i've never felt shame in this regard
love animals but not enough to stop eating them
I don't like hurting living things. Strike that, I don't like hurting things possessing
hsin. All life forms here have a hsin to them, but I don't want to say I know that other things such as rocks or tools don't either. Hsin is a Chinese word, probably written as 心, and is also a concept that's partial to the understanding of the understanding of a lot of Far Eastern literature. For some background understanding, Alan Watts puts it best in this excerpt from his book,
The Way of Zen:
Each is a special instance of the mental function which works through all, and which Chinese designates with the peculiar word hsin.
This term is so important for the understanding of Zen that some attempt must be made to say what Taoism and Chinese thought in general take it to mean. We usually translate it as "mind" or "heart", but neither of these words is satisfactory. The original ideograph seems to be a picture of the heart, or of the lungs or the liver, and when a Chinese speaks of the hsin he will often point to the center of his chest, slightly lower than the heart.
The difficulty with our translations is that "mind" is too intellectual, too cortical, and that "heart" in is current English usage is too emotional—even sentimental. Furthermore, hsin is not always used with quite the same sense. Sometimes it is used for an obstruction to be removed, as in wu-hsin, "no-mind." But sometimes it is used in a way that is almost synonymous with the Tao. This is especially found in Zen literature, which abounds with such phrases as "original mind" (pen hsin), "Buddha mind" (fu hsin), or "faith in mind" (hsin hsin). This apparent contradiction is resolved in the principle that "the true mind is no mind," which is to say that the hsin is true, is working properly, when it works as if it were not present. In the same way, the eyes are seeing properly when they do not see themselves, in terms of spots or blotches in the air.
Even though the reality is there is no duality between Myself and Others (something I'd spend an everlasting time explaining, kudos if you know why), I still have a pain in taking away from things which possess this
hsin that is insofar apparent in living things (and also dead things).
This also relates to the psychic episode I had back in July where were I to clear my mind enough I could get a feel of that thing through a sixth sense of sorts. A few months later I read that book I mentioned and connected it was that, but yeah, anyway... It pains me to hurt. I know it is inevitable that I will, as the reason we are mortal is that we are constantly destroying ourselves anyway, but that's another topic.
Here's yet another tl;dr to PC's GC DCC. :3
Senusret, you can deffo have from-hunt-to-clothing done in Nunavut. There are places that will make you stuff like proper moccassins and include you in every process of it. There are people who would commission other organic clothing items too from like sheep's wool or a cotton-plant and etc if you did a bit of searching.
I just want to have the ultimate confidence in a set of clothing. I want it to be entirely natural, and for the outfit to be fashioned as things were in older times, underclothing being a shirt and pants and overclothes being a cloak, armour, or whathaveyou. It would make me feel at peace.
