Stealing a Thief's Belongings Is Also Theft

Question: If someone secretly takes away what a thief has stolen, is this act stealing? Is one stealing from the thief? Do those things belong to the thief? In autumn, when crops are harvested in the fields, field mice will steal some grain and bury it in their burrows to eat during the winter—this is their food for the whole winter. When winter approaches, some people will deliberately search for the mice's burrows, dig out the various grains they have stored, and take them home; a single burrow may contain several jin or even ten jin of grain. When the field mice return to their burrows and find the grain gone, some of them will despairingly commit suicide and die; otherwise, with nothing to eat in winter, they would starve to death anyway. Does digging out the field mice's grain constitute stealing?

Answer: There is a great difference between stealing with intent and taking without intent. Since beginningless kalpas, each person has gained nothing at all, apart from a huge pile of countless karmic seeds of good and evil.

What is called stealing is taking what is not given—secretly taking something away without the owner's consent, arbitrarily moving it to one's own side and under one's own name, making it one's own possession. The owner must be a sentient being; the thief, harboring a thieving mind and stealing intent, actively takes it, and in the process must also employ certain skillful means; finally, the object leaves the owner and arrives at the thief's location, who successfully comes to possess the stolen item.

The field mouse's behavior constitutes stealing: first, it has a thieving mind, secretly taking things away without letting anyone know; second, it carries them away in its mouth, employing skillful means; third, the grain leaves the field and is placed in its own burrow, becoming its own possession. Since it is stealing, the stolen grain must belong to the field mouse; otherwise it would not constitute stealing, and the theft would not be established. If humans then dig out the grain in the field mouse's burrow, that constitutes stealing from the field mouse. If the field mouse were not stealing but keeping the grain in custody for humans, then when humans dig it out, it would not be stealing from the field mouse, but stealing from someone else.

By the same reasoning, secretly taking away what a thief has stolen is also an act of stealing. Because the thief, through certain skillful means, has successfully stolen the things to his own location and become the new owner of the things; if the ownership had not changed, the theft would not be established. When another person, employing certain skillful means, successfully takes the thief's things to his own location, he becomes the new owner, and this act also constitutes stealing. If there is some other intention in the middle—not wanting to take possession of the thief's things—then it is not necessarily stealing.