Killing eggs comes back: Karma (epidemic)

I feel therefore I am, Descartes

Is an egg an egg? - Yes. Is it alive? - Yes. - How do we know? - We know because if cared for, it will grow (develop, transform, metamorphose) into a bird, often a bird (like a chicken) capable of procreating more eggs and birds.

Is killing unskillful (harmful, detrimental, resulting in suffering)? - Yes. - Is taking the life of an egg killing? - NO, that doesn't count! It's not a bird! It's a fetus, and a fetus is not a life! I'm not giving up my omelets and easy-overs! You tricked me! It's not killing. There's nothing wrong with stealing eggs, smashing them, and devouring the insides like common egg-stealing snake-animals from the warm wombs of mother-birds! I grew up on a farm, and all the hens gave us their eggs, I mean our eggs, and said, "Sure, eat 'em, I don't care! They come out of canal and mean nothing to me as long as the roosters are kept away so they can't be babies and we're forcibly confined for our safety to all lesbian prison-coops! Case closed, right-to-lifers! Keep your exalted karma philosophies out of my kitchen!"

• Karma: The high cost of eggs (Silanisamsa Jataka)
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So you admit to having mixed feelings, with so much reactivity, that slurping the wombs of big mother-birds to devour their egg in the shell is kidnapping, killing, and cannibalizing fellow living beings? Kind of, but so what? EVERYONE does it! - Well, not everyone. Those who do meet with trouble, not the least of which are salmonella infections, E. coli epidemics, bowel distress, possible death, and when they meet with the results of their karma (deeds), they will not be happy about it.

Isn't the salmonella and E. coli infection the karmic result of killing? - No. That's just a natural consequence of consuming contamination. The abducting of eggs, killing of birds, the slaughter and slurping of the dead, that's the karma. And the karmic result and fruit (vipaka and phala) of killing will not be good.

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The Buddha tells a story of the past: Silanisamsa Jataka

It's not a sutra, Homer, it's a jataka. - Shut up, Flanders! *Whisper* I'll be back for those eggs.

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This ship is going to sink, friend.

Long, long ago, at the time of [a previous buddha named] Buddha Kassapa [3], a [stream-enterer] lay disciple who had already entered the path [reached the first stage of enlightenment] booked passage on a ship with his friend, a rich barber.

The rich barber's wife asked the Buddha's disciple to look after her husband. But a week after it left port, the ship sank in the middle of the ocean.

The two friends saved themselves by holding on to a plank of wood and were eventually cast up on the shore of a deserted island rookery.

Hungry, the foolish barber raided egg nests, killed birds, slaughtered and cooked them, offering a share of his bloody meal to the Buddha's disciple.

Farmer trying to steal the mother chicken's babies/eggs goes viral

The wise go for guidance to the Buddha.

"No thank you," the disciple answered, "I'm fine" [not wishing to encourage the foolish barber in his defilements and unskillful karma]. He thought to himself, "In this desolate place, there is no help [guidance] for us except the Three Jewels [the Buddha, Dhamma, and noble Sangha]."

As he sat meditating on the Three Jewels, a naga (reptilian, dragon, CDs) king who had been reborn on that island magically transformed himself into a beautiful ship filled with the seven precious things [4]. Its three masts were made of sapphire, the planks and anchor of gold, and the ropes of silver.

The naga king transforms into a ship to save the good man

The helmsman, who was a sea spirit, stood on the deck and yelled, "Passengers for Jambudipa [earth, subcontinent, or India] now boarding for immediate passage!"

"Yes," the virtuous lay disciple called back, "that's where we're bound!"

"Then come aboard," the sea spirit invited.

The virtuous layman climbed aboard the beautiful ship and turned to call his friend the foolish barber.

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(The Simpsons) Stealing to kill and devour mother and their offspring

"You may come," the sea spirit declared "but he may not."

"Why not?" the disciple asked.

"He is no follower of the pure life," answered the sea spirit. "I brought this ship for you, but not for him."

