Is there a disconnect between what we love and how we live?

For the last thirty years, anthropologist Amanda Stronza has been investigating this question through her studies of the relationships between humans and animals. Her research and work in applied conservation have taken her around the world, from Botswana to the Amazon, where she has investigated what influences humans to care about and interact with certain species the way we do. 

In recent years, Stronza has become known for her practice of rescuing the bodies of animals killed on roads, taking them to a soft and quiet place, and creating intricate memorials for them. Her photographs of these memorials, along with her writings about each animal she honors, are widely shared on social media platforms and displayed in photography exhibitions. In a conversation with Tricycle, Stronza reflects on what this practice has taught her about the dynamics between animals and humans, as well as how we understand death and experience grief. She also discusses the significance of creating these animal memorials alongside her beloved companion, a cattle dog named Matilda, who recently passed away. 

Can you describe your practice of honoring the lives of animals killed on roads? I find animals in many places—on trails and sidewalks, as well as in my backyard—but most of the animals I find are on roads. If I’m driving and I see an animal that appears to be in a condition where I can move or lift them, and if I can stop my car without causing anyone else danger, I stop.

I move the animals for a few reasons. My aim is to restore some kind of dignity. It’s so hard for me to see animals left the way they are. I understand why they are killed, and I understand that we can’t all stop because it’s too dangerous. But I also believe that leaving them there like trash or treating them like the word many people use to describe them—roadkill—is so insulting. I want to show some respect and love to this animal, acknowledge that they’ve already died, and allow them to rest in peace. 

I also want to show respect and love for the animals who come and feed on the dead animal. Many vultures get killed by cars, so I move the animal to help other animals who come and live from the dead. 

How do you go about creating the memorials for each animal? Creating the memorials feels very meditative and sacred to me. When I can, I bring the animals that I find to my home so I can spend more time creating something beautiful. I never bury the bodies. Instead, I place the body in a soft, quiet place where other animals—like coyotes, vultures, opossums, or foxes—can eventually come and take the animal. For the memorial, I look for whatever is around me that is available. In the winter, I usually gather and arrange dead leaves, branches, weeds, and rocks. 

If I don’t have much time, or if I’m far from home, I create a memorial on the side of the road. I choose someplace that’s soft because I don’t want the animal on the asphalt. When I’m on the side of the road, I’m aware of the silence of the space where I’m creating the memorial. In the corner of my eye, I can see the whoosh of the traffic and sense the violence of where they died compared to the space where I am trying to memorialize and honor them. I believe they feel that respite and the sanctuary of that quieter space.

A big part of my process is also writing about each memorial. The stories I write and share feel like obituaries or testimonies to the life of the animal, so I consider these stories part of the memorial. The written word is meant to be an homage to that particular animal. When I write about a squirrel that died, I want to honor that individual squirrel. I want to honor where I found the squirrel and how the squirrel died. That animal is not just another dead squirrel; that squirrel had a life and a personality and a family. That squirrel had memories and stories. Creating the memorial honors the life of that animal the way we would honor the life of the human.

Part of your practice is photographing the memorials. You wrote in one Instagram post: “I photograph the animals not to sensationalize or objectify, but rather the opposite—to show what we fail to see, to look rather than look away, to honor what we tend to ignore.” Can you share more about that? Before taking the photos, I consciously try to make the memorial beautiful. I pointedly cover wounds. I don’t show blood. If the body is contorted, I photograph the animal in a way that they don’t look contorted. I’m not trying to hide death or the horror of how they died on the road. I just want people to feel comfortable to look. I am afraid that if the images were gruesome in any way, people wouldn’t look. So I try to make death beautiful. 

Through my photos, I’m also asking us to not be afraid to look at death. I feel like we can be so afraid of death in our society. We are conditioned to look away and to talk about dead animals as gross. It’s so objectifying. Many people can’t even bear to look at an animal killed on the road.  

By creating the memorials and photographing and sharing the stories of the animals, I’m asking us to look more closely and to think about the life of that animal. I also want us to think about who we are as humans and what our role is.

Your dog Matilda was, and very much still is, a special person in your life. Can you talk about Matilda and how your relationship with her shaped the way you think, understand, question, and experience life? Matilda was with me for almost every memorial I created. There was something astounding about her approach to the memorials. She saw many dead animals in front of her: snakes, squirrels, doves, bobcats. I never kept her away from their bodies. She would smell them and step gingerly over them, or move around them in a respectful way. She would tap into me and the circumstances and sense that there was reverence around the animal.

Since she died, I’ve been thinking about hierarchies of grief, or the different forms of grief we’re allowed to give different kinds of animals in our lives. When a human we love dies, we have all these rituals, norms, and tacit understandings of how we are allowed to grieve. When a companion animal dies, it’s understood that these animals are family, and of course we grieve for a dog or cat. But I can’t take bereavement leave from work even though Matilda was the most important person in my life. We acknowledge that companion animals are family too, but only so far. 

There are also almost no norms for grieving wild animals. Is there a place to grieve the dead squirrel? Or is that mocked? Sometimes people even respond to what I’m doing with chagrin. There is so little room to grieve the animals who live among us and to think of them as family. That’s part of what I’m exploring and asking us to think about.

You’ve quoted Thich Nhat Hanh and his teachings on interbeing in some of your writings. How have your experiences shaped your understanding of interbeing and interconnection? I have been reading Thich Nhat Hanh’s book No Death, No Fear. It gives me so much peace to think about the concept of “no birth, no death.” To describe this, he writes about ocean waves and how we don’t grieve when an ocean wave transitions into the surf. The wave just becomes one with the rest of the ocean. I’ve been thinking that Matilda was this beautiful wave, and I’m a wave, and you’re a wave, and waves are very real. We’re all water, after all. I’m wondering if I can feel that way about Matilda too. If I can see her as transforming into one with me.

Nhat Hanh also talks about interbeing in the example of clouds transforming into rain. I understand that concept, and yet it’s the human condition to hold on to our attachments to the cloud. I’m so attached to Matilda, and it has been very hard to let go. I suppose that’s why it takes many lifetimes to figure out.

Another way I think about interconnection is witnessing how much love there is for Matilda in the world. After she died, I worried about posting and sharing the image of the memorial I made for her body. There’s that hierarchy of grief again—I wondered if people were going to be able to bear seeing Matilda memorialized in the same way that I memorialize a squirrel. The most common response I heard, however, was from people thanking me for sharing that very private and intimate moment. So, in this way, Matilda wasn’t mine. She wasn’t my dog. She was a person in the world so many people loved. I just happened to be her best friend who could help everyone grieve. 

Every day, people all over the world send me photos of memorials that they made. People write to me about death and grief and human loved ones they lost and how seeing animal memorials has helped them grieve. It also helps them talk to their kids about death and honoring animals. 

It’s so affirming to me how people want to talk about death and grief. Instead of death being perceived as gloomy and gruesome and scary, I believe we can talk more about the beauty of death and its connection with life. There can be a space for that.

⧫

You can view more of Stronza’s work on her website and her Instagram page. 

The post Restoring Dignity to Our Animal Kin appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

You might think this rather odd advice to come from my dog, Brooklyn. After all, let’s be honest: She herself doesn’t even really dance.

Well, unless I’m dancing with her, that is—which I admittedly do sometimes. I pick her up in my arms and we waltz around the kitchen to old-school hip-hop or Jamaican ska or random mambo beats, her front paws hanging over my shoulder, a distant, bemused, almost bored look in her eyes. Brooklyn is not a small dog, either—maybe thirty-three pounds or so, including a good couple pounds of scruff—and so I know she looks a little ridiculous in my arms, too big to be carried around that way, but I cannot help myself: The moments I get to dance with my dog are some of my happiest. I could say Brooklyn likes it, too—or perhaps at least that she doesn’t seem to mind—but maybe a more truthful way of putting it is that she tolerates it.

Anyway, as I was saying, excepting our little waltzes in the kitchen, Brooklyn doesn’t “dance” in the traditional sense of the word.

