The animal precept is a precept that admits, combines, and immediately transforms. It is the very Buddha Dharma Body. Female combines, trains, and transforms into living beings. For example, a woman who gets married and gives birth to her children. Everyone realizes that Female does give births.
And what is about the male? I heard the Lord say the following:
A man living in a proper environment will produce by himself lice and head lice. When a man's body produced a male and a female, he accomplished his duty of birth by metamorphosis; Later, this male and female would continue to give births to their countless descendants... Thus, the male also gives birth.
So do senseless things.
For example, fallen trees at a certain time will produce woodborers. So does rice: when it is stored for a while, it will also produce by itself rice-weevils. On the surface and in the heart of the earth, it also produces countless species, which can walk and stand in living activities... In the air, it also self-produces all kinds of bacteria…
Therefore, for the animal precept: the male, the female, and the non-perceptive, all can produce the perceptive. Therefrom, we can see that the animal precept combines and transforms, forming mountains, rivers, continents, and the Three Thousand Great Thousand Worlds.
Thus, the non-perceptive gives birth to the perceptive; the globe, the plants, the rivers, the mountains, the ocean, the cloud, the water, the animals, the organisms, and the emptiness, all are containing the seeds of every species. All of them are precisely the universe, the Tathagata-Buddha, the God, the Allah—depending on each region named for the universe.
Hence the Tathagata or the universe is also the perceptive, also has the knowing — it is not that the universe is inanimate. Where there is a suitable combination there is a suitable metamorphosis, without suitable combination without metamorphosis. That is the natural law, no-beginning no-ending, and eternal constant. Therefore, when a piece of clay is molded into a kitchen god, a land deity, or a wealth deity…, and then continues to be worshiped, it will have a supernatural efficacy; that is because the UNIVERSE’s seeing nature and OUR seeing nature is in concord and that results in supernatural efficacy. There is no efficaciousness without faith, due to without suitable combination without metamorphosis. If a piece of clay or wood... shaped into a Buddha statue, a Tao practitioner then worships that Buddha statue with their believing, it will become efficacious supernaturally, also due to the suitable combination. This supernatural efficacy is depending on the practitioner’s character of generosity or petiteness, of goodness or evilness and on the case itself.
Because the universe has the knowing that is the perception, the Buddhas, who experienced and attained the Buddha Fruit, have taught human beings known how to recite the Buddhas’ Appellations so that they could maintain their rooted goodness, being in concord with and transformed as the rooted goodness; they therefore could live in peace, avoid suffering, and escape disasters. For a Tao practitioner who practices well, reciting the Dharma means reciting the hearing-seeing-knowing, correcting their character and bad habits to acquire afterward the Essence of Mind — knowing their mind well and dissolving it into the universe’s mind, that is the integration of oneself into the Tathagata to be together with the Tathagata to attain the Tathagata Buddha's knowledge.
Just like a small drop of seawater that is worth nothing in comparison with the immense ocean, but when added to the sea it is immediately and completely dissolved because they are the same substance. Analyzing a drop of seawater shows its content of calcium, sodium, and iron..., those are as same as those of the sea. It is at this point that a drop of seawater and the vast ocean can unite and sympathize with each other like the father and the son. We can draw a reliable conclusion by that fact: There can be a union and sympathy between a tiny human being and the immense universe. Like the Buddhas' love, compassion and heartiness toward living beings, once knowing that, the living beings soon clearly comprehend as the Saints, profoundly acquire as the Bodhisattvas, and completely accomplish as the Buddhas. That is also the animal precept combining and transforming. From that reason, The Founding Master has taught: All living beings have the Buddha nature.