On The Path With Husband Not On Path

[ThirdEyeSees]

I am 32 female with two kids and started this path about 1.5 yrs ago. 

I have been with my husband for 11 yrs. My husband hunts and he also works in the outdoor hunting industry so I am surrounded by this a lot. 

Is this okay? He seems more conscious  about food and nature than me. One of the reasons I fell for him was because he was and is so intune with nature. First person I ever came across like that actually. 

The more I read about Buddhism the more I feel guilty for the position I am in. I also have realized I generally feel guilty about everything.  It has been my MO since I can remember.  

I just feel like I need to have a better understanding. 

Thank you for your help. 

 

 

 

 

[Prabhaker]

@ThirdEyeSees

A hunter lives in a more authentic way. He lives with the trees and the animals and the earth and the sky, the wind and the rain and the sun. He lives close to the nature. And the person who lives close to nature is in an unknown way, unconscious way, close to God, close to truth.

Because he lives close to nature he has a certain vague awareness of the presence called God.

Of course it is vague, it is not crystal-clear, otherwise he will become enlightened. But he senses it intuitively, instinctively. He is not as dead as a professor, he is not as dull as a scholar; he is alive.

He has to be very alive because his work is with very lively creatures.

The hunter's work may look violent to us, but it has a beauty of its own. Because he lives with wild animals he has a certain wildness in him; he is still part of nature.

When you are chasing a wild animal you are risking your life, it is dangerous. In that danger, mind stops. In that dangerous state, thought cannot function. And because of those thoughtless moments, hunting can give you few glimpses of meditation.

[ThirdEyeSees]

@Prabhaker

you know what. I thank you so much. I think I'm going through a spiritual transformation. Not sure. just feel energy up the front of me and down my spine. Guilt is coming up and I am finding every excuse to feel guilty. And trying to figure out if it's rational or not. This came up recently and has had me stuck. Seriously, I was under a different name before and you guided me. So thank you again for such a quick and eloquent response. 

[Russell]

On 7/13/2017 at 10:36 AM, Prabhaker said:

@ThirdEyeSees

A hunter lives in a more authentic way. He lives with the trees and the animals and the earth and the sky, the wind and the rain and the sun. He lives close to the nature. And the person who lives close to nature is in an unknown way, unconscious way, close to God, close to truth.

Because he lives close to nature he has a certain vague awareness of the presence called God.

Of course it is vague, it is not crystal-clear, otherwise he will become enlightened. But he senses it intuitively, instinctively. He is not as dead as a professor, he is not as dull as a scholar; he is alive.

He has to be very alive because his work is with very lively creatures.

The hunter's work may look violent to us, but it has a beauty of its own. Because he lives with wild animals he has a certain wildness in him; he is still part of nature.

When you are chasing a wild animal you are risking your life, it is dangerous. In that danger, mind stops. In that dangerous state, thought cannot function. And because of those thoughtless moments, hunting can give you few glimpses of meditation.

This was beautiful. ^

 

My family hunts because we are farmers. Hunters need to keep the deer and groundhog populations down because they will eat their crops. We try to use natural foul smelling agents lined across the perimeter of the fields that keep the deer away, but sometimes it fails. 

Most hunters eat all of the meat that they can and keep their antlers. 

In my most enlightened days I would never kill an animal, but as I move down the path I see that it's a part of life. What is chaos to the fly is normal for the spider...

[Prabhaker]

@Russell @ThirdEyeSees

There is nothing profane in the world, nothing sacred in the world. The world is neutral. Now it depends on you what you want to make of it. Meditation makes it sacred; then every act becomes meditative.

I am reminded of a butcher in Japan who was considered to be a great master — and he was a butcher! The whole day he was cutting animals and selling meat; that was his business. One Buddhist scholar could not believe that this man was thought to be a saint. He was simply a scholar. He went to the butcher and said, “This is something absolutely mad. Who are the people who think that you are a saint? How can a butcher be a saint?”

The butcher laughed. He answered, “Just by mixing meditation in the butchery. When I am cutting up an animal I am not angry, I am not hateful. I am full of love, I am full of compassion. I have great hope that next time he will be born in a human form; perhaps he will become a Buddha. With all my blessings I am sending him on a new journey, releasing him from this prison.

And moreover, my father was a butcher, my forefathers were butchers, and I am a poor butcher. I have never told anybody that I am a saint. If people think so, that’s their business. You should go and argue with them.