But she does have moves.

For instance, her wiggle-butt—that full-tilt, whole-body wag, every atom of her ecstatic, shimmying with good vibrations.

Or the way, hoping for a treat, she’ll look up at us with expectant eyes and do an eager little two-step with her front legs, a sort of deerlike prance of sorts, her toenails clicking against the kitchen floor.

Or the way when she’s really excited, she’ll run off and grab one of her little stuffed toys—her flamingo, or her rhinoceros, or her moose—and then trot back in proudly with the thing in her mouth to show it off to us.

Or the way she’ll look up at us and tilt her head with perfect curiosity, as if trying to figure out just what the hell we’re talking about.

In fact, it’s hard to think of anything Brooklyn does that’s not a move of sorts, almost as if her whole life is in fact a kind of dance, every instant of it a work of art. After all, dogs have this remarkable way of inhabiting their bodies with a kind of unqualified ease, and the result is that there is something exact—something perfect and irrevocable—about their every movement. Even when Brooklyn’s not moving—say, for instance, when she’s sprawled out, asleep—she does so in positions that have a certain flawlessness, as if they cannot be improved (though, apparently, in her own mind, they can be, for every now and then Brooklyn will rise to her feet, make a few determined circles, paw at her dog bed a little bit to soften it up, and then settle back down again, often in almost exactly the same spot: which is of course yet another ridiculously cute move).

And it’s not like Brooklyn’s trying to take these poses—or trying to do anything, really—she’s just being herself, doing her thing. But there’s something truly enviable nevertheless about the way dogs are so present and at home in their bodies, in their skin. About their existence, so natural and fluid. Yes, even with all the collars and the leashes and the crates, dogs are free in a way it sometimes feels we humans can only dream of: that ability to just be themselves without any apparent self-consciousness—their calm, easy presence. And the result, unintentional, is that dogs emanate a kind of languid grace. A simple, unadulterated perfection.

Of course, whether we realize it or not, we humans are not actually so different. We, too, are wholly complete, though we may not always feel that way. Each of our lives is a unique and marvelous dance, utterly our own, and beautiful, too—though for some strange reason it seems easier to recognize this in a dog than in ourselves. But consider this: At any random moment, if your simple posture or your lovely, sad eyes could be captured in paint by a true master, the result would be a masterpiece. Because you are a masterpiece—you just can’t see it. As it is with dogs, so it is with us: At any moment—in every moment—each of us is this great, fathomless treasure.

The problem is, if it doesn’t feel that way, who cares? If we humans go through existence feeling separate and awkward, rather than beautiful and whole, isn’t that, then, the reality of it? And if that’s the reality we’re experiencing, what can be done?

Like the helpless wag of a dog’s tail, dancing, too, is an expression of joy.

Well, one solution, as Brooklyn might suggest, is to dance. Put on some funky music and shake your butt a little bit! (After all, let’s not forget that shaking your butt is basically the same thing as wagging your tail.) And the great thing about dancing is that it gets us out of our brains and into our bodies, into the moment. Yes, start moving our muscles, and suddenly we’re not thinking so goddamn much anymore, thank God. For once, like dogs, we’re just existing, we’re just moving, jumping up and down and shaking ourselves free from ourselves and all our ridiculous fears and inhibitions—we’re being a little silly and having a little fun—and it feels really, really good . . .

Yes, and let’s not forget that this is the point of dancing: to celebrate. After all, like the helpless wag of a dog’s tail, dancing, too, is an expression of joy. It is to be at play; it is, for once, to be free.

How wonderful it would be to go through your whole life like this, with the simple, joyful presence of a dog. The funny thing is, if you’re truly going to inhabit the moment the way dogs do, you almost have to dance. Because the nature of the here and now is that it’s ever-shifting, and so to remain with it requires that you stay on your toes. You need to be alive to what’s in front of you—almost as if life itself were your dance partner—you need to be able to be flexible, respond, adjust. You step to the side, do a pirouette, take two steps forward, two steps back, do the cha-cha. And then, all of a sudden, it’s clear that you, too, are free—that you’ve always been free—and that in each and every moment, you can make of your life whatever you want, as big and beautiful as you please. You can make of your life a work of art, a dance—which is what it already was—only now, you no longer feel so separate from it.

Of course, admittedly, this is mostly conjecture on my part. I myself catch only the most fleeting glimpses of the moment—and rather than waltzing freely through my life, alive and responsive, I often feel stuck in mud. But I do believe it’s possible that we can be more present, that, like dogs, we can be lighter on our feet, and in our hearts—though for me this is, as I say, a work in progress. All I really know for sure is that I like dancing with my dog—and she likes dancing through her life. I bet we would, too.

♦

Originally published here on Love, Dog, an online publication that explores the companionship between humans and dogs.

The post Lessons from a (Mostly) Good Dog: #5: Dance appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

“And now we welcome the New Year, full of things that have never been.” —Rainer Maria Rilke

If my dog, Brooklyn, were able to express herself in English, I’m pretty sure this would be one of her favorite maxims. It’s how she lives, anyway: like each day—each moment—is a truly new one, brimming with impossible possibilities.

We mere humans, on the other hand, don’t always see it like that. Even if it’s a new year, a new day, a new moment, life for us can have a rather depressing way of feeling much the same as it did the year, the day, the moment before. (This perhaps has felt especially true as of late, when the coronavirus has served to make every day seem similar—and similarly dismal—a kind of Groundhog Day existence that’s become a little tiresome, to put it mildly.)

And yet the plain truth of it is that Brooklyn is correct: whether it feels that way or not, each new day is in fact new—as is each new instant. This moment that you are experiencing right now as you read this has never actually occurred before. And in this fresh, never-before encountered life, absolutely anything could happen. The question is: what?

That’s what Brooklyn wants to know: What wonderful thing will happen next? Will she go for a walk? Get a treat? Have a cuddle on the couch? Will someone she loves go away and then come back? And if she heads out for a walk, will she see another dog? Will she meet a new person? When she gets back home, will she take a nap?

And perhaps most importantly, might there be some chicken in her future?

Now, for the most part, these are not extraordinary events—going for a walk, having some chicken. Yet for Brooklyn, somehow, they are. For Brooklyn, it’s as if these occurrences have never happened before, and will never happen again—which is the truth of it. Each moment is utterly, heartbreakingly unique—there for but the briefest instant and then forever gone. Should such fabulous, impossible occurrences not be appreciated with the bright, eager eyes of a dog?

Encountering life in this way—with the wide-open eyes of a child, or of a dog—is what Zen Buddhism sometimes calls Beginner’s Mind, and Brooklyn’s got it down. The enthusiasm, the curiosity, the excited wag of her tail. The way she takes nothing for granted; the way every instant seems worthy of wonder.

So it is that, for Brooklyn, each new moment feels new—not just because, as we’ve been discussing, it actually is new, but because, with those Beginner’s Mind eyes, everything is greeted as if for the first time. I wonder if that’s what’s really going on when your dog welcomes you home with that famous gusto—perhaps they simply experience things so freshly that it’s almost like it’s the first time you’ve ever come home: an event unexpected, miraculous, and well-worth celebrating.

For dogs, everything is like this. Even the most familiar, ordinary things are wondrous. A pile of poop. The scent on the wind of another dog. Snow.

Actually, snow is one of those things that can be wondrous for us humans, too. You awaken the morning after the first big storm of winter, and outside—shining, unmarked, footprintless—the whole world is covered in snow. These are the days that wipe the universe clean, somehow, and wipe our vision clean, too, so that our old, tired way of looking at life is swept away, and for a moment or two at least, we cannot help but to see it all as if through a dog’s eyes, with that senseless, childlike excitement. You put on mittens and boots and head outside with the dog.

I’m not sure Brooklyn even knows what snow is, but she freaking loves it nonetheless, and so she is bounding around chasing snowballs, pouncing on the place where they disappear, plunging in headfirst only to discover that what she was chasing is everywhere. She emerges from great piles of snow, her muzzle all covered in white, her tail wagging. She barks shrilly for more.

