In the Brad Pitt movie Seven Years in Tibet there is a memorable scene where the garden of a Buddhist monastery is to be bulldozed but the monks won’t allow the machinery in until they have spent days painstakingly picking through the soil to remove worms from the danger zone and transport them to safety. We see them gently placing the creatures back into the earth and even thoughtfully sprinkling them with water. (Watch the clip).
Since most of us are not living at a level of consciousness where it would even occur to us to go to such lengths, it is easy to scoff at this as a bizarre cultural idiosyncrasy that has no relevance for us. Yet it shows a respect and reverence for all of life that is sorely lacking in our world. The monks were practicing ahimsa, which is the Buddhist tenet of not causing harm to any sentient being.
Most of us lead lives that don’t permit us to get down on our hands and knees multiple times every day to search out and rescue otherwise non-visible insects or invertebrates that may be lying in our path. Yet if every human being lived with a fraction of the compassion demonstrated by these monks it would transform the world – not because of the way we’d be treating worms but because of the way we’d be treating each other! However, we don’t have to take it that far in order to achieve transformation on a massive scale.
Imagine the world we would live in if enough of us simply decided it is not acceptable to knowingly treat any sentient being, whether human or animal, with disregard for its needs and rights, let alone with any form of violence? And crucially that it is just as unacceptable to buy products which involve such violations as it is to commit those violations ourselves?
Think about it for a moment. If enough of us lived with a respect for the sanctity of all of life, everything would change. Factory farms and sweatshops wouldn't exist in such a world, and neither would famine or war.
If you are conscious enough to recognize dogs, cows and chickens as beings which deserve gentle and kind treatment, how would you ever commit any act of violence or cruelty towards another human being?
You just wouldn't.
You just couldn't.
And I think we can all agree that this world needs more people like that.
Top 5 books on compassionate living
1. Animals Like Us by Mark Rowland
2. The Pig Who Sang To The Moon by Jeffrey Masson
3. Diet For A New America by John Robbins
4. The Great Compassion by Norm Phelps
5. Vegan: The New Ethics of Eating by Erik Markus
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