the illusion of freedom

For those of you who live in south east asia and know a lil bit about the buddhist lifestyle probably know that there is this ritual where you need to buy wildlife animal and set them free. Of course the thought is good, to set free wild animal that aren't suppose to be caged, but is the end really justify the mean??

The most popular animal to be bought and set free is the passer montanus bird (called burung gereja/church's bird in indonesia)
In most temple here in Medan-Indonesia you can almost be sure you can spot a man selling this birds outside the building. Temple goers buy them in groups and set them free, and go home feeling good about themself, proud that they can be categorized as one of those person who try to make the world a better place. Ohhh the beauty of ignorance, did they really help those birds??

why would the guy sell this birds at the 1st place anyway?? why would he go the trouble to catch them?? need time to think.......??





....insert you own personal fav thinking music here....




its simple economic's principle called supply and demand, those birds are almost of no economic value if not because of the demand from these people. stop the buying, and the catching will stop too.

YOU are the reason they end up being caged and treated badly (those seller are poor people who had trouble landing a job themself, its not exactly like they are running a bonavide pet shop, they can't really afford to keep feeding the birds and hundreds and maybe even thousand are kept inside a small cage so that it can fit behind his bike, some of the birds die inside the cage)

YOU did this to them, but yet you walk home thinking you have been a saving grace to them!!

if you really do care about the well being of these wildlife, then donate your money to one of the wild life organization fighting to help this animal, or get involve in their project. But i know for a fact that most of the people who buy those birds from temple won't be bothered, because they doesn't want to take time out of their "busy" life to actually do something meaningful, going to the temple and spend some money to buy and then release those birds take only 10min, and they can feel good about themself for days and weeks. Make me remembered an episode from the sitcom friends where Joey argure that there aren't any unselfish good deeds, all good deeds are selfish.


Somebody should really tell the temple's elders and explain it to them so they can stop their followers from continuing doing this stupid good deeds.