Your six-year-old son is out there with you, also—you’re both dressed up alike, all ridiculous-looking and puffy-coated, and you each have the same mischievous glint in your eye, and you are throwing snowballs at each other, and Brooklyn is bounding about and barking, and above the snowy rooftops, vultures are soaring in the sunlit sky, and little birds are in the rhododendrons, hopping from branch to branch, dislodging little puffs of snow wherever they land. All the animals are delighted. It’s a snow day. Everything is new.

Oh, we could all use a brand-new day like this, every now and then. Which is exactly what we are given every morning, if only we could see it. Yes, if only we could see as clearly as Brooklyn does, I have a feeling every day would shine with such freshness, as would each moment within it.

Of course, to experience life like a dog does is no easy task. As I’ve been writing this, I’ve been trying every now and then to enact this particular piece of canine wisdom—to appreciate each day, each moment, as new—and it’s really, really hard. The mind wanders. The past seeps in. The fresh, vibrant moment at hand goes unnoticed, overlooked. But it is, I believe, a good state of existence to aspire to: one in which everything is worth being curious about, sniffing at, barking at, wagging your tail at. Because there’s such hope in a world that is constantly being refreshed—such possibility and freedom. Such adventure!

Just because it’s a new day, doesn’t mean you have to necessarily make a big deal out of it, or do anything so different.

Considering all this, it may surprise you to learn that for one who so keenly appreciates the newness of each day, Brooklyn begins her mornings by hopping into bed with my wife and me and going back to sleep. Even when one of us gets up, she’s still not ready to rush off—instead, she moves over to the warm spot we’ve just vacated, curls up there, puts her butt on the pillow, and snoozes some more. (Of course, what better way to appreciate your life than to cuddle up with those you love?)

Still, it’s a reminder that just because it’s a new day, doesn’t mean you have to necessarily make a big deal out of it, or do anything so different. You don’t see Brooklyn riding around on a unicycle to celebrate the uniqueness of the moment at hand (though you do see her wagging her tail a lot). After all, the moment is unique already without you striving to make it so. Which is part of the point: everything you experience is new and different, whether you realize it or not. You have never had this exact piece of toast. You have never seen this exact shade of pale, winter light. You have never taken this exact breath.

Each moment is a new beginning, forever fresh—the only question is, can you, like Brooklyn, meet it freshly?

Actually, there are other questions, too, like: What are you going to do with this new day you’ve been given, this new moment before your eyes? What momentous occurrences will you partake in? Will you have a grilled cheese sandwich? Take a bath? Play Monopoly with your family? Who knows? Maybe you’ll go for a walk! Maybe you’ll have a nap!!!

Whatever you end up doing, take a moment to remember that you’ve never actually done it before, and will never do it again. It’s a new day, and we only have so many.

♦

Originally published here on Love, Dog, a digital publication that explores the relationship between humans and their best friends.

The post Lessons from a Mostly Good Dog: #4: Every Day Is a New Day appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

My wife, Lizzy, has this bright yellow sweatshirt that reads, “Bee Kind,” and has a bumblebee on it. (She also has a sweatshirt that says, “C’est La Vie,” though that’s fodder for another column.) Anyway, I bring this up because “Be Kind” is a maxim that my dog, Brooklyn, embodies with her whole furry, friendly self (though interestingly, she’s not all that nice to bees—lolling about in the sun on an early fall day, she’s been known to snap her jaws at passing yellow-jackets, and I’m pretty sure she’s been stung a few times on her soft, black nose.)

Yet despite her apparent distaste for bees (and the fact she’s essentially a big-toothed, savage beast), Brooklyn’s got this giant sweetness about her. And when it comes to humans, she is kind—and loving—in a way I’ve never before encountered.

You can see it in the way she looks at you, her eyes soft and brown and adoring.

You can see it in the wag of her tail—the simple, heartbreaking, unadulterated fact that she is thrilled to see you, a fact her tail cannot hide. (I love this about dogs—that they cannot hide their happiness. If only we humans had tails that wagged of their own accord, maybe we would find it more difficult to convince ourselves we’re miserable, which for some odd reason we like to do.)

You can feel it when she puts her paw on you, gently, or gives you a little loving nudge with her wet nose, or puts her chin on your leg as you sit on the couch, or decides to give you kisses—those disgusting, wonderful dog licks.

Of course, beneath all this kindness, informing it, is love, I guess—for what is true kindness but love, expressed? “It’s OK,” she reminds us in a million different daily ways, “I love you.” And what a love it is in Brooklyn, and in dogs in general—a love that has no ifs ands or buts, that is not dependent on conditions, that is there no matter what.

So I guess the question is: how do we cultivate this kindness, this love, this compassion, in ourselves? We humans are so hard, sometimes—so clench-jawed and “forgiveless”—how do we become soft? Can we learn to love each other the way our dogs love us, with that simple, tender adoration?

The funny thing is, the way dogs look at us isn’t so far off from the way we often look at them—with love and warmth in our eyes. We’re naturally tender toward dogs—even ones we’ve never met—which is why, for instance, we’re much more likely to greet a strange dog on the street with affection than we would a strange human. With each other, we are more reticent and reluctant to engage; of our own species, we are (understandably) suspicious. Maybe it’s just that we know ourselves too well—all our cruelties and pettiness—and so are unwilling to give each other the benefit of the doubt. We look at a dog and see innocence; we look at each other and presume guilt.

You wouldn’t think it, but Brooklyn, with all her kindness, can also present this strange, same-species dislike. For while she’s never been anything but gentle and loving to humans, when it comes to other dogs, if things don’t get off on the right paw, my fluffy, friendly little girl-dog can quickly turn vicious, snarly, her sweet, open face now contorted and ugly, her big teeth bared. (Even dogs, of course, can be jerks, a fact that reminds me of one of my favorite scenes from Family Guy: “Hey, other dog! F**k you!”)

Anyway, it’s interesting to me that even the kindest of beings—because I’ve never encountered a creature as soulful and sweet as Brooklyn—can have their vicious side, though I wonder if even behavior like this comes from a place of sweetness, in the end. Consider, for instance, a mother bear mauling someone to protect her cub: is this not kindness, too, somehow—that giant mother’s love?

No, kindness does not mean that there will never be a time when it’s appropriate to bark, to bite, to protect the ones we love from potential threats—all creatures do this, and unfortunately, sometimes must. The problem is that many creatures (including Brooklyn, and most definitely, us) aren’t actually all that good at determining what constitutes a true threat and what doesn’t. Too often, we respond inappropriately, baring our teeth when a smile and a wag would have been better. Misunderstandings abound. We are all so utterly confused.

Which, when you get right down to it, is exactly why we need to be kind. Because we never really know what’s going on with anyone else—what great battles they are waging, how many of their ships have already been sunk. But we know what it’s like to be human, and in the face of suffering (and suffering has so many faces), what appropriate response is there but compassion?

Yes, knowing ourselves too well—that’s why we have to be kind. Because life is fucking hard sometimes, and knowing this, we need to be willing to ease up a bit and cut everyone some slack. To be gentle with each other, and patient, and forgiving, and kind.

It sounds like a lot to ask, I guess—though Brooklyn doesn’t seem to think it’s such a big deal. There’s the old bumper sticker advising random acts of kindness, and when I think about it, this is what Brooklyn does just by being herself, as do so many other dogs: dishing out sweetness to family and strangers alike, without reservation, and for no particular reason—randomly, if you will—just because that’s who she is, and that’s what she does. That’s who dogs are, creatures of great kindness, and it’s who we could be, too, perhaps, if only we follow their lead.

And when it comes to Brooklyn and the way she’s always cursing out other dogs—well, she could probably use some training. But what do I expect? She is, after all, only mostly good.

♦

Originally published here on Love, Dog, a digital publication that explores the relationship between humans and their best friends.

