Stealing a Thief's Belongings Is Likewise Theft

When crops are harvested from the fields in autumn, field mice will steal some grain and bury it in their own burrows, which serves as their food for the winter. When winter approaches, some people will deliberately look for field mice's burrows, dig out the various grains the mice have stored, and take them home—one burrow can contain several jin or even ten jin of grain. When the field mouse returns to its burrow and finds the grain gone, some of them will despairingly commit suicide and die; otherwise, without food in winter, they would starve to death anyway. Does digging out the field mouse's grain constitute the act of stealing?

What is called stealing is taking what has not been given—secretly taking something away without the owner's consent, moving it without authorization to one's own side and into one's own name, making it one's own possession. The owner must be a sentient being; the thief, harboring a thieving mind and a mind of stealing, actively takes it, and in the process employs certain skillful means, until finally the object leaves the owner and arrives at the thief's own location, and the stolen object is successfully possessed.

The field mouse's behavior constitutes stealing: first, it has a thieving mind, taking things secretly so that no one knows; second, it carries the grain away in its mouth, employing skillful means; third, the grain leaves the field and is placed in its own burrow, becoming its own possession. Since it is stealing, the stolen grain must belong to the field mouse; otherwise it would not constitute stealing, and the theft would not be established.

If humans then dig out the grain from the field mouse's burrow, this constitutes stealing the field mouse's property. If the field mouse were not stealing but merely keeping the grain in custody for humans, then when humans dig it out, it would not be stealing from the field mouse, but stealing from someone else.

By the same logic, secretly taking away something that a thief has stolen is also an act of stealing. Because the thief, through certain skillful means, has successfully stolen the object to his own location and become the new owner of the object; if the owner has not changed, the theft is not established. When someone else then secretly takes away the thief's goods, employing certain skillful means, and successfully brings the object to his own location, becoming the new owner, this act constitutes stealing. However, if there is some other intention in the middle—not wanting to take possession of the thief's goods—then it is not necessarily stealing.