A couple of posts back, Sammy in Iowa asked this question:
Could you write about helplessness too? i sometimes wonder about trying to become a bodhisattva when some around me are bent on increasing their own suffering. i feel more helpless when it comes to animal beings sometimes; but, i see it in humans too, myself included.
Hm. Well. This’ll be the first time I’ve ever written a blog post by request. Here goes…
A Boddhisattva is defined as someone who delays their own achievement of nirvana in favor of saving all sentient beings from the sufferings of samsara, and helping them to achieve their own enlightenment. One of the best known stories about boddhisattva action concerns Mahasattva and his encounter with a starving mother tiger. You haven’t heard the story yet? Oops, my bad.
Mahasattva was one of the incarnations of the Buddha. One day, while traveling through a forest, he encountered a starving tigress and her cubs. The tigress was too weakened by hunger to hunt properly, and feed herself and her children. Selflessly, Mahasattva offered himself to the tigress, so she could kill him, feed, and regain her strength. But the poor tiger was too weak to strike him down. Mahasattva then cut his own throat, so the tigress could feed.
I know when I first heard this story, my first thoughts were about how beautiful the story was, but would I ever really slit my own throat for a helpless animal? Hm. And what about all of the encumbrances of modern life? There’s bills to pay, and then that meeting next week…and, if I died that way, what would happen to my stuff? A lot of the helplessness I feel is partly a sense of being caught up in my own little section of samsara.
So there’s one of the biggest differences between a boddhisattva and us regular folk. A boddhisattva has none of these worldly considerations. He or she is purely focused on the salvation of all sentient beings. There’s no time spent telling other folks that they need to slit their throats for hungry tigers; no postings on a blog site or on YouTube to trumpet their accomplishments; no bumper stickers or t-shirt sales to spread the word about this work. There’s just the moment, and the tiger, and the knife.
It’s also true that some of my helplessness comes from being at a loss as to how to begin saving a particular being. Sammy mentioned folks bent on increasing their own suffering. I have a personal tale of my own to share…
Some years back I was riding in a friend’s van with some other folks. We were in the Mission district of San Francisco–not the more gentrified part filled with trendy restaurants and nightclubs, but the section in the low ‘teens, where gangs and drugs and prostitution abound. It was night, and we’d pulled into a gas station to fill up the tank. We all stopped what we were doing to gape through the front windshield. In the glare of the van’s headlights, one of the local crack whores was changing clothes in a corner of the gas station lot. She made no attempt to shield herself from the light at all. Modesty is one of the first things to go when it comes to a lifestyle bent on turning that next trick to get the money to buy that next rock as quickly as possible. I remember the scene to this day; and one of the first thoughts to go through my head was, “Ya know, Nyondo, when you’re saying manis for the salvation of all sentient beings, this is one of those beings.”
Despite that, I still felt helpless in the face of her suffering. Although I was working one day a week for the SAGE Project, this particular woman wasn’t a SAGE client, and probably not even close to entering a program that would help her escape the life she was living. And I’m not proud of this, but the fact is my friends and I did nothing, immobilized by the sheer amount of help this one person needed. Housing, medical care, clothing, food, detox, regular employment…
The whole experience was something of a revelation. For one thing, the boddhisattva attitude makes it clear there is no room for racism, prejudice, or judgement of any kind. How can you commit yourself to saving all sentient beings, only to say “except for that soul, over there?” Ridiculous. And while I still might not be prepared to slit my throat for the first hungry tiger I encounter, there are many other smaller things I can do for other beings, if I keep their salvation firmly in mind.
I could end the post here, but the fact is that even here in the remote Himalayan foothills, the desire to become a boddhisattva is sorely put to the test. I’ve written previously about the animals here, but in this case I’m referring to a person.
There’s a man here who was once employed as chowkidar (caretaker) of the lake. He would go around and clear away some of the garbage, and generally patrol for litterers and vandals. Then he started to go crazy. He would shout his prayers to the fish in the lake, and bless me continually as I passed by. He took on that skinny, wild-eyed look that people get when they’ve been listening to the voices for too long. He started to pray in the middle of the bus stand, chanting “Om Namah Shivay” while forcing the buses and taxis to drive around him. About two months back, he came up behind me, and tried to cut of some of my hair with a knife. He didn’t hurt me, and got only two or three dreads. The odd thing is, after it happened, I didn’t become angry. I mostly went into some kind of shock, and felt sorry for him. Friends asked me if I wanted to go the police, and I refused.
