In the new (July 2009) issue of the Shambhala Sun, Gabriel Cohen’s piece “Night of the Cockroach,” the author shines a light — and in so doing, sends little sentient beings scattering. But sho
uld we really treat cockroaches with compassion, or are they just disease-carrying pests to be dealt with?
In this short excerpt Cohen shares his reaction to the presence of unwanted six-legged visitors, and it’s probably not an uncommon one:
“I’m flooded with an intense jolt of anger and revulsion. I’m thinking, how dare you invade my safe kitchen, you malicious little bastard!
“When anger arises, it’s always a good idea to question what’s going on inside, rather than out. first of all, because I have chosen to occupy this apartment, is it inherently mine? Why is it my space, as opposed to the roach’s? And why do I believe that this little creature is threatening me? I even impute a malicious streak to it, as if it were inherently both vermin — noxious and objectionable — and villain. When I look at things from the roach’s side, I see the wrongness of my view. This bug doesn’t wish me harm. It came out of the darkness into an open space, just seeking a bit of food, the satisfaction of its most basic needs. then the light came on and a huge monster was standing there! from the roach’s point of view, I’m the menace; I’m the potential cause of suffering.”
We want to know: what do you think? Where do you draw the line when it comes to killing or not killing? Share your advice, your comments, and your thoughts with other SunSpace readers here.
(And for more related to this, you might want to see our recent SunSpace discussion about vegetarianism, here.)
25 Comments
This is a good topic of conversation because I just killed a cockroach two nights ago.I felt conflicted but when push came to shove I felt the cockroach and I had different aims and in this particular situation I could and should achieve my aim. Sometimes I try to save them and let them go but sometimes I get lazy. I do feel bad, though, but that's life – at least for me.
Take care.
Thanks, Raymond… I understand completely. I'll practically break my neck to collect a bug and get him outside — unless it's one of those big ol' centipedes that everyone seems to get every now and then. (I hear that when you see them, they've actually been around for quite some time — they come out of the woodwork (so to speak) and show themselves sometimes after hanging around for like 5 or 6 years.) When it's one of them I see, all bets are off, and I land temporarily on the "killing" side of the argument. …not that I'm proud of it…
It is ant season here and I have been struggling with what to do about them. The ants were here before our house was built on the sandy soil they love, but oh how I wish I could encourage them to stay in the woods and not on/in the house! We do end up killing some, well, lots probably, with our non-toxic (to humans) ant powder. My husband often wonders out loud how we could negotiate with them instead. So far we've had no luck with that.
Love this SunSpace blog – it really helps tide me over between print issues :)
This is the crucible no? I hate hate hate june bugs. the way they go brughhhhhfppp into my hair . I will happily remove bees and spiders that could hurt me but I cannot touch these things. Our rooster, John Wayne, has taken against me and my step-daughter. He looks at us sideways and then tries to leap on us spurs forward. He shouldn't be allowed to do that should he? I want to dispatch some of the people who drive badly too.It is a practice to be non-violent, to not take the life of other beings, to work with my mind about who I think gets to stay and who should go. What if someone decides I should go? I'm rather annoying to many I've been told – so bossy and opinionated. I might be considered vermin to some. Groups of humans have been considered vermin I understand – they are not part of the fat center but are hanging on to the skinny branches with their finger tips. And then they make me feel guilty – they ask for my attention and my money and my heart. They ask me to wake up and see them – those flowers we've designated as weeds. Let's keep talking about this OK?
I keep the mouse out of my house by giving him birdseed out side. I keep the squirrel from chewing my shingles by rubbing habenaro pepper on the shingle. the black ants stay out of the house for they are drawn to the sugar dripping from the hummer feeder. If there isn't a food source in the house for them they will leave. LIke in the movie 7 yrs in Tibet. Kundun says to Brad Pitt's character "you're smart, think of something".
In my household we capture and release, except for spiders (auspicious portents of wealth) and crane flies (so beautiful and so harmless to humans.) In the front parlor in the winter, ladybugs hatch – also lucky omens of wealth and happiness – and in warm weather we open windows and encourage them to fly away, fly away.
