Mindful meditation and snails

I decided to take down another bush today. Actually, that's not true, I decided to measure the garden and its existing hard-landscaping features, but this bush got in the way:

So I decided to cut it back from over the path so I could measure where the path was more easily. Well, I still haven't done that, as I ended up cutting pretty much the whole thing back.

And then I got sent some work, so I stopped to do it.
While I was cutting back the bush, I discovered two things:
1. the honeysuckle does come from our side of the fence (which is good, as I have a past history of allergy to honeysuckle, and if it comes back that means it's my choice whether this one lives or dies) and
2. that bush was hiding an absolute ton of snails.

As a gardener I needed those snails gone. I've already lost enough plants to snails and slugs that I need to get rid of any snails I find. The thing is that I've been doing mindfulness meditation for my pain, and mindfulness meditation is strongly derived from Buddhist meditation. This causes me a bit of a problem, as Buddhism says you shouldn't harm your fellow creatures (including snails). Now, I find a lot of what Buddhism says very useful advice - or at least, I find a lot of what they told us at the Buddhist centre where I used to go to try and learn meditation very useful advice. And that makes me feel very guilty about killing snails.
As seems standard for human psychology, I have more worries about killing them by a method where I'm an active agent in their death - i.e. by stamping on them or drowning them by popping them into water, than where I play a less active role - for instance through slug pellets or a beer trap, despite the fact the snails end up just as dead and I'm not convinced that any of those deaths is pleasanter or quicker than the others - except maybe the beer death. For instance, I filled a small ice cream tub with water and a bit of washing up liquid and popped all of those snails in it. In fact, I pretty much filled the ice cream tub with snails. But I feel bad saying so on this blog (even though I strongly suspect that the two pictures above are actually at least partially snail graveyards, as some of those snails were very firmly stuck and the snails inside did not seem very well hydrated, so may well already have been dead).
Nevertheless, I put all of them into a tub of water with the intention that none would survive – although I did save as many of the woodlice who fell in by accident as I could. The snails that were curled up in their shells seemed not to survive my slightly washing-up liquidy water at all, but some of the others made several attempts to climb out, which made me feel even worse (because I didn't let them). I might need more washing-up liquid next time. It's surprising how much washing up liquid vegetable gardening involves. I don't know what farmers did before they invented it.