For those of you who do not know, "ahimsa" is the principle of non-harm.  I have chosen to look at it from the opposite side -- not as a judgment or punishment for harming, but a celebration of and taking responsibility for when harm cannot be avoided.

Think about it -- even a species which decided to curl up and die rather than harm another living thing is doing harm.  There are the species which it was intended to feed upon which would then be multiplying out of control until another species stepped in or was created to fill that role, the species which may have been intended to feed upon them and now has to find new food sources... even the plant life that was supposed to grow where this hypothetical species lay down and died, which cannot grow in the presence of so much protein and metabolic breakdown... it goes on and on.

As has been said many times before (and not a few times by me), life feeds on life.  If we could all be Breathaireans, even that would do some harm to some part of the ecology we live in. 

For a full discourse of my concept of Neo-Ahimsa, please read my article at Pathways Sanctuary's Philosophy page.

Today, while taking a lovely shower, I thought of another extension of Neo-Ahimsa - being grateful for those who lived and died to create new things for us.  At the moment, I was thinking of the early plumbers, who lived to create pipes out of lead to bring us running water -- and often died early and nasty deaths from a life of lead poisoning.  I instantly said a prayer of thanks for their sacrifices over thousands of years.  (If you did not know, the Latin word for lead is "plumbum", and is why the elemental symbol for lead is Pb.)

My thoughts then went out to the millions of workers who lived and died building highways.  I remembered that thousands died alone building one highway from Ouray to Durango, Colorado.  Most of these were virtually slave laborers, but I don't know of anyone who refuses to drive that highway just because it was built on the backs of slaves.  Under this idea of mine, you would not refuse to drive it, you would utter a prayer of thanks for their sacrifices while traversing this (or for that matter, any) road.

In a nutshell, ahimsa is not punishment or guilt.  It is gratitude.

Hugs,
Me