"If that's the case," the virtuous layman announced, "then all the gifts I have given, all the virtues [restraints and exertions] I have practiced, all the powers I have developed — I give the fruit of all of them to him!"

"Thank you, Master!" cried his friend the barber.

"Very well," relented the sea spirit, "now I can take both of you aboard."

List of the Buddha's rebirth tales or Jataka Stories (Wiki)

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The ship carried the two men across the sea and up the Ganges River that pours into it. After depositing them safely at their home in Baranasi [the holy ancient city of Varanasi/Benares], the sea spirit used his magic power to create enormous wealth for both of them. Then, poising himself mid-air, he instructed them and their friends:

"Keep company with the wise and good. If this barber had not been in the company of this virtuous layperson, he would have perished in the middle of the ocean."

Arguing more details

What about other eggs? - Avoid harming beings.

[Doesn't that depend on whether a rooster (cock, man-chicken) inseminated and fertilized it? - That's what some people say. But is cannibalizing a fellow human's womb, the afterbirth, okay after a human birth? - That's sick. - Yeah, but people do it, saying human cannibalism is nutritious and what a waste to throw all that flesh and goo away after it is expelled from the womb and vagina, mixing with bum juices and all but being washed and sauteed before being cannibalized. - Sick! - Sick, yes, but is it killing?

- No! No one died, and no one was kept from being born or developing! - Right, so if that cannibalism is all right, why not eggs that have not yet developed a blood spot, the sign of fertilization? - Ugh, it's all so gross. I don't think humans are carnivores, given that they don't have the features of carnivores but share so many similarities with herbivores. - Meat eaters call human bodies "omnivores" like dogs, capable of eating anything. - Any nutritive substance will do, no matter how contaminated or how fouled by harmful substances that intrinsically mixed in. Carnivore bodies are the way they are to deal with quickly expelling the toxins. - Anyway, don't we HAVE to eat something, so we have to kill something to do it?

- No. We can live without killing, but let's say some lower lifeform does die in the process, are we killing it or calling for it to be killed? No. Even vegetables do not have to be killed for us to eat and live well. - How? - Fruitarianism, for example, is a great way to live on food produced by plants without killing the plants -- beans, grains, vegetable parts other than roots, bioavailable minerals, chlorella, nuts, and much more like nonplants, such as mushrooms and mycelia.

There's breatharianism, subsisting on prana and amrita, but the West doesn't believe in that, so it's out of the question -- but we know it to be true, rare as it is, upending everything we think we "know" about this body and this human life. Vegetarianism is another example, which comes in different varieties. Veganism is a better example, as it steers clear of all dead animals, dead insects, dead and killed higher lifeforms, and avoids using their slaughtered bodies and byproducts. - Is there no way to eat the dead? - There are plenty of ways to eat the dead. Look around.

- No, I mean, any ethical, moral, non-karmically-harmful way? - I can think of one, but it still has the problem of the dead's bodies being rotten, filled with harmful things that the human body will suffer to have to deal with, but at least karmically might not be a problem, other than maybe ghoulish beings standing around delighting in the dead body and its devourment.

- Well, you don't make it sound appetizing, but what is it? - What if someone were to eat the already-dead, that is, that which is dead by not being killed? - What do you mean? - Roadkill, aged animals, sick animals, dead by predation, dead by accident, and so on, these bodies, while dead, might not have been killed by the consumer aiming to consume them NOR paid to be killed, nor by approving of killing as happens when one hires and pays a butcher, a delicatessen, a slaughterhouse, abattoir, a rancher or other torturer of animals who raises them for slaughter or facilitates their slaughter.

- Never mind, I'd rather go vomit and never eat another living being if you put it like that. - The Truth is that the Truth is, whatever it is, and that may be what karma knows, regardless of our rationalizations saying, "This isn't so bad" or "This is not as bad as that" as if any of that makes killing okay, or approving of killing, or rewarding someone for killing, or digesting the dead.]

• Eds., Wisdom Quarterly COMMENTARY, ANALYSIS