Kindhearts Club
  • We Feel Just Like You Do
    • All Creatures Great and Small
    • How About That! -Monkeys Beat The Trainer....With His Own Stick
    • These Birdies Deserve A Traffic Ticket
    • A Mother’s Heart
    • Rescued Snake Saves Chinese Family
    • Twenty Inspiring Life Lessons
    • LuLu - The Lifesaving Pig
    • Reverence For Life - Even An Ant Is A Person
    • A ’Polite‘ Door Knocking Bear
    • ‘Mama, baby!' How Hero Parrot Saved Little Girl
    • Money Sweeter Than Honey
    • Gorilla Saves Boy From Being Attacked
    • Art Is Universal - Not An Exclusive Human Domain
    • To Whom It May Concern: An Investigation of the Art of Elephants
    • Monkey Painting - Avantgarde Artist Pierre Brassau
    • You Do Not Know The Process!
    • Lions Free A Kidnapped Girl
    • Little Tyke - True Story of a Gentle Vegetarian Lioness
    • Why Should You Kill Animals?
    • A Loyal And Loving Goat
    • The Story of An Extraordinary Friendship
    • A Girl Owes Her Life To A Whale
    • The Fox With A Footwear Fetish
    • Dolphins Save Surfer From Shark
    • Parrot “Arrested” For Alerting Traffickers
    • ‘Thou Shall Not Kill’
    • A Tribute To Trillions of Chicken-Buried in The Graveyards of Human Stomach
    • If Chickens Could Speak
    • Choice Is No Longer Violence or Nonviolence-It’s Nonviolence or Nonexistence
    • The Author
    • Other Books
  • Sample Book 2
  • Sample Book 3
  • Sample Book 4
  • Sample Book 5
  • Sample Book 6

8.
Reverence For
Life
Even An Ant Is A Person

Picture
         There was a holy man who had to go on a long journey. He packed a bundle, filling it with enough bread to last him for the trip. He traveled on foot and stopped at a temple to rest for the night.
         The next morning he set out again on the journey and walked quickly for about ten miles and then decided to stop for breakfast. He sat down and opened his bundle to take out the bread. When he opened the pack, he found that it was full of ants.

Although Jada Bharata was forced to carry the palanquin, he did not give up his sympathetic feelings toward the poor ants passing on the road. A devotee of the Lord does not forget his devotional service and other favorable activities, even when he is in a most distressful condition. While walking on the road, he could not forget his duty to avoid killing even an ant. A Vaisnava is never envious or unnecessarily violent. There were many ants on the path, but Jada Bharata took care by looking ahead three feet. When the ants were no longer in his way, he would place his foot on the ground. A Vaisnava is always very kind at heart to all living entities.
—Srila Prabhupada (Srimad Bhagavatam 5.10.2)
         “Oh, this is too bad,” he thought, “I have taken these poor ants a long way from their home in the temple. They must be missing their families, parents, and children.”
         He felt so bad and he had so much compassion for the ants, that the holy man walked the ten miles back to the temple to take the ants back to their home.
         This story illustrates the high level of compassion that is available to us; a state where not only do we not want to kill animals for food, but we also don’t want them to suffer in even the slightest way. Compassion toward animals has to start somewhere. For many, adopting a vegetarian way of eating is the next step on their journey toward living a more compassionate life.
Picture
Picture
So many gods, so many creeds,
So many paths that wind and wind,
While just the art of being kind
Is all the sad world needs.
-Ella Wheeler Wilcox



Picture