Theft Involving Animals

The content of stealing includes all dharmas in the worldly realm that do not belong to oneself—people, affairs, objects, principles, and information that are not one's own; if one takes them privately into one's hands, it constitutes stealing. Wanting to possess what is not one's own without the owner's consent all constitutes stealing. There are two kinds of stealing: stealing with knowledge and stealing without knowledge; the former carries a heavier offense, the latter a lighter one.

Someone asked whether shearing wool counts as stealing. Shearing the wool of one's own family's sheep is not stealing, because it benefits the sheep and the sheep are willing to be sheared; but shearing the wool of someone else's sheep is stealing. What about collecting wool from wild sheep? The wool belongs to the sheep itself, so in this case one must see whether the sheep likes being sheared. If shearing makes its body feel comfortable and the sheep does not object, then it is not stealing; but if the sheep avoids being sheared and one forcibly shears it anyway, that is stealing the sheep's wool.

This differs from taking honey. Whether or not bees are kept by anyone, they guard their own honey and do not wish it to be taken by anyone, nor do they want humans to swap it out with white sugar. Therefore, whoever takes honey commits stealing. Once the person who sells honey has stolen the honey and made it personal property, the buyer of the honey no longer commits the offense of stealing, but merely owes a debt to the bees, which must later be repaid with multiplied interest. As for those who kill animals and sell their meat, they not only commit the offense of killing but also the offense of stealing. Those who buy the meat, although they have no offense of stealing, owe a debt to the animals, which must be repaid in the future with high interest. Wearing fur and leather shoes makes one both an accomplice of the killers and a debtor to the animals, to be repaid in the future with multiplied interest.

The eggs sold in markets today generally have no life and cannot hatch into chicks; therefore eating them does not constitute killing, but one merely owes a debt to the hens, which needs to be repaid. However, the more eggs one eats, the more the chicken farmers will abuse the hens, the more the hens will suffer, and the more people toil the hens, the greater the debt owed to the hens. If everyone stopped eating or ate fewer eggs, the hens would lay eggs according to conditions and would not be abused.