You see, in the States, calling the police for this kind of situation would result in a “5150” (Danger to self and others) and a nice hospital stay with food and psych meds. Here, though, the only thing calling the police will do is result in beatings and a stay in a jail cell. Would beatings and imprisonment do anything for the craziness? No. Would I feel better about myself for having put someone through that? No. For the most part, no one in town is willing to call in the police for this reason.
The chowkidar disappeared for some weeks around Baisakhi Mehla, and showed up again in town the other day, crazier than ever. He now goes about town with his face covered in yellow powder, and bits of garbage tied onto his clothes. He’s been praying to me as his mother, and touching my hair. I told him off this morning, and a local wallah suggested again I go to the police. In town I ran into David, a Western friend, and asked his advice. It turned out the chowkidar had been praying to him as his “father”. David and I went back out on kora, and when we encountered the chowkidar, David gave him a stern, fatherly lecture not to touch his mother. The chowkidar apologized, and we continued on our way. During the walk David told me the local Rewalsar police had shipped the crazy man off to Simla, and it looked like the Simla police had shipped him back.
So now what? Here is the boddhisattva test for y’all. Here we have a sentient being, certainly in need of saving. But how to do it? He’s pretty far into his tin-foil hat reality and seems happy there, where gods are wandering around as confused indjis, and garbage makes perfectly good jewelry. For myself, the options seem to be these:
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Not leave the house for a while, and hope the chowkidar regains his sanity (or at least picks different parents)
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Leave the house, and play along with being his mother, as long as it seems safe
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Leave the house, but avoid him whenever possible. This tactic is kinda limited, since there’s only four main streets in Rewalsar….
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Leave the house, and go to the police.
What do you think? what would you do?
May 29th, 2007
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“…And then what happened, Nyondo?”
Well, after the events of the last post, I heard through a friend that the veterinarians who’d spayed the dogs and then left town hadn’t gone far–only to Dharamsala, a 7 hour drive away. (This counts as “close by” in Rewalsar, which is remote enough that Chandigarh, “only” 4 hours away, seems next door.) Supposedly, at least one vet came back for follow-up. Some other people came to town, and a local man showed them around the kora path, stopping to take a look at any dogs they spotted along the way.
The thing about kora is that it not only allows you to fulfill your religious obligations, but also provides an opportunity to meet up with friends and have a cup of tea. This is how news gets around town. If I didn’t go on kora, I wouldn’t know anything. But, back to the dogs…
“Dehisce” is a very neat, very precise medical term that describes the messy process of a surgical incision that’s supposed to stay closed but doesn’t. I think about 7 to 10 dogs were spayed, and out of those, two suffered the horrific and fatal results of dehiscence. Meantime, people seem to be much more aware of the town dogs, and are keeping a weather eye on the survivors,
making sure no others die the same way.
The following morning, while on kora I encountered two Tibetan ladies administering meds to one of the dogs who’d been spayed. They told me the dog was doing well. They were applying one oral medicine–at a guess, an antibiotic–and also applying an Ayurvedic topical ointment to the incision on the dog’s belly. In India, Tibetan and Ayurvedic medicine is as respected as Western medicine, so Ayurvedic animal medicines are available. The dog was complacent, and seemed perfectly happy to be doctored.
In the West a vet with a 20-30% mortality rate on spaying operations would not stay in business for long. Here, though, where sterile technique consists of washing with bottled water, and pet supplies are a 12-hour bus ride away, it’s surprising more dogs weren’t lost. It’s possible the European vets assumed there would be more resources available for the dogs’ aftercare than there actually was.
On the other hand, the Indian government considers poisoning dogs with strychnine to be a reasonable method of population control. This method is also an extremely painful way for the dogs to die, and has a 100% mortality rate.
The whole experience has been something of a painful lesson in how not to carry out a spaying/neutering program. But there are enough canine survivors around town that a program might seem worth while.
And next time, both the dogs and the people are likely to be better prepared for the operations….
