Hi everyone, this is a revision of something I posted a couple of days ago.
Still not 100% why it was initially flagged, I suspect it might’ve been some of the video content (it was a long video, and admittedly I did not watch all of it, I just watched a small portion).
Anyway, I searched for the specific part that I thought was worth sharing, it’s a much shorter video this time around.
The reason I wanted to post it was, a lot of the times when we watch ‘worldly’ content, you pretty much know what to expect, but when I saw this bit, I thought ‘Oh that’s nice, and unexpected’.
It’s nice to celebrate small acts of kindness, it’s skilful to have a perception of picking up deeds that are worthy of praise. 
9 Likes
Lovely to see!
Whenever I’ve had a discussion about the first precept, it always ends up centering around insects. Mosquitoes, ants, flies, people seem to feel a special right to kill them even if they’re only being a nuisance.
6 Likes
Sixteen years ago, one evening, I was working late at my house on a hill in Papua New Guinea. Looking out the window toward the swimming pool in my backyard, I noticed something moving in the water. I went outside to check and found a cockroach struggling to stay afloat, on the verge of drowning!!! I couldn’t reach it from the edge, so I went into the pool and rescued it.
I placed the cockroach in a box lined with tissues, hoping to dry it off. It was still alive, but weak and barely moving. I kept it warm throughout the night.
The next morning, before leaving for the office, I even googled it to find out what a cockroach might eat. I couldn’t find anything, perhaps because no one has ever tried to care for a cockroach! 
When I returned home that afternoon, the cockroach had died. I felt sad, but I also knew that I had done everything I could to help.
The next morning, I shared the story with my colleagues. They mocked me relentlessly for rescuing a cockroach in the middle of the night. The teasing went on for days, then weeks, and eventually became one of those stories that was brought up again and again over the years!!!
To them, it was proof of my foolishness. To me, it was simply an attempt to help a living being in distress. Even one that many people would consider a disgusting creature!!
After that, I never told the story to anyone again, until now… 
13 Likes
There is an Islamic Hadith that says if a housefly falls into your drink or food, it should be fully immersed before being removed. The Prophet Muhammad explained this by stating one of the fly’s wings carries a disease, while the other carries the cure.
Setting aside the scientific validity of the above, it seems people in the desert were more preoccupied with saving the drink than the fly - considering how scarce water in the desert can be. The guest in the video had another beer on the spot - unwittingly aligning the principles of compassion and non-harming with abundance.
1 Like
Welcome to the forum!
Thank you for making this your first post and for caring so much for the cockroach.
3 Likes
Sadhu! 
Too bad your colleagues couldn’t rejoice in an act of kindness. It might be a drawback of the human realm that there is social pressure to deem some beings unworthy of kindness 
3 Likes
Indeed, I can totally relate to this, I’m sure there’s been a few times my work colleagues have given me a strange look when I’ve gone to the trouble of saving some kind of insect at work.
I remind myself in these situations, “The world is the world, and the Dhamma is the Dhamma.”
Enough said.
At the end of the day, one’s integrity (the practice, your kamma) is all that one has, and it’s the only thing you have, that is worth protecting. Everything else can be taken away from you, with a snap of a finger. But one’s integrity, that’s yours and yours alone. 
YAY you! Sadhu X 3 
4 Likes