The post Lessons from a (Mostly) Good Dog: #3, Be Kind appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Usually, when someone tells you to “relax,” the instinct, understandably, is to want to respond by punching them in the nose. This is the way it is with most unsolicited advice: it’s annoying, and you kind of just don’t want to hear it. Keep in mind, however, that any wisdom you receive here comes not from me, an extremely flawed human being, but from my innocent, sagely, and mostly good dog, Brooklyn. (So if you don’t like it, blame her, not me!) The other good thing about guidance when it’s offered by a dog is that you don’t have to listen to them prattle on about it—they tend to offer it up just by being who they are.

And so: Brooklyn.

When Brooklyn relaxes, it is the most relaxed I’ve ever seen a creature be. Every muscle, every atom, releases. She becomes a pile of mush—sometimes even when she’s in your arms. But the signature move she makes that best embodies this idea of utter relaxation is when she sprawls out on her back, her soft underbelly exposed to the heavens, her limbs splayed off to the sides. It is a position of extreme vulnerability, and thus one of complete trust. In these moments, she exhibits no fear, no anxiety—only a deeply calm faith that all is well in the world, that she is safe, and that there’s not a single thing she needs to be worrying about. Now, to be sure, make a loud noise, and she’ll be over and up in a flash—but in the moment, it’s pure ease.

We humans, on the other hand, struggle to reach such a state—which if you consider the language, is probably part of the problem. Yes, though I do my best to unwind, I wonder if such a concerted effort might actually be self-defeating, sort of like “hurrying up and relaxing.” Anyway, I meditate, I do tai chi, I take hot baths, I enjoy lazing about on the beach on sunny summer days. I appreciate a good snooze, a good night’s sleep. But so often, even in these states of repose, tension remains: the mind races, the jaw clenches. At night, lying in bed, the brain chews it all over again and again: the things I could have done better that day, the things I failed to do at all. Even in these precious moments of relative ease, there’s so little true ease.

When there’s nothing she needs to respond to—when life is good, and nothing’s obviously awry—Brooklyn can dissolve into that nothingness, into the good, soft ground of it.

To be sure, Brooklyn is not always relaxed, either—in fact, far from it. When we play fetch, for instance, her body is a bundle of fast-twitch muscles on high alert, quivering in expectation. And when there’s tension in the house—our young son howling about one injustice or another, his mom and I fed up, our voices strained and elevated—the vibrations in the air sink into our poor dog till she literally trembles with them.

The difference is that when nothing’s afoot—no ball nor squirrel to chase, no family drama to resolve—Brooklyn is, for the most part, at peace. She lounges around, yawns, takes dog naps. Whereas we humans remain infected with anxiety—about the future, the past, all the things that we wish we could fix—even when nothing’s broken.

This makes me wonder if part of what’s going on here is simply the oft-mentioned fact that dogs live in the present. In other words, when there’s a ball, she chases it; when there’s family tension, she reacts to it and lets us know. But when there’s nothing she needs to respond to—when life is good, and nothing’s obviously awry—Brooklyn can dissolve into that nothingness, into the good, soft ground of it.

Funnily enough, the fact she can relax also probably helps her, when she does act, to give that action her all. Which, in turn, probably helps her to relax. After all, whatever Brooklyn does—barking at another dog, rolling around in something smelly—she exhibits complete commitment. She holds nothing back. And when you give yourself so fully to life—when you pour yourself into everything you do unreservedly—then there’s no room for regret. At the end of the day, Brooklyn has earned her respite. She can rest easy, knowing there is nothing more she could have done.

Of course, trying to emulate all these wonderful, inspiring qualities of a dog can be counter-productive, if we don’t remember to take it easy on ourselves. (Why can’t I be fully committed to my daily life?!? Why can’t I exist in the present?!?) As much as we might like to be, we are not dogs, dammit. Our big, stupid brains will continue to mull things over even when there’s no real reason—that’s just part of what big, stupid brains do—and there’s absolutely no point in beating ourselves up about it. Or, as a Zen teacher of mine likes to say, “Be kind to monkey mind.”

A dog at ease inspires trust not just in the moment at hand, but in the entire universe, in life.

Anyway, while it might be frustrating to recognize how far from enlightened doghood we ourselves may be, having a pup in our lives will probably help keep us calmer, nevertheless. In Love, Dog’s October issue’s Big Dog Story, authors Philip Tedeschi and Molly Jenkins talk about how, going back to our earliest days together, dogs have provided humans with a sense of neuroceptive safety—“observing a known dog who is calm or playfully engaged disenables our defense mechanisms and allows us to know, however subconsciously, that ‘the camp is safe.’” And yes, relaxed dogs in their presence probably meant our ancestors didn’t have to worry so much about being pounced upon by a saber-toothed tiger, but the sense of calm that dogs offer is bigger than that, too, somehow. A dog at ease inspires trust not just in the moment at hand, but in the entire universe, in life. Anyone who’s ever had a dog knows this feeling—the warmth of well-being their simple presence can impart.

Every now and then, Brooklyn will take a deep breath, and then let it all out—that wonderful, familiar dog sigh. And it’s a reminder that you can do this, too—that it’s OK for you to take a deep breath and let it all go, confident in the knowledge that, for the moment at least, all is well. Not only is Brooklyn offering this advice, her very existence is giving you permission to enact it. So go ahead! In the end, to truly relax is a revolutionary state, because it involves this massive trust in the way things are. It is a rejection of all that pointless anxiety, that ancient, misguided notion that something needs to be fixed. It is to know in your bones that right now, nothing need be done—that the universe has it covered, and doesn’t need your help.

Don’t worry—your worries aren’t going anywhere, they’ll be here tomorrow, you can reengage with them then. The point is, right now, you are probably not about to be mauled by a bear—you can exhale. The pile of mush that is Brooklyn guarantees it.

♦

Originally published here on Love, Dog, an online publication that explores the companionship between humans and dogs.

The post Lessons from a (Mostly) Good Dog: #2, Relax appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

The bus was about to depart Libourne one August afternoon when a passenger noticed a wasp inside, crawling at the top of a window. The passenger alerted us all to the wasp and then alerted the driver. Another passenger stood and demanded the driver open the door, not to free the wasp, but so that she, the passenger, could get off the bus. She refused to be on a bus with a wasp.

There seems to be a fear of wasps in France, perhaps because of stories in the newspapers about a few people who have died from allergic reactions to stings by the invasive Asian hornet. The invasive Asian hornet’s sting is no worse than the native European hornet’s sting, but perhaps seems doubly invasive.

I’m allergic myself, so I remember from childhood the fear of stinging insects, from before I learned that bees and wasps would really rather not sting us at all. As with most animals, danger is avoidable with respect.

Regardless of its lineage, this particular wasp presented no danger that I could see. It did not want to be in the bus. It showed no interest in the passengers. It was at the top of the window looking for a way out. There may have been a lot of dangerous animals on that bus, but the wasp was not one of them.

Nonetheless, the driver attacked, first trying to crush the wasp with a roll of paper towels. The wasp fled into a crevice between the window and the drapes. 

I thought I should do something to capture the wasp and free it outside. With a cup I could have caught it when it was on the window, but now that it was hidden that would be more difficult. Nor did I have a cup. Perhaps I should have asked if anyone else had a cup. But the bus was already late. Certainly people would object if I suggested we capture the wasp.

So I did nothing.

The driver unsheathed a ballpoint pen and attacked again, stabbing at the wasp where it hid. It fell to the floor, either killed or seriously wounded. The bus proceeded toward Sainte Foy La Grande.

The passenger who reported the wasp seemed satisfied with herself for resolving this perceived threat. The passenger who had demanded to get off the bus returned to her seat.

I regretted that I had done nothing to save the wasp, that I had allowed it to be killed. 

But it was only one wasp on one bus on one day, right? Another dead bug, no big deal? 

That seems true until we consider the human multiple: there are 7.7 billion humans on earth, most of whom share the attitude that we can kill for our convenience. So take this attitude, multiply it by 7.7 billion, acculturate and industrialize it.

Then it’s easier to understand why 40 percent of insect species are in decline, including those that provide the invaluable service of pollinating our crops.