May 26th, 2007
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Editrix’ note: this is another blog post where painful, revolting things happen to animals that certainly deserve better. If your stomach is a bit on the weak side, or you’d just rather not read this particular post, fine by me. Those of you in a mood for happier animal stuff, try Cute Overload, Stuff on My Cat, or Kitten War. Hey, look–unicorns!
Okay. Now that the obligatory warning has been posted, I can continue the story of the secret Samaritan dog spaying. I wish I had happier news about it. I really do. But this is what happened instead:
This morning while on kora, one of the spayed dogs I’d spotted earlier in the week was lying belly-down in a water-filled gutter, weakly lapping at the water that trickled between its paws. A group of folks I knew were standing around looking at the dog with some concern. “It’s very bad,” explained one Tibetan lady. “Stomach is coming out.”
Just then, the dog stood up. Several of us watched in horror, hands over our mouths, as the dog’s stomach and intestines dropped out of the its belly, to land in the gutter and drag along the ground as the dog attempted to walk. Looking back along the street, I could see splotches and drips of blood from the dog’s earlier attempts at walking. The dog gave a series of mournful howls as it walked. A bloodied t-shirt crumpled on the ground attested to someone’s efforts to help the dog, despite a complete lack of veterinary training. In a few minutes the dog had disappeared, having successfully managed to drag itself into a small alleyway.
I very much doubted the vet would be open at 6:30 in the morning. Asking around, I learned that the local vet had already been consulted about the dog the previous evening, but had refused to do anything, since it was after 5:00 and his work hours were done. At the time only a small section of the incision had opened back up to reveal a small loop of intestine. Now the dog is in much worse shape, and it was unclear if the dog will receive any treatment from the local vet. There are other vets in Mandi, 45 minutes of scary mountain driving away, but the problem of safely transporting the dog to a vet who might also refuse treatment seemed insurmountable.
A friend filled me in on the rest of the story of the spaying samaritans. A group of European vets had visited Rewalsar, and held an impromptu spaying clinic for all the female street dogs they could round up. For three days, they collected and spayed the dogs, releasing them back to the street to sleep off the effects of the operation. And then…
The Europeans left.
Meantime, their erstwhile patients returned to their lives as Indian street dogs–including fighting and scrapping over territory and dominance. In a fight, a dog wearing a large surgical bandage covering up a five-inch incision is at something of a disadvantage, to put it mildly.
This sort of circumstance outlines why spaying/neutering programs in India have had trouble getting started. The problem is that for the program to have any chance of success, it’s more important to spay female dogs than neuter male ones. The spaying operation is a bit more dangerous, since it involves a larger incision over the abdomen, rather than just the short snip to the testicles that male dogs get. Too, after spaying the female really needs to be kept indoors and looked after for at least a day or two, to give her the best shot at healing up. But spaying performed by a group of itinerant vets on a tight schedule, in a part of India where few people are familiar with the idea of keeping pets indoors, makes for some fairly gruesome results.
A different friend tells me she’s spotted a second dog with a loop of intestine trying to escape from its abdomen. Makes you wonder what the local vet thinks of all this.
I must’ve read the saying “The road to hell is paved with good intentions” millions of times. Never have I seen it illustrated as vividly as I have today. Just goes to show that the karmic equations of one’s actions aren’t as simple as you might think they are….
May 23rd, 2007
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The other day, as I was rounding the lake on kora, I spotted a dog in the street, and did a double-take. Now, a dog in the streets of Rewalsar is not news. There are many of them. Most Indians do not keep dogs as pets. As in Mexico, dogs are outdoor animals who may get the occasional treat from a friendly butcher or dhaba-wallah, but other than that they’re pretty much on their own. There are few spaying/neutering programs here, so the dogs produce litter after litter, until it seems the streets are filled with ungainly puppies learning to walk and play. In parts of India, like Goa, the dogs may end up running in large and sometimes dangerous packs, claiming beaches or parks as their territory. The nights are filled with barking as the dogs settle territorial and dominance disputes.
When the government determines the dogs have gotten too numerous, they put out poison.
Ironically, when the same thing happens with monkey troops, the monkeys are not poisoned. Why? Well, monkeys are vegetarians. Anything that will poison a monkey could poison a cow, since both animals do their share of feeding off the streets. So monkeys are humanely trapped and relocated.
