thou shalt not kill -- the bible commandment
i shall abstain from killing -- the buddhist precept

a little girl, sitting by the window, was watching a line of ants on the windowsill, and was considering what she had recently learnt from her mother, that ''after death one goes to heaven.'' this gave her an idea: she said to an ant, "do you want to go to heaven?" and squashed an ant. and then, she started to squash ants, one by one saying: "do you want to go to heaven?", do you want to go to heaven?"

historically soldiers were taught that if they won the battle, they would be rewarded in this life, and if they died fighting, they will go to heaven.

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in the above three quotes the first one is an observation of the interdependence of natural elements. the other two depict the way of life of the humans; in the judeo-christian form it is ordered by the authority, and to be followed. in the buddhist perception, it is the outcome of the first person awareness of the right response. what the little girl sitting by a window in san francisco did is what all the u.s. presidents have been doing, killing people for the humanitarian ideal.

in the u.s. supreme court there is a legal debate on the law forbidding taking life, but there is not any thought therefore on bringing into fore the weapons, medical, and pharmaceutical industries that thrive on supplying the means and methods of killing.

more americans have been killed by weapons at home than in all wars they fought in distant lands. and now the news is that the third leading cause of deaths in the u.s. is the healthcare industry: the medicinal and surgical errors by physicians, harmful effects of medicines pushed by the pharmaceutical industry, the ailments acquired from the hospitals and so on.

still this does not include the termination of life legally permissible, such as by abortions and death sentences. when the birth control pill was first marketed, there came a first page cartoon in newspaper, of a sketch of bomb and a tiny little pill, with a caption, ''they sent a boy to do man's job.'' the common sense, that the life forms when the egg is united with the sperm is how nature works came in conflict when the unwanted pregnancy was required to be terminated to save face, usually of the impregnator, a philanderer boss, or in case of rape, or the racial or class mismatch, where the shotgun marriage was not permissible. the back alley abortions were not always without the termination of life of the pregnant woman as well.

so, like every other commercial product that seemingly was invented to make life easy, the development of the pharmaceutical means to abort life was inevitable. then the first pill developing into the 'morning after' pill made it even easier to terminate the process of transformation of life form into a human being.

the pill that seemed easier tool, and not so visibly harmful to woman's health, also made it easy for the males to take advantage of the female subordinates in every work situations. the male controlled media that is financially dependent upon the commerce sector began to promote the idea that the life does not form at conception. this required the change of definition of words concerning the physiology as a science and the male-female relationship based upon the knowledge promoted by the pharmacy. it required the promoting of the new meanings of words that altered the concept of life. all this was happening when women were entering the work force, and to keep their jobs secure, women were giving in to the male demands of sexual nature, whether in hospitals, offices, the nation's capitols, prisons, labour work, stage, and church and school campuses.

by the time the women's rights became legally enforceable, women were already conditioned to the pill, enabling them the 'safe sex' as it enhanced the woman's liberation. it enabled them to have sex with the males they preferred, while rejecting the advances of the male bosses.

but having sex with a man a woman is attracted to may originate in natural instinct of mating with a perfect man, but then the reality of the socioeconomic existence suppresses such instinct into the deep recesses of woman's conscience, and she resorts to the 'morning after' pill.

'the wuthering heights', a novel written by a 23 years old english woman in the early 1900 is the account of the turmoil in the state of mind envisioned by the unmarried young writer in the era when the pill was not invented yet. so the female character, catherine was torn between her heart throb, who could give her only the lifelong suffering of the degrading poverty, and the other young man who would offer her the socioeconomic uplift, but without the very sense of being alive. the other woman writer of the same era, jane austin, too, wrote about this body-mind split in her popular book, 'pride and prejudice', but unlike emily bronte, jane austin, the professional writer conscious of the book sale finds her heroine eliza a man who is both attractive and rich. a hundred year later, a real life young woman, diana, married a real life prince only to realize what the english pop music group beatles sang aloud: "money can't buy me love", and despite divorce, diana, too met a tragic death.

with the advancement of the advertisement industry both women and men have learnt to view sexual intercourse as purely a pleasurable act with no connections with the biological limbs and organs required in such act. the disconnecting element in such perception is the pill and other devices that prevent or terminate the natural progression of an act.

in the commerce invented economy -- the house management -- the dwellers of the house are divided by the work, the super rich 'donate' to research to create a sellable elaxir, and their money goes to the researchers who look for treatment to eradicate the symptoms. but symptoms not being the cause, the diseases continue to thrive.

if not all, then at least most of the modern world's diseases are created by the same research industry that is busy inventing the means and methods to make the rich richer; and what they have created is a lifestyle that is an incubator for the very diseases. and all this just because of the idea that one can live outside of the nature given physical body, which is the same for both the rich and the poor. so only way the rich can look different is by not working and making others to work to death.

the researchers' livelihood is sustained by the rich, the rich is sustained by the subservient poor, and the life in poverty is sustained by the authority donning the robes of teacher, preacher, and politician. and all of them feel alive in the applaud of the the invisible audience that is the idea, the ideal actorly image of oneself, whether as a wretched poor or the filthy rich. actors just play whatever roles assigned to them, and in the middle of the play have no sense arising in them as to whether what they are told to act out is the right action or not. this is where, both the hindu and christian idea extol them to just submit to the command and do the assigned duty.

have you ever seen even one butterfly that was so greedy for the life sustaining nectar, that flowers crushed under its weight?