NY Times: A Rite to Improve Karma for Man, Creature and, Now, the Environment

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/28/nyregion/a-rite-to-improve-karma-for-man-creature-and-now-the-environment.html

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“It works better with turtles — turtles just stand there and stare at you,” Shi Benkong said as he stood near the Great Lawn in Central Park on Tuesday near several cardboard boxes containing not turtles but restless, rustling birds.

Mr. Shi and other Buddhists chanted as Chinese-speaking monks sprinkled purifying water on the boxes holding the impatient birds, which were about to be freed as part of a religious ritual known as a life-release ceremony.

In such rituals, a caged animal is freed into a public place as a way of generating positive karma for the animal as well as for the person releasing it.
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xposting in New York