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<\/figure>\n\n\n\nIt was our mother who didn\u2019t know what to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She laid a towel in a large insect case<\/p>\n\n\n\n
and placed the bird inside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For my worried brother, she asked a local animal clinic<\/p>\n\n\n\n
to treat it, but they turned us away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And not just one clinic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One after another, after another…<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At last,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
we met a vet who said, \u201cLet me take a look,\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
and only then<\/p>\n\n\n\n
did we understand why we had been turned away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wild birds are not meant to be kept by people,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
because they are part of the ecosystem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That is what the vet told our mother.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And to my brother, the vet said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIf you take it back to its mother and father,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m sure it will get well.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That night, together with our mother, my brother returned the bird to the woods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And he said goodbye.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Years later, as an adult,<\/p>\n\n\n\n I looked into this story again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Japan, there is a law called the Wildlife Protection and Management Act,<\/p>\n\n\n\n and as a rule, it forbids catching wild birds or animals<\/p>\n\n\n\n without permission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Among its purposes,<\/p>\n\n\n\n the text of the law includes the words<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201csecuring biological diversity.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even a single, nameless little bird<\/p>\n\n\n\n has a role in the ecosystem of its land:<\/p>\n\n\n\n eating insects, carrying seeds,<\/p>\n\n\n\n helping other lives carry on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So kindness from one person alone<\/p>\n\n\n\n should not cut those ties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I learned that this way of thinking<\/p>\n\n\n\n was what lay behind all those refusals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Strangely enough,<\/p>\n\n\n\n Buddhism has a very similar idea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is called engi<\/em> (dependent origination).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nothing exists<\/p>\n\n\n\n entirely on its own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Everything is here<\/p>\n\n\n\n only because countless connections have come together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Birds, insects, grass, and trees<\/p>\n\n\n\n are all bound up with one another,<\/p>\n\n\n\n shaping a single world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To keep one bird in your own hands<\/p>\n\n\n\n may also mean quietly cutting<\/p>\n\n\n\n the countless ties<\/p>\n\n\n\n it was meant to have.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Japanese Buddhism,<\/p>\n\n\n\n there is another phrase:<\/p>\n\n\n\n sansen s\u014dmoku shikkai j\u014dbutsu<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mountains, rivers, grass, and trees,<\/p>\n\n\n\n all things<\/p>\n\n\n\n carry the precious nature of the Buddha.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is the idea that humans are not the only ones who are special.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The forest and the birds<\/p>\n\n\n\n are here with just as much weight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When I think of it this way,<\/p>\n\n\n\n the woods where my brother let the bird go<\/p>\n\n\n\n were not just a backdrop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They were the place it truly belonged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That finally makes sense to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I also learned<\/p>\n\n\n\n the word h\u014dj\u014d<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It means releasing a captured creature<\/p>\n\n\n\n back to where it came from.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For a long time, in Japan\u2019s temples and shrines,<\/p>\n\n\n\n it has been cherished as a form of jihi<\/em>, compassion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In jihi<\/em>,<\/p>\n\n\n\n ji<\/em> is the wish for another\u2019s happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hi<\/em> is the wish to take away another\u2019s suffering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Both, they say,<\/p>\n\n\n\n begin not with what satisfies ourselves,<\/p>\n\n\n\n but with asking<\/p>\n\n\n\n what is truly good for the other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When my brother let the bird go,<\/p>\n\n\n\n perhaps he was choosing its happiness<\/p>\n\n\n\n over his own loneliness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Everything changes and passes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Buddhism, this is called shogy\u014d muj\u014d<\/em>, impermanence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That bird, too,<\/p>\n\n\n\n could not stay in an insect case forever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was always going to return to the woods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Perhaps letting go<\/p>\n\n\n\n simply means<\/p>\n\n\n\n not forcing that change<\/p>\n\n\n\n to stop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The story of the ecosystem<\/p>\n\n\n\n and the teachings of Buddhism<\/p>\n\n\n\n seem to me to arrive at the same place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Everything is connected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And every single life<\/p>\n\n\n\n has its own role and its own place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So,<\/p>\n\n\n\n the deepest love<\/p>\n\n\n\n we can give to someone dear<\/p>\n\n\n\n is not to hold them close beside us,<\/p>\n\n\n\n but to gently send them off<\/p>\n\n\n\n to a place where they can be truly themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To the little bird my brother found that day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To all the vets who turned us away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And to the vet who, in the end,<\/p>\n\n\n\n kindly told us why.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThank you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The refusals,<\/p>\n\n\n\n the life we couldn\u2019t save,<\/p>\n\n\n\n all of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because that day happened,<\/p>\n\n\n\n I feel I was taught<\/p>\n\n\n\n that letting go, too,<\/p>\n\n\n\n is a kind of love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Today, again,<\/p>\n\n\n\n to the people and things I meet,<\/p>\n\n\n\n one by one,<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ll softly say, \u201cThank you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n To the things that went well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And to the things that didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Today, may a quiet calm, a gentle nagi, come to your heart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n #life #buddhism #gratitude #lettinggo<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Good evening. I\u2019m Ren, the lotus rabbit. Tonight, a memory from long ago came back to me. My little brother wa […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":93,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jinr_url_youtube":"https:\/\/youtu.be\/Vkf4TFUbJjY","_jinr_pip_youtube":false,"_jinr_time_youtube":"","_jinr_thumb_youtube":"https:\/\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/Vkf4TFUbJjY\/maxresdefault.jpg","_jinr_media_youtube":"http:\/\/nagi-life.site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/youtube-thumbnail-Vkf4TFUbJjY.jpg","_jinr_category_edit":false,"_jinr_category":"","_jinr_title_display":false,"_jinr_snsbutton_display":false,"_jinr_ads_display":false,"_jinr_thumbnail_display":false,"_jinr_profile_display":false,"_jinr_representations_display":false,"_jinr_relatedpost_display":false,"_jinr_sidebar1col_display":false,"_jinr_sidebar2col_display":false,"_jinr_seotitle_display":"Where a Small Life Belongs | Letting Go Can Also Be Love","_jinr_description_display":"A little bird that could not fly, and the night we let it go. Why letting go can also be a kind of love.","_jinr_keyword_display":"letting go,buddhism,gratitude,wild bird,ecosystem,nagi","_jinr_hastag_display":"#lettinggo #buddhism #gratitude #nagi","_jinr_canonical_display":"","_jinr_noindex_display":false,"_jinr_paidpost":false,"_jinr_paidpost_product_id":"","_jinr_headtag_article":"","_jinr_ogp_image_url":"","_jinr_last_featured_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,7,5],"tags":[13,15,14,17,16],"class_list":["post-91","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-english","category-7","category-5","tag-buddhism","tag-gratitude","tag-letting-go","tag-nagi","tag-wild-bird"],"views":"19","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagi-life.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagi-life.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagi-life.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagi-life.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagi-life.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=91"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/nagi-life.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":100,"href":"https:\/\/nagi-life.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91\/revisions\/100"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagi-life.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/93"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagi-life.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=91"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagi-life.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=91"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagi-life.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=91"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/nagi-life.site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/\u6708\u591c\u306e\u68ee\u3068\u7948\u308a\u306e\u3046\u3055\u304e-1024x577.png\")
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