Advice on Benefiting Animals
by Lama Zopa Rinpoche
If you love your animal very much then this is what you must do for
them for their good rebirth and quick liberation from
samsara.
When the animal is dying or has died
Recite mantras: Om mani padme hum, Heruka mantras, and other
mantras such as Milarepa and Namgyälma mantras. Recite the mantras
and blow over the body. You can recite the long mantras 21 times or
more and the short mantras one mala or more. Blow strongly on the
body after each time or you can blow on water, visualizing each
deity absorbed into the water; each drop has the power to purify
negative karmas. Then pour the water on the animal; all negative
karmas are purified.
When the animal is dying, you can do the Medicine Buddha practice
as outlined in the small book, visualizing the Seven Medicine
Buddhas on the crown of the animal. Then you can also do the
Thirty-five Buddhas practice, with nectar coming and purifying the
negative karma, taking strong refuge to the Thirty-five Buddhas to
protect and guide.
Theres a mantra paper to put on dead bodies to purify. You can get
this from the online shop of the FPMT. This is written especially
to put right on the body -- put it right on the skin, on the
forehead or the chest.
When the animal is in the process of dying or even after the breath
has stopped, if you have some sand from a Kalachakra sand mandala,
you can mix it with butter and put it on the crown. Each sand grain
has numberless buddhas abiding in it. Its especially good if it is
blessed by His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
Then burn the body. If there is a good practitioner or a lama
available to do the jang-wa puja, then do that when the body is
being burned. After the body is burned, keep some pieces of bones,
and if possible, do jang-wa again on the bones. Crush the bones and
make powder. Mix with other material and make a stupa, or more than
one stupa. Put the stupa in a garden if you have one and then
flowers can be offered to the stupa. Dedicate to your animal for a
good rebirth and enlightenment.
What you can do for your animals in everyday life
Its not enough that you keep the animals and they give you
comfort. You must do something of practical benefit for them. This
is what you can do every day:
Take them around holy objects -- circumambulate. Everyday you can
put on a table many tsa-tsas and statues, and take the animal
around chanting mantras at the same time. This way it also helps
the person who carries the animal around.
Recite prayers in their ears, verbally, to plant the seed of all
the realizations of the path to enlightenment.
This makes a huge difference. It has inconceivable result,
unbelievable result. That makes them have a good rebirth next life,
to be born as a human being and meet the Dharma.
There is a story when Buddha gave teachings to 500 swans in the
field and the next life they were born as human beings, became
monks, and they all became arya beings, able to achieve the
cessation of suffering and the true path. So the result is
unbelievable, just by hearing Dharma words. Vasubandhu was reciting
the Abhidharmakosha and a pigeon on the roof heard this everyday.
One day the pigeon died and Vasubandhu checked to see where he was
born. It was in a family who lived down below in the valley. He
went down and saw the child and asked if he could have him and the
family gave him to Vasubandhu. The child became a monk named Lobpön
Loden and became an expert on the text that he had heard when he
was a pigeon. He wrote four commentaries on that text. Therefore,
its extremely important to recite lam-rim prayers and mantras --
at least the mantras -- to animals.
Its also extremely good before you give them their food, to bless
it. If you cant do it at every meal, then you can bless it all at
once. Recite the five powerful mantras if you know them; otherwise
recite Om mani padme hum, Medicine Buddha and Milarepa mantras. All
this has power; it helps those who eat it not get reborn in the
lower realms, blesses their mind and purifies their negative karma.
If you can, do it every time you feed them -- recite the mantras
and blow on the food. This is the biggest present you can give
them: good rebirth, finish samsara, liberation, and the positive
imprint of the Mahayana teachings and mantras also to lead to
enlightenment.
Especially for Buddhists who have animals, when the animals die, it
should be different for their future rebirth. So one should attempt
to have a special rebirth for them. Thats what I asked the people
who took care of our dogs at Tushita in Dharamsala to do. Many
years ago, Ven. Tseyang-la, who is a translator at many centers and
built the Kopan nunnery, and Maureen, a student from New Zealand
who taught at Kopan for quite a number of years and then worked
very hard at Tushita, and for me, asked me to recite the Maitreya
Buddha prayer and mantra, the Lama Tsong Khapa praise to Guru
Shakyamuni Buddha Having Found the Realization of Dependent Arising
and other prayers and mantras to the dogs, while holding a biscuit
in the hand, so everyone waits, like listening to the teachings,
eyes looking at the biscuit and everyone is humbly sitting, like
respectfully listening to teachings, all their eyes looking at the
biscuit. We gave some of the dogs away, and along with the dogs was
the commitment to recite a lam-rim prayer or mantras. Some people
did it for years. One lady from either the British or Italian
Embassy in Delhi, who wasnt a Buddhist, did the lam-rim prayer The
Foundation of All Good Qualities every day for years. Then one day,
her maid left the gate open and the dog got lost. She was very
upset. Thats because she must be a very kind person; even though
she wasnt Buddhist, she did that prayer. She was very
sincere.
Theres a story about an 80-year-old man. After he entered into the
Mahayana path, when the time ripened, then he became enlightened,
then he does perfect work for sentient beings, bringing every
sentient being to enlightenment. So that means all that perfect
work -- enlightening all the sentient beings -- came from himself
being enlightened, and that came from having entered into the
Mahayana path. Before that he was an arhat and actualizing the path
to liberation, which started from being a monk. He was able to be a
monk because inconceivable eons ago, he was a fly following some
cow dung around a stupa, which became circumambulation -- one
circumambulation. So all these benefits -- becoming an arhat,
becoming enlightened and enlightening all sentient beings --
depended on the small merit created by following the smell of the
cow dung, which became circumambulation. Therefore, we should
always keep in the mind how precious even one circumambulation is,
how precious it is to take the animals around; and of course,
theres no question about us human beings intentionally going
around, how that has incredible benefit. Therefore, one
circumambulation of a holy object -- a statue or stupa -- one must
do it; since karma is expandable, we shouldnt be careless even
with small merit. All this means that each holy object is so
powerful and can liberate so many sentient beings from suffering
and bring them to enlightenment, and that it causes one to
actualize the path. Therefore, even if one cant build a big stupa,
even to have a small stupa is unbelievably precious -- the benefits
you and other sentient beings get.
If you have many ants in your house, for example, then of course,
if youre careless you kill them, but otherwise, with a soft tissue
paper or soft cotton or broom or feather, pick them up and put them
in a plastic bag and put some food in it. Put something they like,
something theyre excited about or fascinated by and then close the
bag and take it around the stupa or holy objects as many times as
you can to liberate them from lower rebirth and to achieve
liberation and enlightenment. Then put them outside, releasing them
by opening the plastic bag, or shake it on the ground with the
food. The only way you can help ants and other insects is if they
come into your house, into your kitchen or room. Otherwise, theres
no way to benefit them in this way. So this is a very good way, an
excellent opportunity, to benefit the ants in addition to making
charity by giving them food. If you take them around a stupa or
holy objects, theres both Dharma charity and the charity of
fearlessness. By purifying their minds, youre saving them from
suffering. Also, for dogs and cats, blessing the food with mantras
is not only miscellaneous charity; it also becomes Dharma charity,
charity of fearlessness, and charity of loving-kindness because you
have the intention to cause them happiness. In this way, you
practice all four types of charity.
