All beings, long to live

Mahavira said, “All beings, long to live. To all things, life is dear”. This one line has fallen upon me while I was going through a textbook. It sensitized me for the feelings of the other beings, not only human but other animal beings. To all things, life is dear & it is the source of motivation for how they act based on their physiology and mental capacity couples with the external environment. They all long to live. My belief in being a vegetarian strengthened. If I care for my own life, my pain, my hunger, my feelings, the same would be done by the other beings. Why don’t they? It is a strong case against human’s action of deforestation. After all, it is not the competition but mutual co-existence. We are interdependent. There is a fine balance established within the ecosystem. To tinker the balance is to tinker with our own lives. Then we are bound by deformities. We know that only for 1% of the earth’s green-blue life did humans existed – 99% of the time we were not here. We are fairly new on this planet. By putting themselves at the center of the universe, isn’t human being ignorant?

Statistics show that in the last 4 years almost 1715 elephants died unnaturally by getting hit by the train, or electrocuted etc. This number constitutes almost 7% of their population in India. We could not side-track them for our sole development, neither we could commodify them. There are hardly any animal rights; neither do we care about it. Let human intelligence not overshadow by the greed.