So I continue the quest to tame my foster kittens. It took me several tries today to find their hiding places. The carrier was easy enough, but the wire raceway under my desk was a stroke of genius – a black kitten hidden in the darkest corner under the desk.

My wife and I have decided to leave them alone since every time we touch them they decide they must find a new hiding place. Instead, we are only giving them food when we are in the room and withholding it when we leave. We’ll see how that works.

Now I’m killing time, allowing the kittens an opportunity to eat. No takers yet.

I’ve been reading The Beginnings of Buddhism and gathering quotes that I’ll eventually reprint here. I enjoy the early teachings of Buddhism, considering them in the context of the Lotus Sūtra. Today, for example, I set aside a quote explaining the concept of karma as understood before Buddhism.

[W]hen Shakyamuni was teaching in a town named Devadaha, the issue of karma was being discussed. In those times, in India, there were five explanations for the causes of present happiness and unhappiness:

1. Everything, happiness and unhappiness, is determined by karma from previous existences.
2. All fate is determined by the will of an all-powerful deity who created and controls the world.
3. Human fate is determined by the good or bad ways in which the elements—earth, water, fire, and wind—constituting the fleshly body are combined.
4. The fate of the entire life of an individual is determined by the social class and family into which he was born.
5. Human fate does not depend on any of these definite causes but is determined, from minute to minute, by completely accidental occurrences.

From the Buddhist standpoint, all of these explanations either are deterministic and fatalistic or rely purely on chance and therefore deny the significance and value of education and training and fail to take into account the importance of free will in efforts to determine and develop fate. For the sake of a correct interpretation of cosmic workings, Buddhism proposed doing away with these explanations and offered in their place the Law of Causation and the Four Noble Truths as accurate explanations of the world and of human life.

And so I gather up the cat food as I prepare to leave and offer the kittens the value of education and training and the importance of free will. No food until you come out of hiding.