Free Your Body, Free
My Heart
Life Releasing
7 Aug 2007
With regard to karma, it is
said that of all negative ones, killing being
is the heaviest; and of all positive ones,
saving life is the highest.
So some days ago, a grand life
saving operation took place in Guangzhou in
which one million delicious seafood-would-be
creatures were set free to the sea. Among the
lucky million, there were 23 giant sea
turtles with the oldest reportedly aged 113.
Life Releasing (放生) undertaking, coupled with
vegetarian diet, has a long history in China.
In 511 AD, Emperor Liang Wudi (梁武帝), after reading Lankavatara
Sutra (《楞伽经》) that made him realise Buddha nature is in
every being and thus all lives are of
equal value, wrote Let’s Abstain
from Alcohol and Meat (《断酒肉文》), urging his people
to abandon animal sacrifice and the monks to
stick to vegetarian dishes, and that
practically started an unique tradition of
Han Chinese vegetarian Buddhism. During his reign,
from time to time a large number of
furred, horned, winged and
finned folks were saved from the butcher‘s knife, and released to the
sky the land or rivers, which is considered
as the beginning of the Life Releasing
custom. Before long, the practices became
integral parts of the Buddhist life in China,
and the tells of the miraculous effects
derived from these exercises made entry into
various historical documents.
Not everyone endorse the
practices though. Some oppose the ideas on
the ground that we shall observe the natural
order, and others argue from the perspective
of helping the animals in their karmic debts
repayment.
Yet the supporters dispute
against these notions by
reciting Surangama Sutra (《楞严经》), in
which the Buddha denounces the act of killing
other sentient beings, for it not just
causing sufferings on the
slaughtered, generating unhappy
karmas for the slaughters, but planting
negative seeds in the consciousness of the
perpetrators which would see them stuck deeper in
the karmic loop. Therefore, as the Life
Releasing participants believe, what have
been released are not just those trapped
animals, but their own trapped hearts.
Thus we heard Chinese monk
Xuanhua (宣化上人) once say: “Your world is
the reflection of your heart; you are what
you want to be.”
Thus we hear Chinese monk
Jiqun (济群法师) keep saying: “What
we once pursue will be what we repeatedly
chase; and what we keep chasing will be what
we eventually attain.”
And thus we venture to
anticipate that the Life Releasing practice
would continue, and would even become more
popular. And why wouldn’t it?
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