What IS the right thing to do?

Yoga Discussion Structural Yoga Therapy
#1

I respect your opinion a lot since meeting you at the SYT workshop in Yogaville a few days ago. So I’d like to know what you think of this situation: I hit a squirrel while driving on a country road back in July. I tried to avoid it, but it swerved the same direction that I swerved. When I glanced back in my side mirror, I saw it flopping around in the road and looked like it was in pain. I was hundreds of miles from my home and didn’t know the area at all. I turned around and went back with the intention of killing the squirrel to put it out of pain. When I got there, I saw a man putting the squirrel into his truck and he told me that he woud care for it.

My question is this: was my intention to kill the squirrel a moral intention in your opinion? Or should I have tried to find somewhere nearby to ask someone about a veterinarian?

Thanks for your time and your opinion.

#2

Dear Bobkat -
Reply from Mukunda follows. Chandra apologizes for not getting it to you sooner. Life has been most dynamic recently.

The transition to death is not easy for any of us. My sweetheart had a similar experience as you recently. She was driving in heer van with her two small children and ran over a squirrel. She stopped and held the animal until it passed, and had a lengthy conversations with her children about death. Three weeks later their dog who was 3 years older than her oldest child had to be put to sleep due to kidney failure. The children were more prepared for this more intimate death as a result of the passing of the squirrel. Who can say what we or animals must learn? Perhaps the ultimate lesson is that we are eternal and death is an illusion. On this topic i would recommend reading Swami Muktananda’s Does Death Really Exist?

You did the appropriate act for you as did the man who stopped to care for the animal.  There are no absolutes.  Be compassionate for yourself.  blessings. 

Our compassion