The role of Animals in Buddhism
With special reference to the Jatakas
by Nguyen Thi Kieu Diem | 2012 | 66,083 words
This study studies the role of animals in Indian Buddhism with special reference to the Jatakas鈥攁ncient Pali texts narrating the previous births of the Buddha dating back 2500 years....
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1. Introduction鈥擶hat is an animal?
From a Buddhist perspective, the empathetic relationships established among humans and their pets can be seen as new contributory capacities being brought forth from both humans and animals. This does not mean that the interdependence among humans and pets is assumed to be necessarily good. Pets can be, and too often are, abused. But the benefits of pets for children and the elderly are very well-documented as are the potentials for pets to establish profound more communities with individual humans and human families. The relational repertoire of well-cared for pets is much more extensive and refined than that of either their counterparts or industrially farmed animals.[1]
According to the universal law, all living beings have equal right to life in the world, all animals can have the right to be free from pain, the right to food, all other rights could be applied to animals. In nature, all animals are wild and free, but the human beings do not respect the right to life of animals. They kill and inflict injury to animals under many forms. The people do not care about the ethical and moral aspects that concern human use of animals for the purposes of food, labor, and various other needs. They make use of animals for fur, leather, wool, food, clothing, entertainment, and as research subjects. The people not only use animals for purpose of food, labor, but also in scientific experiments, hunting and trapping.[2]
Buddhism considers it immoral for humans to exploit animals. Over 2500 years ago, the Buddha after leaving home refused to ride an animal or travel by a vehicle driven by an animal. With the reasons above, the major portion of this chapter is devoted to the tricky issue of meat eating. We have also discussed in detail the Therav膩din principle of 罢颈办辞峁璱辫补谤颈蝉耻诲诲丑补, and further deal with the 惭补丑腻测腻苍补 regulations regarding vegetarian food. Thus a major element of the animal rights argument is the shared characteristics of human and other animal species.[3]
The word 鈥渁nimal鈥� comes from the Latin word animus, which means 鈥�breath鈥� or 鈥�soul鈥� That is, an animal is an 鈥渁nimate鈥� being, a thing that lives and breathes and moves, unlike a plant which is incapable of rapid motor responses.[4] In everyday colloquial usage, the word usually refers to nonhuman animals. Frequently, only closer relatives of humans such as mammals and other vertebrates are meant in colloquial use. The biological definition of the word refers to all members of the kingdom Animalia, encompassing creatures as diverse as sponges, jellyfish, insects and humans.[5]
Animals have several characteristics that set them apart from other living things. Animals are multi-cellular which separates them form bacteria and most protists. They generally digest food in an internal chamber, which separates them from plants and algae. They are also distinguished from plants, algae, and fungi by lacking rigid cell walls. In most animals, embroil pass through a blastula stages, which is a characteristic exclusive to animals.[6]
There is a huge variety of life on earth. Nobody knows exactly how many different plants and animals there are, scientists have estimated that there are between five and thirty million species. Animal come in all shapes and size. They live in many varied habitats, from desert to rainforest. It unique species is the product of millions of years of evolution.[7] According to Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712鈥�1778) who was a foremost Franco-Swiss philosopher of the Enlightenment, a writer and composer of eighteenth century Romanticism mentioned in discourse on inequality that animals should be part of natural law, not because they are rational but because they are sentient. He argued that sensitivity, the capacity to experience pleasure and suffering, entitles rights. Animals being sensitive experience pain and suffering and therefore as a consequence they should have rights.[8]
Tom Regan argues that, because the moral rights of humans are based on their possession of certain cognitive abilities, and because these abilities are also possessed by at least some non-human animals, such animals must have the same moral rights as humans. Although only humans act as moral agents, both marginal-case humans, such as infants, and at least some non-humans must have the status of 鈥渕oral patients.鈥� Moral patients are unable to formulate moral principles, and as such are unable to do right or wrong, even though what they do may be beneficial or harmful. Only moral agents are able to engage in moral action.
Footnotes and references:
[1]:
Peter D. Hershock, Buddhism in the public sphere: reorienting global interdependence. Routledge, 2006: 33.
[2]:
Tom Regan, Matters of life and death: New Introductory Essays in Moral Philosophy, USA: McGraw-Hill, Inc, 1993: 350.
[3]:
Catherine Redgwell, 鈥楲ife, The Universe And Everything: A Critique Of Anthropocentric Rights鈥�. In Human Rights Approaches to Environmental Protection, ed. Alan E. Boyle, Michael R. Anderson, New York: Oxford University Press, 2003: 77.
[4]:
Dhirendra Verma, Word Origins: An Exhaustive Compilation of the Origin of Familiar Words and Phrases, New Delhi: Sterling Publishers, 2008: 69.
[5]:
Buddy Poy. Vegetarianism Unmasked: Unmasking the Truth About Vegetarianism. Author House, 2011: 57.
[6]:
Ibid. 58.