It’s easier to understand how humans have eliminated 83 percent of wild mammals on earth and half of plants. How only 4 percent of the world’s mammals are wild. How extinction has reached unprecedented rates for this age, with a million species threatened.

We can only address the ecological crisis we’ve created if we transform our relationship to the rest of the natural world. We can only prevent the suffering looming for all species, including our own, if we stop killing for convenience.

In thoughts like these, the wasp haunted my days at Plum Village’s New Hamlet, one of the monasteries in the Dordogne Valley founded by the Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh. 

Many of the people on that bus were also going to Plum Village, a place devoted to peace, including the woman who raised the alarm about the wasp. In the early days there I would pass her on the path, near the Lotus Pond or the Meditation Hall, and I would think, with chagrin and indignation, “There’s that wasp killer!”

One might expect that people going to Plum Village would already know not to kill—Buddhism’s first precept.

How would Thich Nhat Hanh regard the wasp? It’s not difficult to imagine, for he is the teacher who said:  

People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child—our own two eyes. All is a miracle.

For those who don’t like the word miracle, certainly one wasp is a brilliant culmination of 3.7 billion years of evolution, the earth’s natural intelligence. To snuff out its life is a triumph of ignorance.

But my indignation was tempered by the persistent feeling that indignation itself was incongruous with the peace cultivated at Plum Village.

A few days later, we would hear Thay’s elaboration on the first precept, what he calls The First Mindfulness Training, Reverence for Life: 

Aware of the suffering caused by the destruction of life, I am committed to cultivating the insight of interbeing and compassion and learning ways to protect the lives of people, animals, plants, and minerals. I am determined not to kill, not to let others kill, and not to support any act of killing in the world, in my thinking, or in my way of life.

Notice it is not enough to not kill, we must also prevent others from killing.

My own experience—failing to speak up for the wasp—taught me that reverence for life takes courage, the courage to stand up to convention, to culture, to industry. To stand against the norm and say, let life live. 

This should not be a radical act.

But it is. And it also has to be a mindful act. The First Mindfulness Training has a second paragraph: 

Seeing that harmful actions arise from anger, fear, greed, and intolerance, which in turn come from dualistic and discriminative thinking, I will cultivate openness, non-discrimination, and non-attachment to views in order to transform violence, fanaticism, and dogmatism in myself and in the world.

At Plum Village that August, the teaching on the First Mindfulness Training came from Fatima Tamayo, a Spanish psychologist whose commitment to the practice has inspired her to develop demonstration projects on sustainable living.

Tamayo reminded us that even as we oppose killing, we must aspire to tolerance, openness, and non-attachment to views. She advised us to realize that often those who kill also believe they are doing the right thing.

On the bus, those who killed the wasp doubtless believed they were protecting themselves and their fellow passengers. 

It was only I who had failed to protect.

The needless death of one wasp may have been incremental, but it was an increment advancing a cumulative tragedy: killing has become routine.

Perhaps over tens of thousands of years humans developed an indifference to life that facilitated our survival—much as fire facilitated our survival. For tens of thousands of years we needed fire for cooking, for heat, for energy. But where there’s fire, there’s smoke. The consequences of using fire, compounded by the human multiple, have now compelled us to find cleaner ways to cook, to heat, to make energy.

Likewise, the days are gone in which our survival depended on routine killing. We’re entering a new day in which, to survive, we must have the courage to revere.

The post The Sting of a Wasp appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

When interfaith chaplain Sarah Bowen tells people that she is also an animal chaplain, the reaction is often the same: “You have a church for cats?” 

Even though we can all agree that would be incredibly cute, Bowen and other animal chaplains primarily help people with end of life care and the grieving process for the animals who often become an integral part of our families but whose deaths we tend to not process as fully. The job can also entail working with animals in shelters, addressing behavioral problems through interspecies spiritual practices, and animal advocacy. 

Bowen, a faculty member at the One Spirit Interfaith Seminary in New York, has been a Buddhist practitioner for 20 years, though she has branched out to draw inspiration from and cater to all faiths. Her blend of influences and chaplaincy work is the subject of her latest book, Spiritual Rebel: A Positively Addictive Guide to Deeper Perspective and Higher Purpose (June 2019, Monkfish Publishing).

Here, Bowen speaks with Tricycle about what being an animal chaplain entails, the importance of including non-humans when we talk about all sentient beings, and how we can meditate with cats.

What is the day-to-day work of being an animal chaplain? There are four different areas that I’m working in. The first one is supporting animals. We have eight million dogs and cats that are surrendered to shelters each year. Those animals have needs, including spiritual needs. They’re lonely. They’re confused. Many of them have been abandoned. So I spend time with those animals at shelters, sanctuaries, and pet stores, and I address their need for love, for touch, for attention, for being seen, for being cared for. That’s one way to ease the suffering of the animals themselves. 

The second piece is the human-animal bond. I teach interspecies mindfulness practices, which helps the animals in our homes ease their anxiety. This can address a lot of what we consider behavioral problems, but are often a result of those animals’ needs not being met. 

The third piece is what I call sacred sendoffs—working around end of life and death. People can be very perplexed about what to do when an animal is coming to the end of their life. So I help them navigate questions about end-of-life care. I also do memorials, I’m present at euthanasias, and I perform rituals to help people pass that animal onto whatever is next—and that differs based on someone’s belief systems. 

Related: Putting Spot Down

The fourth piece is advocating for nonhuman animals. That involves education and awareness about our food systems, which is out of alignment with a lot of our values. 

Let’s go through those four pieces one-by-one. What’s the grief counseling aspect of it like? What services do you offer? That’s a huge piece of this work and all chaplaincy. Our animals become members of our family, and we go through the same stages of grief. It can be especially important for older people who may have lost a spouse and that animal becomes their primary relationship in their home.

I do individual grief counseling and family grief counseling, which is very similar to what I do with human grief counseling. I normally do four to six sessions with someone. First, we honor the relationship with the animal. We look at the joyous moments and process the grief or the loss using Kübler-Ross’s Five Stages [denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance]. We also will do a ritual or a memorial to honor that pet’s life where we wish that animal a most auspicious next time around. And that can look like a lot of things. It can be anything from doing an actual burial to doing a releasing ritual with flying wish paper. 

Why is the ritual important to the process? There is a letting go piece that is important in our grief and loss, and something happens to us when we make physical or somatic gestures. That’s the reason we bury humans. But what happens in our history with animals? A child’s goldfish gets flushed, and there’s nothing for the kid to deal with. But these things can be very traumatic.

At One Spirit Interfaith Seminary, when we start to discuss grief, we create a timeline of our loss—from the first up to the most recent loss—and then unpack all of those losses. The first loss on most people’s grief timeline is a pet, but we don’t necessarily help our children understand. It can be a wonderful opportunity to help young people understand the cycle of life. But instead, we rush out and get a new pet to replace it. So it’s important to be able to honor the life of that animal through some sort of experience.

You also mentioned that you work with animals who are up for adoption. How do you approach the shelters, and what do you do there? It can work a number of different ways. For some people, the words chaplain or spiritual are comfortable. For other people, they are not. So in some cases, I come as a chaplain, and in some cases, I’ll just be a volunteer. In other cases, I may be a donor or supporter of an organization. 

I’m mainly there to support the animals. Many shelters have animals they consider that are unhomable, who are most likely not likely going to be adopted because they’re special needs. Shelters usually have a room for potential adopters to meet a particular animal, and I go into those spaces with the unadoptable pets to just spend time with them. The experience can be very heartbreaking. Seeing an animal in need who feels your compassion can be joyous, but it’s also sad because I can’t take them all home. 

Related: Jataka Mind and Cross-Species Compassion

People don’t have to be chaplains or do anything special to do this work. We’re all capable of having compassion and love and easing the suffering of animals. I recommend that people go over to the adoption area at Petco or to a shelter and ask if you can spend some time with the animals. 

