The monks who bought lobsters worth Rs 3 lakh to free them into the ocean
Over 600 lobsters headed for boiling water found themselves in the cold ocean. Buddhist monks in Canada bought eight crate-loads of live lobsters, to release them into the waters off the coast of Prince Edward Island, reported India Times.
“Hopefully, we can find a spot where there are no cages waiting for them,” Venerable Dan, one of the monks from the Great Enlightenment Buddhist Institute Society told CBC News. The lobsters received blessings with purified water and prayers before their release. The monks had bought them on a lobster shopping journey across Canada’s Prince Edward island. “This whole purpose for us is to cultivate this compassion towards others,” he added to CBC News. “It doesn’t have to be lobsters, it can be worms, flies, any animals, drive slower so we don’t run over little critters on the street.”
How much the monks spent on purchasing the lobsters is not known, nor there is information on which species they freed. But with a pound of lobster sometimes costing up to $8 in grocery stores, it’s possible they may have shelled out as much as $4,800 on their gesture, reported The Huffington Post.
Other Buddhist monks performed a similar act off the coast of northern Massachusetts in 2011, when they freed 600 pounds of lobsters into the ocean. “Even if they get captured again, they’ve had a longer life,” Wendy Cook, former director at the Kurukulla Center for Tibetan Buddhist Studies in Medford, told Reuters at the time.
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