If an Ant is your Guru, Feed him?

One of my Tibetan Buddhist teachers who was a Canadian I met along the way gave me this interesting statement in the 1980s. And in some ways it healed my being understanding life in this way.

Why?

Because enabling any being that helps you moves you along on your path to God.

We had a hummingbird fly into a door we left open into our kitchen and above the kitchen is a skylight. The hummingbird flew up into the skylight area and kept beating itself to death on the window above it all day long. I tried poles and other things to try to redirect this poor hummingbird back out the door it came in to no avail.

It was almost sunset and the poor bird had been beating itself to death on that skylight all day long. But, my wife forbade me to go up on the roof usually because now I was over 70 years old when this happened. Also, the roof tiles were cement tiles that easily broke if someone walked on them wrong. 

However, my wife was out of the house talking to a friend in her car in the driveway. So, I snuck the ladder outside and climbed up on the roof which she forbids me to do because of my age. So, things like this Ladders and roofs I only do in sort of emergencies when she isn't looking or isn't there.

I went up on the roof and unscrewed the lag bolt holding the skylight sealed from the roof. I lifted the glass skylight up and hoped the hummingbird would know to fly out but he didn't do that. Finally holding up the skylight with one hand I touched the tail of the hummingbird with a hammer  I had to boost him out of there and finally he saved himself and flew up and out but his tail was dragging as he flew across the road to a pine tree with his tail dragging. I don't know whether he even survived the night after his ordeal but I'm hopeful he did. 

And to top off everything my wife in her car actually saw the bird fly across to the pine tree and horrified at what I had done. But, by the time she was inside again I had gotten off the roof and moved the ladder so at most she was chagrined that I had succeeded without her input at all and grateful I had saved our little local Hummingbird from an awful death.

The point of all this is: If and ant is your guru feed him but if your teacher that day is a hummingbird, release him!