Can you tell us more about practicing mindfulness with a pet? How does that work? My specific area of expertise is cats. I especially like working with cats who are very skittish, who have trauma. I teach a type of mindfulness that I call cat gazing. Cats often don’t like to be looked at directly in the eyes. They see that as a challenge. The practice is to look just off to the side of them, watch their breathing, and then start to match your breathing to theirs. And you’ll start to feel a non-dual moment where you’re breathing with the cat and the cat is breathing with you. (This practice also can help us explore our concept of the self: Where is self? Where do I end?) 

Once you have that connection, the cat may perk up and start to come up out of it. This is analogous to when you’re meditating with a group and the guy next to you starts to get the itch and he starts to come out of his state. Animals do that too. They lose the moment. They lose that present moment piece. At that point, you can bring yourself a little bit up out of it, too. And then, when they settle, you settle back with them and match their breathing again. And you just continue to do this. 

It’s based on a mindfulness practice called The Trust Technique, which James French developed with horses. It can be really beneficial. One cat who has lived in my home for about two years could not be touched for the first six months because of his trauma. Now, he comes running over because he wants to do mindfulness. We think it’s just a human thing, but my experience has been that it’s not. 

Where did you learn about this type of practice? My training with cats and dogs comes from the veterinary school at the University of Edinburgh. The behavioral science around animals has changed significantly over the last 70 years. But we don’t necessarily get very educated on their needs or keep up with what science is telling us. For example, when dogs start to yawn, you need to back away a little bit. That’s the first point on their ladder of aggression. It’s a way that they try to relieve the stress that they’re feeling within their bodies somatically by yawning.

I learned about not looking cats in the eyes while meditating with lions in South Africa. Linda Tucker runs a preservation called the Global White Lion Protection Trust, where she has been almost single-handedly trying to keep a group of white lions alive. Two years ago, I went and spent time meditating with them, and there’s nothing like connecting with a lion in that mindfulness state. It’s remarkable and a little scary too. And I, for sure, learned not to look the lion in the eyes. I was taught to lower my head, keep my gaze down, and make sure that the lion knows that I am not a threat.

Do you consider your advocacy work to part of your role as an animal chaplain? Most of the people that I know that are doing work in this area are involved in the bigger picture—both the micro and the macro. There’s the individual work with animals, with the human, between the animal and the human, and then we have to look at our system. I think of it like lovingkindness meditation, where we extend out beyond ourselves to all beings. 

The billions of animals each year that are being systematically abused in our food system is horrific. And if you look at the planet and climate change, our issue is not our cars, it’s our cows. The amount of PTSD being caused by the people who are working within factory farming right now is a human issue as well. They’re interlinked. You can’t look at one without the other. It’s very Buddhist. It’s all interrelated.

It would not be holistic for me to be to be dealing just with the animals that live in my house or with the ones with my friends or with my clients. If I truly believe in interdependence, I need to work as much as I can for all animals.

What reaction do you get when you tell someone that part of your work is in animal chaplaincy? The first response is a little bit of a joke. People say, “You have a church for cats?” Then, when I explain what it is about, people do a 180. Then, they almost immediately share a story of their grief and loss of a pet (though the term we prefer is companion animal). They tell me about how they experienced suffering when this happened, but there wasn’t anybody to help with it. Then they get it, and the conversation might open up and move beyond their companion to a discussion about all beings.

How do you support this work financially? None of us become clergy or chaplains or monks or spiritual people to get rich I have found. So it necessitates that we have additional things that we do. I write books, and I write for companies. I also teach. This allows me to work with clients on a sliding scale, based on what they have. Of course, it is helpful when people are able to pay, which allows me to cover my office space and other expenses. When I do a funeral service for someone, I also ask that they send 50 percent of the fee to an animal organization of their choice instead of me. I do the same with human funerals—50 percent is my fee and 50 percent is toward a charity.

How many clients do you see on average? I have probably three to four clients around animals each month. I also spend a lot of time removing dead animals from our roads. I drive a Jeep and keep a shovel, bags, gloves, and flower seeds in the back. I stop for roadkill. I move them to the side of the road. I do a blessing for them: May you have a most auspicious next lifetime. And I put flower seeds on top of them. I probably do that 50–60 times a month.

Roadkill breaks my heart the most because we continue to hit animals and leave them on the side of the road. And if they were our babies, our children, we certainly wouldn’t do that.

You also talk about speciesism. What do you mean by that? Speciesism is the privileging of human animals over nonhuman animals. Just like racism is the privileging of one race over another race, or sexism puts one gender over another gender. 

Some people may object to comparing the suffering of animals in shelters to, say, starving children across the world. People often say that. Very much so.

What is your response? My response is that our compassion is not a pie to be divvied up. Having compassion for the animals in the shelter doesn’t take away from the compassion that I have for the children who need food as well. That would be a very binary view. 

But my job is not to browbeat anyone for their beliefs or suggest that someone should have beliefs different than the ones they have. This is not a right or wrong conversation. Rather, we need to understand that our choices matter. If we are people who consider ourselves either spiritual, religious, on some sort of wisdom path, we need to consider that our choices have an impact. If your work is with children around food insecurity, awesome. Someone needs to do that work. My work happens to be here with animals. And we need all of us.

[This interview was edited for clarity and length.]

The post “You Have a Church for Cats?” The Service of an Animal Chaplain appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

For French Buddhist monk and prolific author Matthieu Ricard, there is no moral, ethical, or philosophical way to defend our treatment of animals. Aside from our reliance on meat and dairy products, which accounts for more greenhouse gas emissions than the entire transportation sector, or the fact that an estimated 75 percent of the world’s fisheries are exploited or depleted, Ricard says a key thing to remember is that we exist on a continuum with animals—we are one of them.

“The . . . problem with treating animals the way we do now is that everybody’s losing—the animals, the environment, the world’s impoverished people—and the scale is huge,” Ricard writes in his new book, A Plea for the Animals.

Ricard, known to many as “the world’s happiest man,” spoke with Tricycle earlier this month about his new book,  the interrelationship between animal and human lives, the role of compassionate action, and environmental ethics. 

How would you describe the relationship between human and animal life in the world today? There are three big problems with the way we treat animals: One is that while we’ve made huge amounts of progress in civilization in regard to human rights, we have a huge gap of ethical coherence when it comes to the other eight million species that coexist in the world with us. In a nutshell, we (rightly) place infinite value on human life—we cannot put a price tag on it—but we give basically zero intrinsic value to other species unless they are of commercial or instrumental interest to us. This is a big gap.

The second big problem with treating animals the way we do now is that everybody’s losing—the animals, the environment, the world’s impoverished people—and the scale is huge. And the last problem is human health. There’s no benefit to eating animals: rather, there’s harm.

Related: “You Have a Church for Cats?” The Service of an Animal Chaplain

I was giving a conference on this subject the other day in France. I asked the audience who was in favor of morality, ethics, and justice. Everyone raised their hand. Then I asked “Who thinks it is ethical, just, and moral to inflict unnecessary suffering to a sentient being?” One guy raised his hand, but he didn’t hear the question right. Everything comes from this: aside from some Eskimos, there are very few people on earth who need to eat animals to survive. Think about that. See the data, see the science, and decide for yourself. I’m not imposing anything on anybody.

It’s an interesting subject because while these arguments are extremely compelling, when this topic comes up people will often shut down. They’ll ask why they should care, especially when there’s so much human suffering in this world. Well, that’s one of the stupid arguments! And this argument is given many times. People lack logic: how does killing 60 billion land animals a year help the people in Syria? Help progress human rights in China? These things have nothing to do with each other. How will stopping the harm of animals then harm humans? Why can’t you stop the harm of both humans and animals at the same time?

When people go to the beach, listen to music, or garden, do you tell them that they should be in South Sudan helping people? You can have multiple interests in life and stop eating meat. The decision takes a tenth of a second. It doesn’t require much energy, and it doesn’t deplete your strength or the resources that would be used for helping human beings.

