Salt * Wet * Fish

As Vesak Day approaches, I have dug up an old posting of my (last year) and posting it here.

Time to rethink about releasing
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Releasing of animals has been a tradional practice of Buddhists for as long as I can remember. Another form is that of buying would-be dinner food from restaurants and releasing them. This action is probably inspired by the vows to save all beings from suffering, which incidentally also helps the person gain some merits.

Compassion as it has been said is foolish without wisdom. Wisdom comes not from gut feeling of “I think I did the correct thing”, but arises from careful study and understanding of the consequences of our actions. Is this respect, are we sure then that our actions as Buddhist has gone through this process of wisdom, despite our compassion?

Just as the Kalama sutta has urged the kalamas to investigate all teachings and traditions, Buddhists now are urged to investigate this tradition of animal release, to know if they are indeed worth doing or if it brings more harm then good.

The action of releasing bird have in itself sprout an industry for it. For a religion that talks about compassion, it does seems strange that our actions can bring about an industry that catches birds in the wild, cage them in small and cramp cages with many other birds and then allowing us to buy those birds and releasing them back to the wild again, just so that we may feel that we have done a good deed.

One of the methods of catching birds is to setup a net across the woods and as the bird flies through they get entagled and caught. Many of these nets are not meant for catching bird harmlessly, unlike those used for research.

The entangled birds often gets injured or exhaust themselves to their death trying to get free. By the time the bird catcher comes and collects the bird, they are either exhausted and starving and many of those birds either died in the net or along the way to market. Those that are alive are then stuffed into a cage with many other birds, with bad hygiene and we don’t even know if they feed those bird, if at all. Within the cages, they may fight amongst themselves in cage and some may suffocate to death or bleed because of the fights. By the time you come along to buy these birds for release they have often suffered for a few days. So, for every bird you release probably 5 more died because of it.

Such kinds of unkindness and sufferings are not just isolated to bird, but to most if not all animals including fishes caught in the wild. Some have their habitats destroyed or poison, some are ripped apart from their families or have their entire families kills. Like a lot of the marine fishes (which are not bred in farms), many of these fishes are caught by locals using dynamites or cyanide poisoning. The process kills their habitats and other fishes and marine fishes when caught does not live long.

Many of these shop owners who buys fishes and animals do not care about the sources of these animals or the methods used to caught them, their main concerns is always the bottom line.

Some of us may feel that its okay to buy from restaurants because we are directly saving the beings from being killed and they don’t effect the economics of the restaurant themselves enough to cause a dent or to start an industry for it. When we buy off any live food whether for eating or releasing, the act itself already continues the economic cycle of the benefit of selling live food. Also, some of these live food may not be native to our areas or maybe farm bred. Releasing animals into a different environment can has great impact to the existing ecology or to the animals themselves, just like the release of the fierce Lo Han fish into our reserviors. If the animal is farmed, they normally don’t survive well in the wild.

Even if the live animal is native to our areas, do we know how were they caught, what destruction happened when they were caught, how are they treated by the restaurants (have you seeing dying fishes in seafood restaurants?) or how long have they been kept in the tank? But the time we buy any of these animals, they have already gone through all these various stages of sufferings. We come along and buy them off the restaurants and the next rounds of sufferings begins for others.

It would be naïve to think that its always a one to one replacement. For every ONE, we buy, probably 5 more died or suffered and another 2-3 more probably replaces it. If you buy one fish from me, I won’t get just another one to replace it, it will get at least one more, so that I can sell more.

The issue is not that I am against releasing of animals per se, but in the economics of it, the exchanging of money in order to get them released. Whenever we pay to buy something, it becomes an encouragement for the vendor to continue in his/her trade.

This dilemma is constantly played out with animal conservationalist in places like Africa. They constantly have to struggle with the emotion of not buying a young primate (e.g. gorilla, chimpanzee or gibbon) from the market plce because once they do that, this will encourage the sellers to catch more to sell back to the conservationalists. And to catch these young primates, usually it means that its parents have to be killed in order to pry it from their arms. So effectively, they are not releasing one animal by buying them off the streets, but killing 2 or more animals because of it.

Closer to home, true animal lovers would avoid buying pets from pet shops, they adopt them from the animal shelters. I have a friend’s cousin who loves dogs and have taken in a lot of stray dogs to feed and shelter them. His daughter thought that since he loved dogs so much, the best birthday present was to buy a cute puppy for him. Not only was he unhappy, but he was very upset by this move. True animal lovers knows the sufferings of these pets that we buy off pet shops, in the hands of the suppliers and pet shop owners and will never agree to buy one from a shop, no matter how cute.

This is not to say that all pet shops are bad or its dad to buy from pet shops, but because there are no laws or self-regulation to ensure a good treatments of pets within the industry, exploitation will tend to be maximized to extract the maximum value. Have you seen how puppy mills (where they grow puppies) are often covered tall fences that nobody can ever see through, but you can hear barks of puppies and dogs all the time inside? However, if we are careful consumers and equip ourselves to ask the right questions, maybe we can decide which shop we can support.

The lack of law or self-regulation is similar to the maids situation in Singapore where the government refused to protect them more, leaving many of them to the mercy of the maids agency and the home owners.

What about those whose livelihood depends on such sales? This is something for us to ponder over also as its never easy to be a wise and compassionate Buddhist. More importantly, we have to be aware of the consequences of your own actions and choose the path yourself. However, do no develop guilt and shame because we are not there yet, each of us should work on it as we best know how to and to our current abilities.

May all beings be well and happy
And be free from suffering