A. You seem to be disquieted by the precept ‘Don’t kill any living thing’. If this is the case, should you then eat food such as meat, fish, bread, etc? As long as you eat such things, you cannot be free from the responsibility for having a lot of living things, both visible and invisible, killed. Even vegetarians cannot avoid this responsibility since countless microbes inhabiting vegetables are victimised. All living things, including human beings, are supposed to survive by consuming other living things. Even the Buddha couldn’t avoid this rule during his life.
What matters here is not whether you should kill the flies or not, but whether you can see everything, including the flies, you yourself who has the intention to kill them, and also your action of killing them as empty or not.
©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway
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