Do you think it’s easy to give up eating meat? The choice to avoid using animal products or to stop eating meat seems like one that many would argue is difficult. There was this wonderful study in Australia that made it clear to me why people think that. When researchers asked people why they really want to eat meat, 70 percent said “Because I like it.” “I like it” is not moral reasoning. The second reason is “This is our tradition.” Again, this is a description, not a moral argument. Third, people will say that their family makes it complicated to stop eating meat. And the final reason is “I don’t know what to cook.” So you learn! All of these are pathetic arguments, none of which have to do with ethics. No one can come up with a sound, reasonable, ethical argument to justify it.

[When people find out that you are a vegetarian] they feel you are a troublemaker, an extremist who wants to destroy the status quo. If you sit down at a table and say, “I’m sorry, I have diabetes, I can’t eat that,” they say, “Poor you!” But if you say, “Sorry, I don’t eat meat,” everybody says, “You’re making trouble. Let us eat our meat quietly.” As long as it’s the status quo, we don’t speak about it. When you say it’s possible and that it’s easy to avoid meat, people feel bad—no one likes to feel bad.

This book is a thorough and logical appeal to morality, but the thing about human beings is that appeals to our logic and reason are seldom enough to make us change our actions. What you need, then, is a change of culture. You don’t need to be impatient; it’s coming.

I can see the revolution happening in France. Last year a group of activists released a number of videos that led the French minister to shut down eight big slaughterhouses. The government asked a commission of inquiry to take place. This would have been inconceivable 10 years ago, and in the past the group that released the videos were prosecuted in court for the violation of privacy; the slaughterhouses were never punished. But last year was different because there was so much public opinion behind the matter. Out of the inquiry came 65 recommendations that included putting cameras in the slaughterhouses to see if people were causing undo violence, like starting to cut animals who are still conscious. There has been a big shift in public opinion—we’ve reached a critical mass of information and knowledge, and people speaking out about it. It’s a cultural tipping point. Still, some people think we’ve gone too far.

Slavery serves as an interesting example. In England, everybody laughed when 10 people proposed to abolish slavery. They said it was ridiculous. They said the British Empire could not afford it. They said they needed slavery to survive economically—and 10 years later it was abolished. After that, nobody dared to say, “Oh, that wasn’t so bad, let’s put it back, it was nice to have slaves.” Likewise, it takes 10, 20 years, but things happen. I think this is how we should view the sluggishness and inertia that we face when we have to change culture.

In the book, you quote Jane Goodall on the “moral schizophrenia” within our culture: we treat pets as if they’re family members but then economically and personally support industries that slaughter hundreds of billions of animals every year. Melanie Joy has a book, Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows, where she gives a wonderful example of this. Say you have a dinner at home, serve some delicious meat, and your guests ask you for the recipe. You say, “Well, this morning I took my dog and cut it into pieces . . .” and everybody decides they can’t eat it after all. What’s the difference? Pigs are smarter than dogs. It’s well known now. Is it because they aren’t as cute? And of course, in China people eat dogs and even beat them to death because it’s said that the meat will be softer. This is speciesism—it exists not only in how we treat animals as instrumental to human beings, but even in the way we classify different animals. In France, they eat snails, but will puke if you tell them to eat slugs. A French writer said, “So, you don’t like homeless snails.” It’s so ridiculous if you think about it: why would you not want to eat a dog of any kind but don’t give a damn about pigs?

There was a big uproar in France because one guy threw this little cat up in the air and against the wall, filmed it, and put it on YouTube. People went after him and identified him. He was taken to court and sentenced to a year in jail. All the newspapers were talking about the little cat Oscar. But that same day in France 500,000 animals were killed behind the walls of the slaughterhouses and nobody spoke about it. Again, it’s schizophrenia. Psychologists call this cognitive dissonance. There are examples of this cognitive dissonance from the concentration camps: there was a great musician who would cry when he’d listen to some of his prisoners play Chopin, but the next day he would send them to the crematorium. And at home, he was good father. All of this is cognitive dissonance. You split your mind. You do terrible things on one side and are good father on the other. I don’t know how it works, but people do this.

Humans are capable of great cognitive inconsistency. Why not be more coherent? That’s how you will flourish. If you keep on being incoherent there must be something in you that’s not healthy, that undermines your flourishing. It cannot be mentally and physically healthy to have this deep incoherence.

This cognitive incoherence has repercussions that extend into the social world very quickly. Yes, this is where racism comes from. You can do anything if it’s socially accepted. If you find your group, you create a kind of legitimacy, because your group shares your sense of incoherence. You’ve decided it’s OK. This is why people don’t like whistleblowers and troublemakers—it reminds them that they are incoherent. Even if I sit silently at a table of big meat-eaters—not eating meat, but not saying anything—they will ask, “Are you disturbed because we eat meat?” I say, “Of course I’m not disturbed.” If they push I’ll joke a little; if they ask why not, I say, “Well, animals are my friends. I don’t eat my friends.” And they laugh, but for them it’s something that pricks. I don’t do it in an aggressive way, but it is perceived as that. People who are experiencing cognitive dissonance are not very tolerant because of it, and they present the image of people who are trying to be coherent as extremists, as asocial people, when all we’re trying to do is to be a little bit more compassionate.

Was there anything about animal sentience that surprised you while you were writing the book? I was really impressed by a few things I learned—the cognitive faculties of birds, for example. Caledonian crows manufacture hooks to keep in their nests, and then they’ll fly with them in their beaks to get insects. And parrots do incredible things. In the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness, Christof Koff [president and chief scientific officer of the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle] said that consciousness can come through many pathways, not only in the development of the prefrontal cortex like mammals. He gave the example of fish and birds that don’t have a prefrontal cortex and do incredibly smart things. Fish can remember a place where there was a hook three months later. Pigeons can distinguish Matisse from Picasso. Not bad.

One of the most compelling chapters in the book was “The Continuum of Life.” You write that “the intelligence, empathy, and altruism present in the human species are the fruits of millions of years of gradual evolution.” We see signs of these “human” emotions in animals. Here in France they say, “I’m not a bonobo. I’m not a chimpanzee.” This is true even though we share 98.5 percent of the same DNA. Five million years ago we had a common ancestor, but now we are different. But the fact that there were about 15 other hominids before Homo sapiens shows that there was no magic moment—it’s all gradation. There’s no quantum leap. There’s just an increase in the brain and its faculties. The emotions were already there. There wasn’t a single magic moment between the monocellular organism to the human beings or to migrating birds or to bats that use sonar. Each one went on their small line of thousands of changes over millions of years.

In the very first chapters of the book I talk about this because I was debating with the French humanists, who said that you can’t compare us to animals because we are just so different. We aren’t, not unless you bring God into it, which most philosophers won’t. And if they say they don’t believe in evolution, they’re still completely in trouble.

I think the positive thing is we have seen a continuous progress in civilization just by what people say. Look at how much we care about human rights and big international organizations. People might criticize them, but it is a huge bonus to have the United Nations and the World Health Organization. We won’t stop there—I think the next step is to embed in that the consideration for other species and consideration for our common environment. I don’t see why it should stop. This is the way we can all survive together. Evolution may push us: maybe a gene will be selected, a variation that will make us perceive our interdependence more, because if we bring about the sixth major extinction of species, we are in terribly bad position. Species build up to their own demise by, at some point, getting something wrong about the way they should change their functioning. We would not have been smart enough to see the next turning point. There’s a race out there between degrading the environment to the point that it threatens our survival or using that intelligence to change the culture.

♦

A Plea for the Animals: The Moral, Philosophical, and Evolutionary Imperative to Treat All Beings with Compassion is available from Shambhala Publications. 

[This story was first published in 2016.]

The post A Plea for the Animals appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Wendy Cook did not expect to spend her summer rescuing more than 100 rabbits.

“I was truly, truly trying to have a quiet summer,” Cook recently told Tricycle from her home in Massachusetts. “I wanted to get more knowledgeable about gardening, and I was going to grow herbs. I was also going to do less email and less social outings.”

Things turned out quite differently. It all began when Cook was tending to her plot at Codman Community Farms in Lincoln, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. A friend mentioned that she was concerned about the rabbits being kept and bred for meat on the other side of the farm.

