I think we need to look at the bigger picture here. Why do we sweep the pathways? Rather than just thinking that we want a clean pathway just for the looks of it, we need to look at why we want to have clean pathways here. In the bigger picture, it's to make it safer for retreatants. For what reason are retreatants here? To learn the Dhamma. So when we sweep the pathways, it's important to have a bigger picture. Sometimes, people are too focused on the small picture and don't know what the big picture means. In the big picture, we are truthful about why we are sweeping all these pathways, because if we were just living on our own somewhere, we wouldn't have to sweep the pathways, or clear the jungle, or clean all these things.
That's one of the reasons we have rags around the concrete piles. Before, there weren't any of those. All the termites went in the buildings and I had to get the termites out. I said, "Well, that's ridiculous. We have to prevent them getting in the building. Then I won't have to kill any trying to get them out." So we tried to figure out how to kill less, kill less. I had come to a realization long before that I couldn't get out of this by just not doing anything, so I tried to kill less; that was my intention. My intention was not to kill. My intention was to make a room so people could learn the Dhamma to develop themselves so that they could lessen their suffering and walk the path towards the ending of suffering. This is where Truthfulness comes, this is where Wisdom comes, so that we can see we're not just focusing on the small picture. We're focusing on the big picture so that we can help to live our lives and take care of these bodies and take care of all your bodies. Bodies are all very unsatisfactory, but it's the only way.
We also realized that, by taking care of the buildings as long as we can, we don't have to build more buildings, etc. By changing to use concrete instead of building with wood, we kill less beings, also.
We try to always have this intention to harm as little as possible, but also understand that it's almost impossible not to harm. We try to do our job with Truthfulness and Compassion and Lovingkindness, and with a certain amount of Equanimity when we glimpse the deeper unsatisfactoriness of the Cycle of Birth and Death. That's where Equanimity comes in to balance our Compassion and Lovingkindness, and our Wisdom comes in to strengthen our Compassion and Lovingkindness.