But mosquitoes? Dead. With a prayer for a good rebirth as we swat them splat.
i kill bugs…i think that the problem lies in taking pleasure in the killling. If you have a chance to think about it and choose to kill a bug or reroute them out, then the choice can be made. In Texas we have fireants and i feel slightly bad about destroying their nest but i will do it without hesitation
well said, Kundun and peacefulplace2.
Are you kidding me, pp2?
The mouse will find his way in seeking warmth and shelter.
The Squirrel will find an untreated edge of shingle, if he wishes.
There are more ants around your house than you can count. If the ant can find a way in, he will.
Food sources include paper (cardboard, book bindings, etc.) and wood. You cannot live in a sterile environment.
I also have been battling the carpenter ants this spring. They are a persistent pest, so until I master some mantra that sends them packing, I have to resort to chemical warfare. I'm not happy about it either. I assuage my guilt by praying for them to have fortunate rebirths and to find the Dharma. Everything else I capture and release, especially spiders. They eat the ants!
Glad I'm not the only one who has thought about this. Thanks for your posts.
Nice to chat with you Mark,
I'm not really looking for sterile, it's more like minimally sharing my space with potentially disease caring creatues and making descisions I can live with regarding their life as well as mine.
No solution is perfect in this human realm.
I try my best to follow the precept of not killing. I am a vegetarian. When dealing with bugs I do catch and release and utilize environmentally sound prevention strategies to keep my house pest free as much as possible. I am also concerned about chemical means due to the environmental implications (ie pollution). I do have a bit of a phobia of cockroaches but I try to take a compassionate view and I still catch and release them (or have someone else do it!). Fortunately where i live they are rare but I had some monster sized ones in my accommodations when traveling in India and CHina.
If you place a line of chalk at the entrances and anywhere ants come in, they will not cross the chalk line. It doesn't hurt them, just deters them from entering.
I'm vegan, so I try my best to avoid killing even really annoying bugs. My last apartment had quite the cockroach population, no matter how clean we kept the kitchen, and I killed my fair share–I feel guilty about it, I confess. Our resident mice I left alone, though they did chew through a bag of rice. *sigh* Usually I'll scoop up bugs and take them outside (my sister is scared of camel crickets, so it fell to me to relocate them), but I still instinctively swat mosquitoes. I know they don't eat much, but sometimes the itching is unbearable. It's all about the journey I guess….
Turns out Prez Obama, for all the "Zen master" talk about him, is a relentless fly-killing machine. http://gawker.com/5293031/barack-obama-fly+killin...
And here's PETA's take on Obama's "no-fly" initiative:
"He isn't the Buddha, he's a human being and human beings have a long way to go before they think before they act."
LINK: http://www.tmz.com/2009/06/17/peta-swats-at-obama...
I work in Human Services-Mental Health Division and we spend inordinate amounts of energy in the form of physical work and money to eradicate bed bugs and roaches etc from our consumer's housing. Occasionally the problem is carried into our offices and we are confronted with having to cope…As I entered my peaceful office and plugged in my fountain, I turned on the low lighting and prepared to feed my fish when there scurried across my blotter a cockroach hiding between the calendar pages. I lived with this for 2 days and struggled internally until the office was buzzing with sightings. The exterminator arrived with his toxic tank, promising that all would again be "harmonious" and my internal struggle only grew stronger. I know of the disease carrying argument and the bits from bed bugs and secondary infections etc etc, yet I feel nothing harmonious about this choice! As others have stated I make every effort to escort most unwanted guests from my environment to a more hospitable one and struggle enormously with the inability to reconcile this within myself!
This hits home for me. I am at conflicts edge trying to make a respondsible decision. Where I am now is that I am sharing the world space with all insects and critters but not my home space and it makes it mine because I make payments on it. : ) Many times I do cart insects to the door and release but other times I do not. I think it depends on my own laziness and time factor not really the sort of insect it is. The writer that posted about intentional killing or killing out of the joy of killing I believe make a good point. As a child I found fun in stepping on ant hills, as an adult I try not to step on them. I think the answer is within each of us as to how we are to respond there not being a truly right or wrong answer but a respondsible answer. Interesting thread
My dilemma is yellow jackets. I'm allergic to their stings, and I spray their nests at my house. Also I spray them when they're inside my horse trailer; no way I'll subject my horse to getting stung when she's not able to get away! If there's a critter in the house, like a spider, I trap it and release it — unless it's a wasp. I do honor them and wish them a quick return as something less harmful to other beings, and I end my meditation with a Namaste in respect for myself and other beings, acknowledging "including the ones I kill…" … .it's a problem, but perhaps honoring their lives with intention at least keeps me mindful of what I'm doing.
