Buddhist Animal Release Practice

Buddhism is a religious endemic that incorporates many beliefs, traditions and practices which are thoroughly based on the teachings attributed to Lord Buddha, originally named as Siddhartha Gautama. The religion was flourished in Indian subcontinent by Lord Buddha in between 6^th and 4^th century BCE. Buddha means ‘the awakening one’ in Sanskrit and is considered as an awakening teacher by Buddhist who helped to end sufferings of the people by eliminating disbelief and ignorance by understanding deep inner spirituality and thus attaining happiness in terms of Nirvana. 

Buddhism is a world religion which arose in and around ancient ardent kingdom of Magadha. The teachings of Buddha existed only in Oral traditions. Animal release is a term or a practice used by the Chinese Buddhists which refers to purchasing of animals (which are going to be slaughtered) and then letting them go free. The cogitation behind this practice is the teaching of Lord Buddha of altruism, amiability and kindness of humans to all the creatures of this world.

The holy tradition of Animal Release (or even release of human beings) is one of the most exquisite and famous ceremony of Buddhism throughout Asia and since last two decades throughout worldwide also. The inference behind practicing of this ardent ritual is the benevolence and generosity for the captive animals and idea of freeing theses poor and needy animals into their natural habitat. The main concept of this ritual is practicing compassion in one’s heart. There are also some more concepts behind this ritual which are further described in brief in this article.

History of Animal Release Ceremony –

The exact origin of this covetous practice is not yet velar yet Chinese treatises like Yanshou and the Wanshan tonggui ji written by the Sixth Patriarch of the Pure Land tradition normally consider the great Fanwang jing and the Renwang huguo bore boliomi jing as the main ardent scriptural sources of the fervent animal release practice. The justification behind this zealous practice is considered a truly a commiseration act emphasizing on the belief that all men are our father and all women are our mothers and since every reincarnation takes from them so all living beings should be considered our parents (whether human or animals) and killing any one. So these beliefs inhibits killing of animals also and to practice release of animals and also spread this awareness to cause others to practice animal release also. Also if we see someone killing animals we should save those animals by any means so as to protect those animals from sufferings.

In addition to these Chinese sources, there is also one more name that is considered to be earlier source of animal release practice, the Suvar nabha sottanasu tra, the Su tra of Golden Light. This is also claimed as an ardent source of animal release practice because this claim is oftenly referred to in Chinese treatises like the famous Fayuan Zhulin, the Pearl Grove of the Garden of Dharma, an emotional story of a man, Jalava hana in the Su tra of the Golden Light. The story revolves about a man, Jalava Hana, who carried water to a pond of approximate 10.000 fish with the help of 20 elephants. The exact story is that Jalava was a merchant’s son and while travelling through a forest in summer, one day he came across a pond where fish were struggling for their survival in the fast evaporating water. There were numerous animals surrounding the pond to snap up the unfortunate fish.

Moved deeply by munificence and kindness in his heart he first tries to shield the water of pond from severe sun light but it went ineffective. Then he approached the king and from the help of the king and by using king’s elephant, Jalava’s efforts paid off and he was able to save those fish. The reason behind his this act of deed was that the pond was deprived of sufficient water. Well so far most of the Buddhist considered this story and the man Jalava hana the earlier practice of animal release ceremony because Jalava’s deed truly incorporates compassion and kindness for those fish by saving their lives from dying in the pond in deprivation of enough water.

This passage proves a big incidence of animal release practice which portrays the universal message of protecting the lives of all living beings and to practice the ardent principle of Non – Violence, Ahinsa. This concept normally gets confused with the fact that animal release ceremony usually means releasing of captive but the true message behind this practice is quite big which is also portrayed by the deed of Jalava saving the pond fish from dying but yet not releasing them or setting them free as the name of this practice implies. The original and true message behind this animal release practice is to save and protects lives of all living beings, humans and animals; by any mean whether it is by letting the captives free or by any mean which is the call of necessity when the time calls for.  There is also one very famous story entitled to this ritual which is used widely in Buddhism. According to Vinaya, a Buddhist monk once came across a poor pig that was caught in a hunter’s trap and the monk with his compassionate heart released the pig from the trap. But the monk then was considered guilty of theft against the hunter’s pleads. But when the matter was brought up to the Buddha’s knowledge, he said for the Dharma point of view that the monk had not committed any offence because he had acted out of kindness and compassion.

