Stealing a thief's goods is likewise theft

Question: If you secretly take away something that a thief has stolen, is this act theft? Are you 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 prepare for winter—it is their food for the whole winter. When winter approaches, some people will deliberately search out 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. Is digging out the field mice's grain an act of theft?

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 the wholesome and unwholesome.

What is called theft is taking what is not given—secretly taking it away without the owner's consent, moving it without authorization 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 an intent to steal, actively takes the object, and in between must employ certain expedient means; finally the object leaves the owner and arrives at the thief's location, and the stolen object is successfully possessed.

The field mouse's behavior constitutes theft: first, it has a thieving mind, secretly taking things away without letting anyone know; second, it carries them away in its mouth, employing expedient means; third, the grain leaves the field and is placed in its own burrow, becoming its own possession. Since it is theft, the stolen grain must belong to the field mouse; otherwise it would not constitute theft, and the theft would not be established. If humans then dig out the grain in the field mouse's burrow, this constitutes stealing the field mouse's things. If the field mouse were not stealing but merely 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 logic, secretly taking away something that a thief has stolen is also an act of theft. Because the thief, through certain expedient means, has successfully stolen the object to his own location and become the new owner of the object; if the owner had not changed, the theft would not be established. When someone else, employing certain expedient means, successfully takes the thief's goods to his own location, he becomes the new owner, and this act also constitutes theft. If there is some other intention in the middle—not intending to possess the thief's things—then it is not necessarily theft.