Not Impressed With Death

I read once of a Jain physician who, struggling with the Jain law against killing any living thing and the necessity of killing bacteria, concluded that to live is to kill; it’s inescapable.

Tomato seeds need to pass through an animal’s digestive system before they can germinate. The animal carries the seeds far away and, unconsciously, plants them well-fertilized.

Bamboo spreads underground and shoots up out of its underground network of roots. To stop it you have to surround it with tightly joined metal barriers. You have to kill it over and over again.

We once believed that all life needed oxygen to live. We found vents under the sea, too hot for any life we knew, with no light, no oxygen, but with bacteria we named for its breathlessness.

There are good and bad parasites, bacteria on everything, a patina of life on every surface and in every crevice. Death seems lazy--quietly taking one life at a time, as they come, no more or less.