Stealing Involving Animals

The contents of stealing include all dharmas in the mundane world 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 awareness and stealing without awareness; 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 sheep is not stealing, because it benefits the sheep and the sheep is willing to be shorn; but shearing the wool of someone else's sheep is stealing. What about gathering wool from wild sheep? The wool belongs to the sheep itself, so in this case one must see whether the sheep likes being shorn. If the sheep feels comfortable being shorn and does not resist, it is not stealing; but if the sheep tries to avoid being shorn and one forcibly shears it anyway, that is stealing the sheep's wool.

This differs from taking honey. Bees, whether kept by humans or not, guard their own honey and do not want anyone to take it away, nor do they want humans to swap it out with white sugar. Therefore, whoever takes honey commits stealing. Once a honey seller 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 high multiples of 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, though without the offense of stealing, still owe a debt to the animals, which must be repaid in the future with high interest. Wearing fur and leather shoes makes one an accomplice to the killing of living beings, and at the same time one owes a debt to the animals, to be repaid in the future with high multiples of interest.

As for the eggs sold in markets today, they generally have no life and cannot hatch into chicks; therefore eating them does not constitute killing living beings—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, and the more the hens will suffer; the more people exploit the hens, the greater the debt owed to them. If everyone ate fewer eggs or none at all, the hens would lay eggs according to conditions and would not be abused.