“Making the Buddhist Practice of ‘Life Release’ More Environmentally Sound: A Birder’s View”

Shambhala Sun Space has a terrific post up about environmentally-sound animal release ceremonies by contributor Konchog Norbu. Do take a look. Here’s a snippet:

I can’t explain why, but birding has been my main pastime (okay, obsession) for the past 17 years. As such, I’ve developed a wary view at best of the Buddhist practice of “life release”—reciting a blessing liturgy and setting animals free into the wild that would otherwise have remained in human captivity or killed. I’ve seen goldfish giddily dumped where they’ll become pond-dominating carp, and farm-raised game birds unboxed into areas where they’ll be coyote chow before sunrise, only to have my objections dismissed because it was “only the blessing that mattered”.

Read the whole thing here.