Bugs and Mice

Even flies, mosquitoes, bees and bugs will achieve enlightenment If they develop the power of effort.~ Shantideva

"In many of one’s own past lives we have accumulated, tried so hard to receive this human body, the perfect human body. With much hardship keeping the moral conduct, making charity, making prayers, or things like these. So this time I was born as a human being, having taken this body, but so far, has it been really worthwhile, did I really do the work that I am supposed to do?

Check like this, examine like this. Any work that has been done has been to obtain happiness of one’s own life. With attachment, seeking only pleasure this life—all this is meaningless work, meaningless work. None of that is the meaning of human life.

Even the animals do this. They do it very well. In regards to collecting material, by thinking of next year, next year, by thinking of the future, making preparations, collecting material possessions, things like that, even the animals do this. Like the bees collect the homey for the winter or the ants collect much food to eat the next time. They collect so much in the fall to eat in the future. So many worms do this too, collect food to eat in the future. So they work for their comfort of this life. Think like that.

Also mice are so clever, extremely clever, in regards to working for happiness this life. They know very well how to steal; they didn’t go to school or anything. Very well they know. They know very well how to cheat other sentient beings. They know very how to hurt other people too. If people harm them, they know very how to take revenge. This kind of thing. Working for the comfort of one’s own life, they do very well.

If you disturb a mouse, they know where your greatest object of attachment is. They know very well. They know, the cloth or jewels, whatever it is, you keep in a box. They come to it, and if it is locked, then they bite it from the bottom. They bite, they eat like that, then they get inside. They get inside, and take the jewel away. Or if you have expensive clothes, kept in the cupboard or whatever it is, then they go inside and make a hole. It doesn’t benefit them, doesn’t help them. It doesn’t make them warm and they don’t eat it. It’s just because they were harmed before, they want to harm back.

One time happened in Tibet there was one Kadampa geshe, I think, Geshe Langri Tangpa, in his retreat house. So while he was meditating there were a bunch of mice, keeping busy. So busy around. And so he looked at them, what they were doing. They were so excited and they were so busy. So he watched them. There were three mice in front of him. Nearby him there was a wall. So the three mice had stolen one big, big turquoise from another family, somewhere around. There was a crack in the wall. One mouse cannot manage that turquoise alone through the crack. So one mouse went inside the hole, and one mouse he lay down as a bridge. Then one mouse on the other side pushed the turquoise on the backside of the other mouse, to get over, to get to the other side. This made him laugh. This meditator, Kadampa Geshe Langri Tangpa, in his life, he laughed only three times. So this was one of the things that made him laugh. He saw that even the mice are so clever. Normally, all the time he meditates on impermanence, impermanence, death. So people don’t see him laughing.

Even the bugs, the red bugs, know the right time to come to bite, at night time. When there is a light, they do not come. They hide in the corner. When the light goes off, when the person went in deep concentration, then they come down, then they crawl down like this."

-- Lama Yeshe