should i kill the ants?

2 days later, don and andrew invited me to another buddhist seminar. it was a sunday. don drove me in his new honda JAZZ with andrew inside.

this was another interesting seminar.

it began with offering to the statue of a seated MAITREYA BUDDHA. first it was a lighted lotus candle, then a plate of sweetly scented michelia/jasmine, then a vase of chyrsanthemums,another nice floral arrangement followed....then a bowl of fruits and finally a tray of 2 cups water with another cup of fruit juice in between.

it was followed by some thanksgiving verbal acknowledgement. then all seated and 'puja' chanting began in pali which i was totally blank and blur!

after that, a sri lankan professor who was well-versed in buddhism preached. finally question time. again, i was sitting right infront - face to face with the professor. he prompted me to ask the first question. oh well, here i went:

as buddhist practitioner, if there are ants in my house , can i kill them?

hahaha...that was the only question i recalled from the last seminar just 2 days ago.

this professor answered it very wisely:

it's not whether we should be killing the ants or not. we should ask ourselves why the ants happened to be there proliferating in the first place. they are like the karma to the action we did.

you see, if we keep our place clean....no food scraps lying everywhere, where would the ants come from? they won't come if there isn't anything like food to attract them, right? and if we have kept the place spick and spank, then we would definitely not getting the ants.

hmmm....make sense isn't it? i thought if he was stumped by it, i would just gave him the MONK AND NUN ANTS by the tibetan rinpoche....hahahaha! it's not about killing of the ants, more importantly it should be the CONTROLLING of our actions. hence if we are mindful of our action, then bad karmic effect like the appearance of the ants wouldn't have appeared and we as buddhist practitioners won't be in a dilemma of whether to kill the ants or not.

anyway, my answer was even simpler and straightforward. if it harms us and causes unhappiness to us, for heaven's sake just spray the ants with baygon. PROBLEM SOLVED! hahahaha.....;9)

am i enlightened or am i not?