine. I was kind of thinking, ‘Wow, what’s this weird karma I have with this dog.’ And I thought about it and I said to myself that I don’t regret getting Mumu. Although he has been a medical nightmare for many years for me. I don’t regret getting Mumu because I know if that someone else had gotten him, I don’t think they would have gone through the amount of energy, time and research and treatment that we have done for Mumu, and I think he would have suffered a lot and maybe even died much earlier on, because he’s had a few near death problems.

And I don’t think that because people around here… there’s not this kind of awareness for dogs where I live, as far as I know, because I’ve talked to the vets, I’ve talked to the pet shop owners and stuff. And I’m not trying to say that I’m just such a wonderful dog owner or dog lover but he’s had so many medical problems. So what I’m trying to tell you is… I’m glad he came to me because I have the capacity, and the people, and the surroundings and the environment to take care of him. And although he may be ill, many of the times, I can do my best to make him as comfortable as possible. He doesn’t have any life threatening diseases but he has problems from time to time, that are very life threatening.

So in any case, I’m trying to tell you that, you feel guilty that your dogs had cancer, and that they had died. You felt guilty that perhaps you didn’t take care of them, you didn’t do something more, you could’ve done something more and I think how you’re feeling is very natural. I think it’s very natural for people to feel that about something that they love. Something that’s very precious. Something that’s suffering. And I wanted to tell you that I don’t think any of it is your fault when I look at it karmicly, ethically. I don’t think any of it is your fault because from your letter, you genuinely love your dogs to the point of even cooking for them, and I want you to look at it another way.

I want you to look at it like, ‘If these dogs had gone somewhere else, would they have even got a fraction of care and love that you have given them.’ Whether they stayed with you for 24 hours or they stayed with you for 8 years. Would they have got that kind of affection and love? And maybe they could’ve. Maybe it could’ve been better. Maybe it could’ve been worse, but all of that is speculation. Karmicly, these dogs have some kind of connection to you and they came to you and you did your best to take care of them, and you did your best to nurture and love them and do whatever you can, and I think that’s the most important thing. And I don’t think you should be traumatised by it as I’m not traumatised by what happened to my dogs in the past anymore.

So what I wanted to share with you is this. In the Buddhist tradition, we have a special Buddha called Medicine Buddha and the Medicine Buddha looks exactly like Shakyamuni except he’s holding a bowl filled with healing, medicinal plants, and holding medicinal plants. Fruits and plants. And he’s blue in colour and he is the Buddha that has many different types of functions for lack of a better word, but one of the functions of this Buddha, is that he is very beneficially for anything connected with animals. Example, if people fine the bones or hair of animals, or even the flesh of animals, if they recite this Buddha’s mantra

TAYATHA OM BEKANZE BEKANZE MAHA BEKANZE BEKANZE RANDZA SAMUGATHE SOHA

And they blow it on the hair or the bone or the flesh of the animals, dead or alive, it will benefit the animal to take good rebirth in the future. This one says, very clearly, in his commentary. So if we love animals very much and we have a special place in our hearts for them, we have to think of them in Buddhistic terms, and the Buddhistic terms is not just that they had a good life with us, we took care of them and we gave them food and medicine, we gave them love, we gave them hugs, we gave them care but we also have to think that when they eventually die… where will they take rebirth, and how will they take rebirth? And we don’t have any power over that. Neither do they. We don’t even have any power over our own rebirth. So therefore one thing that we can ensure that they’re happy in this life is that we give them our love and care as you have Jill, but also, for us to ensure their future lives are blessed as best as we can, and to recite the Medicine Buddha mantra onto them, dead or alive, will be very, very beneficial. So I’m going to be having Beng Kooi send you a Medicine Buddha Sadhana which was compiled by His Eminence Lama Zopa Rinpoche, which we can do without any initiation, and I do that.

And if you do it every single day or maybe once a week, it’ll be very good. So what you can do is, you can have a Medicine Buddha image and then you make the five sensory offerings in the front and then you can have some biscuits or some crackers, and then you can have the skin, the bones or even a picture if you can’t get the skin or bones or hair of a deceased animal, even a live animal you can just take the hair, you can put it in a bowl in front of the Medicine Buddha and do this Sadhana. And when you reach the mantra part, you can blow it on them, visualising that the Medicine Buddha is blessing them and that they will take excellent, wonderful rebirth and that they will meet the Dharma, practice the Dharma and become liberated in the future.

And at the same time you can think, ‘May all animals, everywhere, be completely free of suffering. Be free from murder, beatings, abuse, cold, heat, hunger, abandonment, sickness, mental pain. May they all be free from this.’