This exquisite and amorous animal release practice further leads to certain cautions and monastic codes that have now become mandatory for Buddhists. First one is to not to hurt small insects while collecting water from rivers for usage or getting wood from trees or anything else related to such incidences. Such monastic codes are available in the Chinese translation the great and famous the Sarya stiva din codes, the Genben saboduobu lushe, that instructs strictly to the monks to use small fine cloths to use as filters for filtering small insects from water while preserving the water into a container. Then further release these small insects back into water with immense care and avoid hurting these small insects by any mean.

Description of Animal Release Traditional Practice –

Well there are many reasons behind ardent practicing of animal release ceremony which includes the belief of all human beings being equal, safety and protection of all living beings, concern for the longevity of all living entities along with covetous idea of practicing kindness and compassion for all yet there is also one more explicit reason behind this practice which is the solid firm belief of Buddhism in the ardent accumulation of merits for longevity and merits can be further transferred to one’s beloved one even after death.

Further there is not any pre texted and pre specified standard manual of practice of this ritual. So due to this fact this ceremony varies in several areas. For example, many great Tibetan masters like Mipham Gyatso and Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo have written their own guidelines for their fervent followers to employ while practicing animal release ritual. With all these variations yet the basic thought and idea behind this practice still remains the same asking the follower to visualized oneself as a particular deity and bless all the animals being released. There is another ritual carried on while practicing this ceremony which includes carrying out the animal around the ritual table at least for 40 times while other monks recite the holy prayers. This ritual of reciting the prayers and carrying the animal around table for many times portrays the idea of imprinting of holy teachings for their future safer life. In china, these ceremonies are incorporated by the head monk only. The head monk then ardently invites other Buddha monks to this gathering and then preaches impeccably the doctrine of dependent origin and also the frequent laws of karma to the animals while leading the crowd to take refuge in the three jewels on the behalf of those animals.

This covetous practice concludes with granting of these animals with two wishes – first one being that after getting released they will be safe form hunters as well as fishermen and secondly they are blessed to be reborn in their next lives as human beings and thus getting rid of the incarnations of animal lives. They will get human birth to perfect all the teaching and blessings they have heard now and tread the Bodhisattva path amorously. After all these rituals’ completion, the participants then make a final wish for themselves also. This final wish is that through such holy practices they will be able to make good progress on the path towards Buddha hood. In the end the holy name of Buddha Amita bha is recited a number of time before the entire holy practice is completed with the dedication of amorous merits. 

The type of animals for animal release practice also varies as the variety of methods for practicing this ceremony varies from area to area. The famous ones are birds, fish, turtles and crabs and sometimes ants also. Well in modern practice the most famous ones are turtles and fish. The reason behind this popularity is that according to Chinese mythology, release of birds creates an immense and impressive effect at the completion of the ritual where as for turtles the reason is that the turtles in Chinese mythology symbolize longevity.

Modern Day Practices -

There is quite a successive lack of sympathetic knowledge on modern day Buddhist animal release practice. Well there are numerous factors for this deed. The biggest reason being the lack of written knowledge available in scriptures and ancient books over this fervent topic of animal release practice. Second reason is the fear of “animal welfare organizations”. Well these organizations sometimes make an issue out of this practice and this has happened in history number of times especially in last two decades. This reason has also led to decrease in practice of this ardent ritual. Third and most important is that with the immense increase in technology and new thinking of our new generation, these rituals are now considered a myth or an old practice by our new generation which now mostly does not believe in this practice that much like pour ancestors do. These all have summoned up and incorporated a lack of knowledge as well as practice of this zealous ceremony now days.

This ritual has brought about some ethical drawbacks with it. When a layman performs this ritual, there is a demand for captivated animals to perform this ceremony and this increasing demand leads to commercialization of this practice. Very oftenly the free animals are caught and captivated to serve for the fulfillment of this ritual so thus forgetting the original idea behind this ritual which was to protect the needy but not to make someone first needy to protect them again to fulfill this ceremony. The modern day practicing normally portrays the lack of true knowledge of this ceremony’s reason among people.

Conclusion –

The animal release practice is an inseparable and unavoidable part of Buddhism. But further customized study of the exquisite and amorous practice of this ritual is quite important to understand its potential implications within the old rich culture and tradition worldwide and also for the potentially demonstrating its importance for other fields also. But still the covetous and amorous messages and ideas portrayed by this ardent and peaceful ritual needs to be incorporated by entire world especially practicing compassion, kindness, benevolence and generosity for all living entities. When these feelings are truly cultivated and practiced by entire world, I don’t think there would be any war or crime or massacre or even terrorism in this world but only love, respect and kindness for each other in everyone’s hearts. May be this is the reason why Buddhism is considered mostly as a ‘Pro – Environmental’ religion worldwide.