Doing SOMETHING 1

I recently read the book 'After the Ecstasy, the Laundry' by Jack Kornfield - again. Whilst it is not my favorite Buddhist book, I do enjoy some of the stories within it. One of my favorites is on page 273. It is a single paragraph with a valid point. The story talks of a man who saves dying starfish, one by one, flinging them back into the ocean from the sands of a beach. Whilst there are so many starfish and it might otherwise seem pointless, he explains the fact that each saved starfish does not regard his action as pointless.

This is similar to my own findings when I first began to take steps to become a vegetarian. After forty years of eating what I thought was tasty or healthy, I had to overcome my taste-cravings, and take 3-4 steps to arrive. But I made it, so that nowadays I do not buy, cook, or consume meat, fish or eggs - unless I am given some, as a gift. The first step was to say no more sausages, pepperoni, steaks, or lamb roasts. This was not too difficult, and I had myself down to eating seafood an chicken only, in a single step. I made the decisions and then took it up. The next step was that I would only eat a PIECE of chicken or fish, and not a whole being or lots of beings. This is where I began to get into difficulty and had to contemplate rather than just decide.

A plate of shrimp for example, is numerous lives lost for just one meal in my belly. Shrimp tastes good, is easy to use in many meals, and is healthy. So I had to go over the fact that I was saving multiple lives by not eating it. By eating one piece of a tuna fish and passing on the shrimp, I was saving hundreds of lives each year. Now, I am at the stage where I do not take a piece of a life for my own feasting, but this was a stage I had t pass through on my way.

So each day I encounter when I think that I have done nothing good, positive, or right, I can still regard as a good day in one small way - I did not eat a plateful of lives! Those shrimps that I did not eat can go on living happily in the ocean, even if it is only one plateful from amongst millions…