When you do the Sadhana, it’ll be very, very powerful. So you can be kind of like the special prayer lady for animals, so you can translate the pain, the guilt, the torture, the fear, the unknowing, all these emotions you felt about the dogs that you loved in the past and about all dogs that you see suffering. The pain, the guilt, the emotions, the pity that you feel for these dogs, instead of leaving it as those raw emotions, which eat away at us, you can translate those emotions into doing Medicine Buddha Sadhana. So your pain, your fear, your guilt, your doubt about how you might have done better with your dogs, it’s just there, it’s just emotion, it’s just raw emotion there, eating into you. So what I think you should do, and I think everybody can do this, and that’s why I’m going to blog it… you can transform, translate, transmute those emotions into something very positive, which is the Medicine Buddha Sadhana.

So what happens is I’m going to send you a beautiful, blessed Medicine Buddha statue and I’m going to send you the Medicine Buddha Sadhana and I’m going to send you a mala and a few other things. And those are going to be gifts from me, for you to start your Medicine Buddha Practice and if you don’t want to do the practice that’s alright also. Those are gifts for you to bless your environment. You can have a little shrine and you can keep the Medicine Buddha there and your shrine objects there and make offerings, and the animals that have passed away, that you love, if you have their hair or any part of them, you can keep it on the shrine and do the Sadhanna and bless them. And your current dog, you can do the same thing and keep the hair there, and you can get the hairs of all the other dogs, all the other animals that you have, you can put it on this little shrine and you can do the Sadhana and you can, every single day or whenever you do the Sadhana, bless these animals and meditate that they will be happy, they will be healed, they will be alright. And when some of your animals are sick or other animals are sick, you can get their picture, you can get their hair, you can put it on your little shrine and you can do Puja to send healing energies, through the power of Medicine Buddha, to these animals, and that would be very beautiful.

So I think that would be very good for you and being a dog lover that is something that would really appeal to you. It appeals to me. Your first dog died after 8 years. Your second dog died within 24 hours of you getting this beautiful dog, and your third dog Buddy who died 6 months ago, well I must say, it is very sad to know he was abused, but it was very nice to know that you gave him love towards the end of his life.

So what you can do is the Medicine Buddha Puja for your first dog that you had for 8 years. You can do the Medicine Buddha Puja for the dog that you had for 24 hours. And you can do the Medicine Buddha Puja for Buddy. Then if you don’t have their hair or any part of them, that’s ok also. You can have their picture. If you don’t have their picture, worst case scenario, write their names on a piece of paper and put it inside the bowl, and you can do Pujas for them. You can do this for everybody else’s dog. You can invite people to send things to you for other people’s dogs. Do it from your heart, do it with a lot of love, do it with a lot of care and you know what? Medicine Buddha is not just for the dogs or for the animals, it’s good for you too. It’s a very powerful Buddha for healing, for purification and for wonderful development of compassion.

So this will be a good practice for you, and did you ever think that these dogs are bringing you closer to the Dharma? From the kindness you have shown them, maybe that is why we have connected in this way. So that you can have the Medicine Buddha Sadhana and practice. To practice for the rest of your life. To be very committed to the Medicine Buddha practice and the Medicine Buddha practice will be very powerful. You can do this Sadhana once a day. You can do it once a week. You can do it once a month. You think how you would like to do it, but make it a regular, consistent thing because it’ll be a powerful source of blessings. The Medicine Buddha Sadhana will not only bless you, the dogs that you love, past, present and future, and the environment, and your house and everyone… it will also bless your mind to open up to accept compassion and love and care, and to develop these qualities, like that of a Buddha. In fact Medicine Buddha’s practice helps us to become a fully enlightened Buddha. It’s very, very beautiful.

So therefore, even if we do the Medicine Buddha practice well, it protects the environment from natural disasters. So places where it’s very vulnerable to natural disasters, Medicine Buddha is a very powerful practice to calm the whole environment and area down. Even the nagas or the supernatural beings or the elemental beings that may also reside in your area, may also be blessed by the Medicine Buddha. It’s very nice to have a Medicine Buddha, maybe made of stone or whatever, to put in our yard and to have animals circumambulate or to have animals see or to have connect there or even people, of course people. It’s very, very powerful. Should you adopt more? Is it their karma to die? Do you have any control? Well the answer is… it is their karma, the karma of the dogs to die, but it was also their karma to get some love from you before they die.

If we can give a good life to an animal for even one day, then let’s do it. Just for one day. Let’s not think about all the days we couldn’t give. Let’s give them even one day, then two days, then three days, as best as we can. You don’t have control over them. If it was time for them to die, you can give them the best diets, you can give them the best medicine, you can give them the best care… if it’s time for them to die they will die, but that is not to excuse us for being negligent or uncaring or cold; we have to do our part, and I’m sure you are none of those. And should you adopt more? Why not? You’re afraid to adopt more because you’re afraid of the pain.