As far as I am concerned, I am absolutely content with my profession because whatever you do, the question is not what you are doing but how you are doing it.The question is not the act; the question is the consciousness with which the act is being performed. Yes, I am killing animals, but I know that they will be killed anyway. If I am not killing them, somebody else will kill them. And he will not kill them with such love, with such compassion. How can I leave this profession?

These animals are going to be killed. If I don’t kill them somebody else will kill them and he is not going to kill them with such meditation, with such love. So I would be leaving these poor animals in the hands of some butcher. I cannot do that. If I am going to be thrown into hell for being a butcher, that is acceptable. But I cannot leave these poor innocent animals in the hands of somebody who knows nothing of love.”

Can you see the point of this butcher? It is very subtle. He is ready to suffer in hell if that is going to be the consequence of his actions. But he cannot leave these poor animals in the hands of somebody who will simply kill them and not even bother about what he is doing.

He said, “I am so concerned with these animals and I love them so much — I cannot leave them in somebody else’s hands. Whatsoever happens to me, that I am ready to face.”

I can see why the people who could understand called him a master, a saint. He never gave a sermon, he never preached anything. He was illiterate, he knew nothing of the scriptures, but he lived religion in a very irreligious situation; that’s something tremendously important. He lived religion in something which is very irreligious. And yet he managed to live religiously. He must have been a great alchemist who transformed the whole act, gave it a new quality; something utterly profane and ugly became so beautiful, so graceful.

It is said that his fame spread far and wide and people started coming to see him while he was cutting up animals. Even the emperor of Japan came to see him while he was cutting because he had heard that the way he cuts, nobody has ever cut — such grace, such love, tears flowing from his eyes. And the miracle was that although human beings were not able to understand, perhaps the animals were able to understand.

Ordinarily when you want to kill an animal he tries to escape, but from this butcher no animal tried to escape. He hugged the animal. The animal was not bound by anything, tied with anything. He was completely free. It was as if deep down he wanted to die by this man’s hand.

And the emperor asked one thing, about the knife that he used to kill the animals. The knife looked so shiny, as if it had just been sharpened. The emperor asked, “Do you sharpen your knife every day?”

He said, “No, this is the knife my father used, and his father used, and it has never been sharpened. But we know exactly the points where it has to cut the animal so there is a minimum of pain possible — through the joints where two bones meet. The knife has to go through the joint, and those two bones that meet there go on sharpening the knife. And that is the point where the animal is going to feel the minimum pain.

For three generations we have not sharpened the knife. A butcher sharpening a knife simply means he does not know his art — he used the word “art” — He does not know the art and he does not know how to do it lovingly.”

~OSHO

[ThirdEyeSees]

@Prabhaker

thank you for providing me that new perspective. 

@Russell

i am looking into toxic guilt. Thank you for that. And I have met people like that. Luckily my husband isn't like that. But it's just weird sometimes that I am seeking enlightenment which i have my unconscious views of and my husband hunts and works for the outdoor industry. I have two kids and he has provided and taken good care of me and also treats me really well.  I do feel like I am going through a spiritual awakening and I am getting nervous cause I feel like once you find that you are no self that I'm going to throw all that out the window. I obviously have no idea what it's going to be like but my ego likes to think so. I am making effort to be a vegetarian and by proxy he is eating less meat and becoming more aware I think. Just trying to find myself without losing everything else in my life but then again it's not my life.... 

[sheenp24]

More than likely, this situation has nothing to do with you and what I mean by that is, it's in a man's nature to be task-oriented and competitive. This gets a lot of men in trouble with the ones they love because they deviate from what's important at times because of their instinctive tunnel vision. For example, men date women and fall in love, but sub-consciously, men see courtship as an objective. Not to say that it is merely an objective because it is not just that, everyone has an instinctive want to love and be loved. Men get in marriages and relationships and feel like the mission/objective is complete, so they get complacent; they then tend to gravitate to new objectives like a new hobby or something that requires and objective. I say all of that to say this, chances are that this has nothing to do with you, it's just that guys get tunnel visioned at times. I personally lost a great women years ago, that I was madly in love with because of a situation similar to this that escalated and honestly it was my fault and it seemed like everything else was more important than her and that was not the case.  I would suggest communicating your concerns with him so that he is aware that it's concerning you.