Halfway through this documentary, I remembered these two sentences in "Rabbit Republic". (Not necessarily the original words.
All living things suffer. They all deserve respect.
It feels like Teacher Octopus has taught me the lessons of Teacher Rabbit again.
Suffer can be interpreted as suffering, but the dictionary usually puts a parenthesis after suffering and adds the word suffering. And I feel that what the living entities bear is not necessarily something as narrow as pain. Let's take a look at the life of Teacher Octopus: being attacked by sharks, biting off hands and feet, and barely escape from danger must be considered as bearable, as are the pale complexion, no eating or drinking, and the struggle with illness. So hiding in Tibet, isn’t the Three Caves of the Cunning Rabbit, hunting shrimps and crabs, running for a living? Although Master Octopus Bingxue is smart, which one of her cleverness is not for survival and evolution, and which one is not the result of her ancestors' endurance and engraving into her genes over the years?
I prefer to think that life is a kind of endurance, whether pain or joy, is nothing more than a process that must be experienced in living in the world, and an emotion that must be experienced. The living beings bear everything that their subjective will cannot control. The octopus is bearing it, the shrimp and the crab are bearing it, and the shark is bearing it. When the octopus is bitten by a shark and suffers pain, the shark is also suffering from the hard work of fighting for its belly. Defeating the octopus will not bring it more value than a brief period of food and clothing. This is only the necessity of life. . When octopus catches shrimps and crabs with its superb skills, doesn't it play the same role as sharks? Out of the need for storytelling, the octopus is personified, so that the audience will empathize with it, will be happy, and worry about it. However, it is not essentially different from shrimps, crabs and sharks. They are only one link in the biological chain of this ecology, and each link bears the tension of the entire chain.
Why should we respect them? Perhaps it's because life forms are destined to endure all this from birth, but they still choose to live hard and continue their lives. All this has a certain Sisyphian tragic color in human beings. Respecting all living entities is like respecting all players who abide by the rules of the game. We respect the rules more.
So how to respect life? I think the first is equality. Because we respect the rules, all lives are equal before the rules of the world. No need to beautify the octopus, no need to demonize the shark, everyone just follows the rule of the weak. Therefore, there is no need to worship the strong, and no need to pity the weak. Our attitude towards all lives, including humans, is respect. In the words of Buddhism, it is compassion. The foundation of compassion is the equality of all beings.
The narrator of our documentary, the male lead, has not done enough on this point. He fell in love with this octopus, and it was inevitable that he would feel compassionate. When the shark was chasing her, he wanted to help her drive away the enemy. After she was injured, he wanted to personally send her back to the nest. During her recovery, he couldn't help but feed her food. Fortunately, he maintained great restraint. I think this is the most important content he teaches the audience, and it is also the second rule of respecting life and not interfering. Respect the rules, don't try to change the rules for the individual, no matter if the intervention is in good faith or malicious. The kindness to this octopus is not malicious to the shark, and is it not malicious to the entire ecology? The greatest respect is to let everything develop in compliance with the laws of nature.
View more about My Octopus Teacher reviews
