Is Euthanizing My Pet the Compassionate Choice? | Eckhart Tolle

Namaste Eckhart. My name in this form is Rena, and my question is about euthanasia in pets. And in February, my little dog was diagnosed with lymphoma. And I'm sorry. And there's nothing that you can really offer. It's a matter of making him happy until his time. And I was pretty upset and panicked by it. And my vet said, you know, when he starts to be symptomatic, bring him in. We'll give him a shot. He'll go to sleep and all that. So when I was so upset, I thought, well, this is a good answer. It's a good plan. You know, I have an idea of what to do. But then I thought about it and I thought, you know, I have power over his life. He's a little guy I bought, and I have power over his life. I can end his suffering, but really, am I ending my suffering? I mean, I don't want to see him suffer, but I. But on the other hand, doesn't he have the right to really go through the dying, the work of dying and the process of dying? And I guess that's my question about feeling. What is right action? What is the right thing to do?

Thank you. Answers to questions like that are difficult to find when you start thinking about it, because, as you know, your mind can assume different positions, and you might have one voice in your head arguing one way, one course of action, and another voice in your head arguing another course of action, and suddenly you are stuck. What is the right thing to do in a situation like that? And so the answer always has to come from within you, but you have to go beyond the mind that is putting forward either the yes or the no, arguing for or against some kind of position. I never. Or very rarely, probably never. I don't know, I can't remember. Give advice as to what actually a person should do, because I believe when you get in touch with the unconditioned intelligence within you, in other words, become still, then the answer will come through you. It may not come the very first time, but it may come the next time. And as you take it into stillness, I know that probably I would. If our dog were suffering. I would probably be inclined to. If there were no way beyond the suffering. And if I were sure that the animal is actually in intense suffering, I would probably feel the compassionate thing to do would be to end the suffering. But that is every individual's decision, but not so much decision, but has to come from a deeper place where it's not a decision. It's a knowing and any individual case. Animals and pain is a strange thing. The animals are very much surrendered to pain. When we took our dog to the vet a couple of months ago, the vet discovered a broken tooth and said, or she must have had these broken tooth for quite a long time and probably had a toothache for several months. Never knew it. The only thing we knew that she wasn't interested in chewing bones anymore. And the vet also said it's amazing how animals can be with pain, where humans would complain and all kinds of humans of course have a psychological level of suffering on top of the physical suffering. There's an entity that comments and resists, feels sorry for itself and all those things. So animals have capacity for surrendering to pain. But also animals are surrendered in death also. The same way that animals don't make life into a problem, they don't make death into a problem either. There's something in animals that knows that is connected with the life itself. And so they know in some non conceptual way they are rooted in being. So they don't have that fear of death that humans have. So take that into a meditation, become still maybe with your animal there and then perhaps what the animal needs will come to you from within or from the animal itself. And then the painful decision making process then no longer determines what action you do. I was at the vet and when the tooth got extracted from Maja, of course with an anesthetic and the same afternoon the the receptionist said, this is very sad for us. There was a dog that had to be put down and I could hear it was being done in a room and there was a little girl crying. And I never saw the dog or the girl, but I cried a little too. I didn't even know the dog or the girl that cried. But that's how it is. The end of form comes to all beings, including ourselves. So becoming familiar with death is a good thing. So that when death comes to someone close to you and even a dog, some people who don't have animals, they say, how can you make such a fuss about an animal? But one is there is a deep, very deep connectedness with that being. It's not only that being, because through that being you sense the entirety of being. And so that is not something you can lose, that remains untouched by death. So in a way don't believe that you lose that. That would be very painful. In a way, the dog is only an opening for that, as are you. Thanks.