I don't knowingly kill creatures in my apartment. I find that not leaving dishes in the sink and putting the cat's food dish in a shallow pan of water (with a couple of drops of dish soap in the water to break the surface tension) keeps the ant population at a level I can cheerfully tolerate. Larger bugs are carefully picked up and escorted outside. (In years past, I killed ants, but it just felt more and more wrong as time went on. They fear for their lives in the same way I would fear for mine, and they want to live on and be happy just as I do.)
I see in all these posts a missing component. Bacteria have been found to act communally, yet we kill miillions or even billions in every hand, dish and laundry washing. Not to mention all the cells in your body you kill with every washing. You kill hundreds of insects on a night time car ride. Possibly thousands given the ones that don't stick to your car. And city dwellers you don't get off so easy. The pollution from a western life kills many animals in it's stream. In all this I can't say a specific point execpt hand wringing over what you can be mindful of can lead you into exponential angst over the millions and millions of creatures you have killed in a lifetime. I am sure the Buddha was aware that in living there were beings beyond his pre-technical conception and that some must be some dying as he went about living. In short, how would the Buddha spare the lives of the bacterium that was raised from it's dark comfy spot to open air? He could not. If the issue is life, size is not the important factor. Thus you have a real dilemma: accept that you must kill with your consent and foreknowledge and realize this is acceptable to life as it happens or live in forever guilt knowing that you kill every day.
Markus, it is about best effort. Just because bacteria dies does not mean we must seek out to kill humans, bugs or other animals.
Thank you Markus for bringing bacteria into the picture. I just cleaned the toilet thinking about the bacteria I was killing, and truthfully, I only felt slightly bad about it, and I know I will willingly murder such bacteria in the future. But, it had never crossed my mind before, so you have given me this new awareness. Thank you for that. However, although I think guilt can be a good thing to keep us in line, I don't think massive amounts of it are healthy. We have to keep this in perspective to stay sane enough to do our best work.
Hi everyone,
I'm not buddhist but rather a vegan, so I do not wish to harm any insect beings that come my way. I know that as I walk through the park, it's possible I kill hundreds of insects under my shoe, so some will philosophically rationalise that it doesn't matter if insects within the home are killed because it can be seen as insignificant. Personally I do not believe this because I think one should focus on preventing unnecessary suffering, rather than rationalising necessary suffering in the same category. If one cannot distinguish necessary from unnecessary suffering, I think such a mental state is harmful and can lead to other types of problems.
I find that one of the most effective measures one can take is maintaining a clean living space. Often ants, flies, spiders exist as a result of having access to a food source within that environment. On top of keeping a clean living space, one can also use deterrant products. White vinegar, salt, and other natural products can deter insects.
When it comes to larger rodents, I know that both PETA and http://www.veganessentials.com sell a humane mousetrap.
I'm not sure what to do about cockroaches though. They seem to like clean living spaces. Right now I'm capturing them with a cup and releasing them outside, but they are very hard to catch, and can fit through very tiny spaces, making humane traps rather ineffective for them.
Sometimes I keep the philosophy "you can't catch them all" and just let them in and out of my living space. Though I do like order in my environment, I try to find the most humane way to go about achieving this goal, even if it takes more work.
Unless I've missed something previously posted, we have yet to realize a reliable way to rid and remove carpenter ants from homes without killing them. It's been recommended that we keep vegetation and firewood storage 18" away from the house, make sure no part of a wood wall is less that 6" from grade, make sure moisture is not entering the house, keep the house clean and free of accessible food sources, a moat of gravel around the house can discourage their entry, and plug-in sub-sonic noise makers can work near areas with wiring. However, what can we do for infested areas located away from wiring? What can be done to divert or block their paths of entry once discovered?