A Plea From a Buddhist Monk
May Change The Way You Feel
About Animals
By Alanna Ketler
I find it fascinating how, as a society, we so easily and
thoughtlessly justify the murder of millions of animals on a daily basis, but
find it heartbreaking to see a dog being abused or a dead animal lying on the
road. Why the double standard?
Why do we pick and choose which animals to love and which to
kill, experiment on, and exploit? Sometimes you’ll hear people say, “Well, dogs
are smarter and cuter, they’re man’s best friend!” But in reality, pigs are
much smarter than dogs and enjoy human companionship just as much, provided
they are being treated correctly.
All animals are sentient beings, capable of feeling pain and
experiencing emotion — and they all want to live! Their sole purpose on this
Earth is not simply to feed hungry humans. In some parts of the world it may
remain necessary to eat animals for survival, but in those cases, the animals
at least had a fighting chance, and likely lived a full and happy life before
being hunted. People who hunt to survive
generally respect the animals, give thanks for their offerings, and use every
part of the animal.
Not so in North America. Consider how much food is wasted
every day in the U.S. alone — not only are animals dying to feed us, they are
dying to not feed us. This does not make sense.
In the video below, Buddhist monk and author of A Plea For
The Animals Matthieu Ricard sums up the absurdity of this perfectly — check it
out!
He makes a great point by saying that human beings are
arrogant, and we try to justify our actions with excuses that are illogical.
It’s as though, deep down, we know that what we are doing is wrong, but we want
to keep benefitting from doing it, so we make up excuses to justify our actions
and alleviate our guilt.
In the video, he reveals a horrifying statistic: 60 billion
land animals and over 1 trillion fish are killed every year for food.
“Why should we put
zero value on the experience of other animals? We need to change our mentality.
If we embrace all sentient beings, not only will we include animals, but also
love better, in a way, human beings because the strength and the magnitude and
the debt of our compassion will be vaster.”
What Can We Do?
I can’t stress this enough: You can make a difference
without overhauling your life and becoming a strict vegan. Cutting back your
consumption of animals and animal products can make a huge difference! There is
a lot of controversy surrounding this, but you can find ethically sourced meat
and fish. The term ethical here means that the animals were raised in a more
natural environment, free to roam and graze before being eventually
slaughtered. While many argue there really is no humane way to kill an animal —
if you wouldn’t like it done to you, it’s not humane — buying this meat is a
good place to start and certainly better than the alternative, which is factory
farmed animal products where these animals are quite literally tortured before
being slaughtered.
Consider taking part in Meatless Mondays to begin with and
perhaps to help ease your family through this transition. This is where you
pick one day a week and eliminate animals from your diet altogether for this
one day. You’ll soon learn about what plant-based eating looks like, and
discover recipes that you and your family will love.
There are many reasons to quit eating animals, but I think
the best one is that, just like us, animals want to live too.
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