But, back to the dogs. Late last year I watched the various litters of puppies with some trepidation. I have no idea what magic number the government uses to figure out when to lay out the strychnine. 30 dogs? 20? 10? A number of dogs died prematurely from cold, starvation, or car traffic, causing me to wonder what kind of karma could lead to living such a short life in a major pilgrimage point. There are still quite a few survivors, who are
now big strapping animals running in packs. A few of these dogs do belong to people, their badge of ownership being a simple bindi mark on the forehead drawn in hair dye, or a red ribbon around the neck. I’ve seen a couple of other dogs on leashes.
The surprising thing about the dog I saw was this: its belly was definitely shaved, the nipples sticking out in rows against bare skin. And, in the center of the shaved patch, was a neat surgical bandage over a long incision. Someone, somewhere, had taken the dog in to be spayed.
I didn’t think anything of it until this afternoon, when, as I walked by the lake side, I spotted another dog napping in the sun. Belly shaved. Neatly limned scar between the lines of nipples.
Somebody, somewhere, has been taking the dogs in to be fixed! I said a few extra manis for the unknown samaritan, who must have gone to the trouble of catching the dogs in the first place, taking them to the vet, and paying for the operations out of his or her own pocket. Unless I miss my guess, they’ve also been careful to catch the female dogs specifically, since neutering just a few of the male dogs won’t necessarily keep the population down. Fewer females producing puppies will mean fewer visits from government officials bearing poison, fewer dogs dying in agony in the streets, and (perhaps) fewer puppies dying simply because the litters were too big to begin with.
And who’s to say how somebody, somewhere, is altering their karma by saving a pack of street dogs from suffering? It’s occurring to me, as I write this, that maybe all of these short animal lives are doing their part to affect human karma, as well. Food for thought…
May 19th, 2007
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I thought I’d really finished blathering about meat consumption with my last post, but, um, no. A couple posts ago I described making cat food for the kitties–the commercial stuff is a 12-hour bus ride away, in Delhi. Since I started making my own cat food, a number of folks have emailed me with helpful hints on making sure the result has all the different nutrients a cat needs. Most Western recipes call for commercial vitamin supplements of some sort or another, that are also not at all available here. The way the food supply works, most humans are lucky if they manage to get all the nutrients they need, let alone pets or livestock. A number of folks here are on vitamin supplements courtesy of the Emergency Medical Fund. But I digress.
At any rate, I’m getting used to the whole process of cat food production. While searching for ways to make the whole process more efficient and nutritious, I often found myself wishing for the good old days of just grabbing a bag of crunchy cat chow nuggets from PetCo.
Then I found out about the pet food recall. And the reasons for it.
It’s hard to imagine a more cutting indictment of the whole food-manufacturing industry. A Chinese manufacturer of wheat gluten spiked their product with melamine in order to increase the reported protein content. On paper, the stuff looked super-nutritious. In reality, a lot of dogs and cats started dying of kidney failure. So now a supposedly “limited” pet food recall is in progress, affecting 57 brands of cat food and 83 brands of dog food. The real kicker, though, is that wheat gluten is commonly used in people food, too–and as a bonus, a lot of “factory farm” hogs are fed on “salvaged” pet food. The investigation being conducted by a totally overwhelmed FDA is being expanded to look at the human food supply. Meantime, about 6,000 hogs get to meet their maker ahead of schedule, without being consumed afterwards, because their meat might poison humans. The latest evil turn in this whole ugly story is that a rice protein, also used in commercial pet food, has been discovered to have been contaminated with melamine.
What the fuck?
Let’s review: so you have pet food containing wheat gluten and rice protein, neither of which is a food dogs or cats normally hunt in the wild anyway, and animal “byproducts” being fed to livestock consumed by people. Wheat gluten on its own is a common additive used in any number of human food products, so there’s at least three different ways for melamine to reach your digestive system.
Editrix’ Note: The news just gets worse. The latest news on this whole fiasco is that the wheat gluten is contaminated with melamine and cyanuric acid–which crystallizes immediately when it mixes with cat urine. We’re talking cat kidney problems within hours. No word on what happens to people. The number of pets lost is now over 4,000; 17,000 people have issued complaints; and the whole food sustainability issue is now the hot topic at a lot of dinner tables.
All of this really makes me wonder what food I’ll be eating when I eventually return to the States.
May 1st, 2007
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