Aggacara Story-9 March 2024

The Death of a Young Puppy.

Recently, a young puppy passed away. It was a male puppy and was only two months old. It seemed that a male puppy was more fragile compared to a female puppy. It had diarrhea, and it did not eat for one day.

The next day, Sayagyi Aggavati took him to the nearby clinic by motorcycle. We put him in a small basket. The roads were rough. They were half-finished road covered with soil, not smoothen out yet. And it was hot at 12 p.m.

When reaching there, the puppy was in a critical condition. When it was lifted from the basket, the body was very soft. The doctor tried to resuscitate it by doing CPR, but it died a few minutes later.

When it came back in the basket, they told me, “It was gone!” I thought it meant the children had gone back to their houses. The children were still learning English lessons in the Dhamma hall. But it turned out that the puppy was gone forever. It was a surprise to me. The puppy was still breathing and walking up to drink some water one hour ago before going to the clinic. So, I went to see the puppy inside the basket. It looked like it was sleeping there. So, this is the original meaning of RIP: Rest in peace forever.

It was an experience for us to see its mother pregnant with puppies, give birth to puppies later, the puppies sleeping near the mother, drinking milk, then walking, playing around, biting the slippers, and so on. But the life cycle for this puppy was very short—only 2 months old.

In the past, we also had dogs die due to weather and poison. The nature of the body cannot stand strong negative forces. In the Dhamma, the body is called saṅkhāra, a conditioned thing. The body is conditioned by food, weather, health, and so on. Also, kamma is another strong force for it to continue its life.

Seeing the puppy, I was thinking, Where would it be reborn? Yesterday, I taught 31 planes of existence to my Abhidhamma students. Would it be reborn in woeful states or in humans? It depended on the kammic result taking place before it passed away. We hope it might be born in the human world so it can do some good deeds and not be born as an animal again.

Even if an animal can have a good life, it does not have the intelligence to do many good deeds. But it normally acquires more unwholesome mental states due to its many states of greed, hatred, and delusion.

Whatever it might be, let us hope that it can have a good rebirth!