Well there’s going to be more pain. There’s going to be more separation. There’s going to be more sorrow. There’s going to be more deaths, but I want you to turn it around and think of it another way. There’s also going to be love and care. These animals will receive a good life. These animals you adopt, will receive good food, warmth, compassion. So if they were to live with you for one year, for example. For one year that they live with you, they can have one year of compassion, love, warmth and good food. Security. Wouldn’t that be better than leaving them somewhere, abandoned for one year, until they die? With nothing. Not much love, not much care, not much security and hunger. If they were supposed to die after a year, wouldn’t it be better that for that one year, you gave them the best life that you can give?

So instead of thinking of your pain which, of course you feel it and you have every right to feel it; you have to think about their pain. Sometimes when we connect with people, when we love people, when we connect with dogs or animals, it’s very scary to connect, love with them because you know it will end and because things have ended in the past, the pain that you feel is very scary because you’re going to feel the same pain in the future. And if you’re going to feel the same pain in the future, to foresee that pain, resurrects the pain that we felt in the past and therefore some of us close up. Some of us just shut down. And it’s not just about dogs; it could be experience with our parents. It could be about anything, that sometimes when we want to do something new… thinking about the past makes us shut down and we start reliving the present and future as we experienced the past. And we need to break that.

Why do we need to break that? Because the past was the past, and the future is in our hands now. So how we want to make our future, according to Buddha, is up to us because karma is open, karma is free, karma is neutral and what we want to create of karma, what we want to create in our future, is in our own hands. If the future is not in our hands, there’s no point to meditate, there’s no point to practice or to study or to be spiritual. Why? You can’t change anything anyway. You can’t help anything. It’s already fated. No. If you do nothing, it can become a situation that is unpleasant. If we do something, it can become a situation that is pleasant. Pleasant or unpleasant, if we don’t do something, it can become an unpleasant situation or remain an unpleasant situation or become one, or it was going to be one and it remains that way, but if we do something, it can be different. It can change. It can be pleasant.

So we need to empower ourselves by knowing that Buddha said, ‘Karma is created by us. We are the creators of our future. It is in our own hands.’ No god, no deity, no one out there, can change our future if we don’t do something. They can only teach us, they can only show us by example, but they can’t give it to us. If they can, the whole world would be at peace and everything would be perfect. So therefore, you don’t have any control Jill. I don’t have any control and we will not have any control over others’, dogs, animals, suffering but it’s better to love and to care and to try than to keep reliving the past, because some animal, somebody, some situation, might need you, and if you put your influence into this, if you put your energy into this, something might be changed for the better in the future, and that’s what we need to live on. We need to have that kind of hope.

So therefore, you asked me a question, should you adopt an animal again? Well I can’t tell you what to do, but if I was you, I would. If I was you, I would go and start saving animals, helping out at shelters. I would maybe even contribute to animal shelters in anyway that I can. I would perhaps maybe start a blog. Create animal awareness. I would maybe start teaching people to care and love animals and creating a lot of awareness. I think I would do that because I your letter, you have an outpouring of tremendous love and care and compassion for dogs. Well they need you. So I think that would be something good for you to perhaps consider in the future. To bring this to another level. That the pain that you have felt, to not leave it where it is and not bring it to no fruition but to bring this pain to another level, to bring this pain to something bigger and higher and more beneficial. Those dogs are gone and I know you love them but there are so many more out there who need your love, and I don’t think you can adopt every single one of them but if you create awareness for these animals, you can make a difference in their lives through other people. So that’s my thinking for you that I thought I’d share, and like I said, I had to film this because it’d be just too much to write.

I will do prayers for the three lovely dogs that have passed away, for you, and I will get Beng Kooi to send the items to you. They are a gift for you, from my heart, because you are a fellow dog lover. Remember, we have two things in common. You love and animals and Buddhism, and so do I. So from one person to another person, it’s a gift. Now remember what I explained about the Sadhana and if you have any questions, you can contact Beng Kooi and my people. They’ll be very happy to help you. If wish you the best. I send my greetings to your husband also.

I wish you peace and I request you to do more for dogs, anyway that you can. And it’s going to be painful, it’s going to be difficult, it’s going to be really, really, painful, but let’s not think about our pain, let’s think about their pain. Let’s not think about what we might feel, let’s think about what they are experiencing. Let’s take our raw fear and emotions and transmute it and transform it into something beautiful and positive, which is to save animals, save dogs and that’s what you have been doing. I wish you good luck and I wish you success and happiness.

Please continue to study Dharma. Please study the Wheel of Sharp Weapons. Please study the Lamrim. Any teachings by His Holiness the Dalai Lama…get it and read it, it’s wonderful. Please look into the ‘eight verses of thought transformation’. Please look into talks on the ‘three principal paths’. Look into it and study it since you like Dharma. Liking it is one thing, knowing it is another, practicing it is another and last but not least, the most important is gaining the results. When we gain results, we can be a benefit to others. Dogs, people, animals, sentient beings. Much, much more. So I wish you luck if you decide to do the Medicine Buddha practice. In any case, I wish you luck. Thank You.

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