Ahh…I owe you a little story. This is a lovely little story about how thoughts of loving-kindness can transform a person, especially from an animal-hating person to an animal-tolerant (or even loving) person.
Or, to be more accurate, a cockroach-loving person…
I give weekly talks on living a more spiritual life, and in one of my talks, a lady came up to me and shared a problem.
This is what she said: I know we are not supposed to kill any living beings, but I hate cockroaches! And there are these cockroaches living in my bathroom. Every time I go in, they crawl out of the drainhole and my first instinct is to whack them with my slipper. What should I do?
So I said, “Have faith in loving-kindness meditation. Just keep radiating loving-kindness. Have faith and confidence.”
I had no idea what would happen, but I do know radiating thoughts of loving-kindness works wonders. In any case, what harm can it possibly do, right?
But someone who overheard what I said, asked, “Will the cockroaches go away if you radiate loving thoughts to them? Or will more come??!!”
I really had no idea, but I had faith and confidence in this method of solving problems, especially in curbing anger and hatred towards anything.
After one month, I went back to that centre to give a talk, and this lady (now, already a good friend) came up excitedly to me and had this to say: Hey, you know what? I did what you told me and guess what, I don’t hate the cockroaches anymore now. In fact, I find them rather cute! I’m ok with them now.
Aha….a transformation had occured in her. That’s the power of loving-kindness.
You see what had happened to her?
Instead of remaining as the cockroach-hating person that she used to be, she has now become a more tolerant and loving person….to cockroaches. (But if you can tolerate cockroaches, I’ll bet you can tolerate many other living beings, including nasty humans!)
Isn’t that a great achievement?
If everyone would make the effort to practise loving-kindness meditation towards ALL beings (not just humans alone), I can bet my life on the fact that this world will become paradise where….cockroaches roam freely and happily amongst cockroach-loving human beings!!
Got a problem with mosquitoes?
Ants?
Lizards?
Same modus operandi, folks.
Loving-kindness meditation works wonders.
“May all beings be well and happy!”
P.S. It is interesting to note that the same lady overcame her dislike of ants as well, and later, most interestingly, a tortoise came to visit her, and she lives on the 17th floor!! Tortoises bring luck?
Comments
2 responses to “The tale of the cockroach”
The cockroach story is very true. Loving-kindness does help!
This happens to me when I need to stay alone in hostel during every holiday. p/s: I'm not afraid of cockroaches.
What I want to stress here is if we love them, they will love us back. During holidays, the cockroaches simply disappear to no where when I ask them to "migrate". Unfortunately, when the holidays end, they came back and Whack! They died.
Perhaps more loving kindness will do …
=Syn Yii=
Dear sister Kah Yein,
Hi…I've been following your website on Animal Care and I love to read the stories.
I do agree what you said about metta to animals. Well, I don't know if what I have to share here has to do with the metta chant or not. I stayed in a condo. and so far no insects have ever fly inside even with the windows wide open. But whenever I played the metta chant, somehow some kind of insects would fly inside…..they would just linger for a while and then fly out the window.
Previously, I'm also like most people….see ants only…..ohhh no…..take the spray and ssszzzzz……..but now I don't. I just let it be….play the metta chant and later they are gone. Well…maybe they are just "shifting houses" or whatever. They'll go after finishing whatever that they had to do. Anyway, if you keep the place clean then not much trouble with ants.
That's all for sharing.
By the way, I really "salute" you for all the work that you do for the animals….how do you manage with so many things and so much energy?