“There is no religion without love, and people may talk as much as they like about their religion, but if it does not teach them to be good and kind to beasts as well as man it is all a sham.”   —Anna Sewell, Black Beauty

All of us are celebrations of infinite mysterious Spirit, deserving of honor and respect. If our religions don’t emphasize this and include all of us, it’s time to replace them with spiritual teachings and traditions that do.

Jesus’ message
was intolerably radical, for it was the revolutionary vegan message of mercy
and love for all creatures that strikes directly at the mentality of domination
and exclusion that underlies both the herding culture we live in today and the
culture of Jesus’ time. 

The vegan ideals
of mercy and justice for animals have been articulated for centuries, often
from within the religious establishment, and it is fascinating and instructive
to see how these voices have been almost completely silenced or marginalized by
the herding culture. It seems to be an unconscious reflex action. For example,
if we read Jesus’ teachings, we find a passionate exhortation to mercy and
love, yet the possibility that the historical Jesus may have been a vegan is a
radical idea for most Christians. 

The Buddha says
in the Mahaparinirvana-sutra, “Eating
meat destroys the attitude of great compassion.” The ninth-century Islamic Sufi
saint Misri says, “Never think of anyone as inferior to you. Open the inner Eye
and you will see the One Glory shining in all creatures.”

Rather than
relying on science to validate veganism and our basic herbivore physiology, we
may do better by calling attention to universal truths: animals are undeniably
capable of suffering; our physical bodies are strongly affected by thoughts,
feelings, and aspirations; and we cannot reap happiness for ourselves by sowing
seeds of misery for others. Nor may we be free while unnaturally enslaving
others. We are all connected. These are knowings of the heart and veganism is,
ultimately, a choice to listen to the wisdom in our heart as it opens to
understanding the interconnectedness and essential unity of all life.

It is the height
of irony that eating a diet based on animal foods, which are complicated, wasteful,
cruel, and expensive to produce, is seen as simple in our culture, and that
eating a vegan diet based on plant foods, which are simple, efficient,
inexpensive, and free of cruelty to produce, is seen as complicated and
difficult. Nevertheless, the truth is slowly coming to light, and the pressures
within the old paradigm are building as more of us refuse to see animals as
objects to be eaten or used for our purposes.

Confronted with
the problems that characterize our herding culture, we are perhaps like the
metaphorical man wounded by an arrow that the Buddha discussed with his
students. He said that the man would be foolish if he tried to discover who
shot the arrow, why he shot it, where he was when he shot it, and so forth,
before having the arrow removed and the wound treated, lest he bleed to death
attempting to get his questions answered. We, likewise, can all remove the
arrow and treat the wound of eating animal foods right now. We don’t need to
know the whole history. We can easily see it is cruel and that it is
unnecessary; whatever people have done in the past, we are not obligated to
imitate them if it is based on delusion. 

When we look deeply we see that understanding brings and awakens love, and that love brings and awakens understanding. If our so-called understanding of animals does not ignite within us a loving urge to allow them to fulfill their lives and purposes, to honor, respect and appreciate them, then it is not true understanding. Our science is in many ways incapable of this authentic understanding, and, because it is also often a vehicle of corporate power, it is best not to rely on it too heavily in our quest for wisdom or healing. 

We have not
begun to scratch the surface of understanding animals. How can we know what it
is to swim as whales, at home in the ocean depths and migrating thousands of
miles, speaking in underwater songs and breathing together in conscious
harmony, or to fly in a flock of sandpipers, whirling in an effortless
synchronicity, fifty birds as one, or to burrow as prairie dogs, creating
complex underground communities with virtually endless chambers, passageways,
and interactions?