法苑珠林 6.85

6.85

Now when discussing animals, they are brought about by the retribution of delusion; their varieties are already numerous, and their lineages are not single. Endowed with this defiled substance, they are born into this evil destiny; they abruptly lose wise brilliance and possess only abundant greed and anger. For this reason, bees and scorpions harbor venom, vipers and adders cherish wrath, doves and sparrows crave lust, and jackals and wolves unleash ferocity. Or again, they are clad in fur and wear horns, embrace kingfisher feathers and hold pearls in their mouths; their beaks are gigantic and sharp, and their talons and nails are long and keen. Or again, they heed others' comings and goings and suffer humans' driving and whipping: dogs toil at barking by night, roosters vie in crowing at dawn, oxen are worn out by tillage and farming, and horses are exhausted by battle lines. Flesh and sinews are thereby wasted away, and skin and hide peel and fall from them. Or they may lurk and hide in marshes of grass only to be trapped in snares and nets; or flee and conceal themselves in ponds and pools only to run foul of casting nets and seines. For all such animals, repentance is made on their behalf. Even down to the vast forms of giant fishes and rukh-birds, the tiny bodies of crickets and ants, the mole drinking from the river, and the wren nesting in the woods; water-born, land-produced, feathered clans, and furred herds; brocade textures, purple scales, cinnabar gills, and crimson tails—for all such types, we repent on their behalf. May their roots of faith become pure and clean, may they cast off these evil forms, may they adorn their life of wisdom, and may they return to this divine retribution; may they no longer have the suffering of being driven and spurred, may they forever leave the sorrow of slaughter and butchering, wandering at ease as they wish, roaming untrammeled according to their hearts, eating and drinking at liberty, chirping and whistling in unconditioned ease, emerging from those cages and escaping bondage!