Animals in Buddhism
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The position and treatment of animals in Buddhism is important for the light it sheds on Buddhists' perception of their own relation to the natural world, on Buddhist humanitarian concerns in general, and on the relationship between Buddhist theory and Buddhist practice.
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[edit] Animals in Buddhist doctrine
Unlike those religions and philosophies which regard animals as soulless automata incapable of thought or feeling, animals have always been regarded in Buddhist thought as sentient beings, less intellectually advanced than humans but no less capable of feeling suffering. Moreover, the doctrine of rebirth held that any human could be reborn as an animal, and any animal could be reborn as a human. An animal might be the rebirth of a dead relative, and if you looked far enough back in one's infinite series of lives, would eventually have to be related to you in some way. One could not, therefore, make a hard distinction between moral rules applicable to animals and those applicable to people; ultimately humans and animals were part of a single family.
In cosmological terms, the animals were believed to inhabit a distinct "world", separated from humans not by space but by state of mind. This world was called Tiryagyoni in Sanskrit, Tiracchānayoni in Pāli. Rebirth as an animal was considered to be one of the unhappy rebirths, usually involving more than human suffering. Buddhist commentarial texts speak movingly of the many sufferings that animals endure: even where no human beings are present, they are attacked and eaten by other animals or live in fear of it, they endure extreme changes of environment throughout the year, they have no security of habitation. Those that live among humans are often slaughtered for their bodies, or taken and forced to work with many beatings until they are slaughtered at the end of their lives. On top of this, they suffer from ignorance, not knowing or understanding what is happening to them with any clarity, and unable to do very much about it, acting primarily on instinct.
[edit] Animals in the Jatakas
The Jātaka stories which tell of past lives of the Buddha in folktale fashion, frequently involve animals as peripheral or main characters, and it is not uncommon for the Bodhisattva (the past-life Buddha) to appear as an animal as well. The stories sometimes involve animals alone, and sometimes involve conflicts between humans and animals; in the latter cases, the animals often exhibit characteristics of kindness and generosity that are absent in the humans.
[edit] Treatment of animals
The first of the five precepts bans the taking of life. In its most stringent formulation, this applies only to the killing of human beings; however, from the beginnings of Buddhism, there were also regulations intended to prevent the harming of animals as well. Monks were forbidden from intentionally killing an animal, or drinking water with living creatures in it.
Concern for the treatment of animals is attested back to the beginnings of Buddhist history. The first Buddhist monarch of India, Aśoka, includes in his Edicts an expression of concern for the number of animals that had been killed for his meals, and expresses an intention to put an end to this killing. He also includes animals with humans as the beneficiaries of his programs for obtaining medicinal plants, planting trees and digging wells. In his fifth Pillar Edict, Aśoka decrees the protection of a large number of animals that were not in common use as livestock; protects from slaughter young animals and mother animals still milking their young; protects forests from being burned, expressly to protect the animals living in them; and bans a number of other practices hurtful to animals. In this Aśoka was carrying out the advice to the Cakravartin king given in the Cakkavattisīhanāda-sutta (DN.26) that a good king should extend his protection not merely to different classes of people equally, but also to beasts and birds.
[edit] Vegetarianism
Most Buddhists in most countries, including monks, are not vegetarians. The eating of meat is not explicitly prohibited in the sūtras and Vinaya of the Pāli canon, which encourage monks to accept whatever food they are given. However, they are forbidden from accepting animal flesh if they know, believe or suspect that the animal in question was killed especially for them, i.e., if the visits of begging monks have become an occasion for the slaughter of animals.
Although vegetarianism is not expressly commanded in the Pāli canon, it is evidently viewed as an ideal state from which human beings have fallen; the Aggañña Sutta (DN.27) explains how human beings, originally sustained on various kinds of vegetable matter, as the result of increasing wickedness began to live by hunting, which was originally thought of as a demeaning occupation.
In Mahāyāna Chinese Buddhism and in those countries whose Buddhism comes from China (Korea, Japan, Vietnam), Buddhist monks are more strictly vegetarian. One of the scriptural sources for this prohibition is the Mahāyāna Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra. This sūtra condemns meat-eating in the strongest terms; among several other reasons, it is stated that it should be avoided because the presence of a meat-eater causes terror in animals, who believe them to be likely to kill them.
[edit] Release of animals
In East Asian Buddhism and particularly in China, the release of animals, particularly birds or fish, into their natural environment became an important way of demonstrating Buddhist piety. In China it was known as fang sheng. This practice is based on a passage in the Mahāyāna Sūtra of Brahma's Net (Ch: Fanwang Jing), which states that "...all the beings in the six paths of existence are my parents. If I should kill and eat them, it is the same as killing my own parents. ... Since to be reborn into one existence after another is the permanent and unalterable law, we should teach people to release sentient beings." In the later Ming dynasty, societies "for releasing life" were created, which built ponds in which to release fish that were redeemed from fishermen for this purpose. They also bought other animals which were sold in the markets and released them.