“When she first told me about the rabbits, I was like, ‘Don’t tell me that. This is my quiet time. I want to grow my lettuce and tomatoes,’” said Cook, who has been a practicing Buddhist for the last 30 years. But once she saw the rabbits and the conditions they were being kept in, she said she needed to take action.

After writing a letter to the board running the farm, a meeting was scheduled for July 6 between the farmers, Cook, and her friend.

“I was a little annoyed because I wanted to go to puja [a special ceremony during which offerings are made] for His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s birthday,” said Cook when she realized the date. “But then I thought: advocating for rabbits is my puja.”

The teachings of the Dalai Lama and Lama Zopa Rinpoche were in Cook’s mind leading up to the meeting, and she began to wonder whether there was any possibility that she could purchase the rabbits.

“As a practicing Buddhist, the daily practice is to see all living beings as equal and wishing the best for all of them,” Cook said. “I can be a very assertive Buddhist. I really believe in compassion and action.”

With that in mind, she began doing some calculations in order to figure out how much the rabbits would cost. “I don’t even think I mentioned the possibility of buying them to my husband,” Cook said. “I just had this thought of maybe I can buy all of the rabbits.”

It turns out that Cook was given the opportunity to do just that at the meeting. The farmer told her he had invested in the rabbits and asked her, rather facetiously, if she would like to buy them.

When Cook asked how much, the farmer told her: $20,000.

“I just said yes,” Cook said. “I didn’t have that money myself, but . . . I knew that across traditions there is lot of emphasis on animal liberation in the Buddhist world. “I just saw this window open a fraction and I thought ‘yes.’”

Once Cook made the decision to purchase the bunnies, she swiftly went into action to gather the funds she needed, starting Facebook and CrowdRise pages in order to support the “Great Rabbit Liberation of 2016.” Most significantly, she reached out to one of Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s students, a Singapore-based Tibetan Buddhist monk named Venerable Tenzin Drachom, and explained the situation.

“He just said, ‘I’ll let you know how much we can raise,’” Cook said. “Within 24 hours he contacted me and said all of the money had been raised. I wasn’t expecting it to be that easy.”

Indeed, Cook says she had been mentally preparing to start contacting other Buddhist groups and friends around the world in order to collect the funds. “But there have been so many auspicious signs throughout this story,” she said. “When Ven. Drachom said that he’d secured the money, he was actually on his way to Tibet. And when the money was transferred to me, he was at Mount Kailash [a Tibetan mountain that is a holy site for multiple religions].” Cook took both events, along with the fact that her initial meeting was on the Dalai Lama’s birthday, as signs she was on the right path.

“There are so many things I can’t do,” Cook said. “I can’t get homeless people off the streets. I can’t stop the war in Syria. This was a moment where I felt that I could make a difference.”

Over the next few weeks, Cook, who had never considered herself an animal activist, began learning more about the animal rescue world. Her life quickly began to revolve around figuring out how to care for the 135 rabbits that suddenly became her responsibility. She initially thought she could house them in her home and on her property, but was deterred from doing so after neighbors complained. She then began working with rabbit rescue groups across the East Coast, including members of the House Rabbit Network. “They came in and saved the day,” Cook said. “Some [rabbits] were taken home immediately.” The volunteers helped with medical treatment for the animals and also helped find the vast majority of them homes or places in shelters.

“I have huge respect for people—Buddhist or non-Buddhist—who are incredibly compassionate and in the animal rescue world,” she said. “They work long hours, they are not afraid to travel for miles for even one animal. That’s just what they do.”

Cook and her husband decided to keep about six rabbits in their home as pets and are still looking for homes for about half a dozen more. She stresses that her spirituality remains at the center of the heart of the Great Rabbit Liberation.

“I’ve done this whole thing on faith and a prayer. I was able to give the rabbits imprints of the Buddha’s teachings,” Cook said. “I did this by playing Buddhist chanting they could hear; I recited many mantras to them, and each rabbit was circumambulated around an altar. The vicious suffering circle of samsara has to be broken. By practicing the Buddha’s teachings, we stop creating the causes to be in samsara and start cultivating the causes for our enlightenment.”

♦

The Great Rabbit Liberation of 2016 is continuing to raise funds to pay for the medical treatment and upkeep of the remaining rabbits. If you are interested in adopting a rabbit, please email Wendy Cook at wendy@lamayeshe.com.

[This post was originally published on September 30, 2016]

The post Why a Buddhist Yoga Teacher Heard the Call to Save 135 Rabbits appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Early on in my days as Moune’s human, I took her to obedience classes at the local ag school. It so happens that St. Gervais d’Auvergne, a town a few miles from my own in central France, is home to one of the country’s few lycées agricoles dedicated to teaching kids how to raise, train, and care for dogs, cats, and smaller pets. You can take lessons there for five euros a pop with a senior student, overseen by a roving teacher.

The roving teacher watched us go through the basics. My dog’s previous human had put Moune through her paces, and she was on her best behavior in the dog school setting. 

“Really, she is already a great dog. But I understand she’s recently adopted, so it is good for the bonding,” said Madame Lagrange. “One thing I would encourage for you to remember: she is a dog, not a person.”

Ha. I knew that, right? I’d seen plenty of canines that seemed to be their humans’ surrogate children, and that wasn’t going to happen here. So when I found myself speaking to her in “wuzza wuzza Ma MouMoune” baby talk, I was aghast. I nipped that one in the bud, but the closer I looked, the more I realized how difficult it is for me to abstain from projecting my human motives, foibles, and even goodness onto my dog, who likely has her own motives, foibles, and guileless goodness. In fact, for me and for most of us, it takes a conscious effort to recognize the extent to which we project our motives, foibles, and qualities onto our fellow humans, much less our pets.

One of my neighbors in retreat in the nineties was Dodé, an angular, enterprising German woman who didn’t need much sleep. She effortlessly and religiously followed the retreat schedule (this, in itself, was annoying enough) and used the evening post-practice hours after 10 p.m. to drill, hammer, fit shelves, and engage in other like projects. We shared a wall, so her forays into home improvement deprived me of precious sleep. She had to know she was bugging me, I thought, as resentment built. I certainly would. But when I finally confronted her, her eyes widened in shock and she hugged me and apologized profusely. The aggravation hadn’t even occurred to her. Instantly, I loved her and we’ve remained friends and pen pals (she’s still in retreat) ever since.

I recall this situation with Dodé because it taught me something about myself, my assumptions, and what they might mean. If I were doing this thing, this is what it would signify. From my experiential basis as a reasonably sane and intelligent middle-aged Franco-American woman, I add my other variables and voilà: I’ll automatically interpret Dodé, Moune, and the rest of the sentient world within the scope of what I am capable of imagining.

Our perceptions and the conclusions we draw from them determine our experience of this life. The ways that different life forms relate to water is the classic example that reminds us of the subjectivity of this experience: can we truly maintain that there is some objective validity to how we humans perceive water as opposed to the perceptions of otters, fish, tadpoles, dragonflies, octopi, or pelicans (not to mention the panoply of imperceptible beings in the Buddhist canon)? As long as we’re aware of the anthropocentric nature of our perceptions and conclusions and of the limits of our projections, there’s plenty of room for communion.

When we were kids, we’d play at trying to picture the thing that was farthest from our minds. I do my best to understand Ma Moune in all her wonderful Moune-ness, but there will always be a part of human me in that—and a part of canine her—that is farthest from my mind. For her part, she does her best to read me based on my tone of voice, smiles, and frowns. She recognizes the sound of her name and commands, which she may or may not choose to heed, even if words in general do resonate like “wuzza wuzza” to her ears. Maybe my inability to make sense of subtle odors baffles her as well.

In fact, her instincts and motives do resemble my own in that their motor is hope and fear. My best guess is that her hopes include treats, a warm bed, squirrels, walks, and companionship; and her fears center around abandonment, storms, and threats to her human. Take away the squirrels and there’s a fair amount of overlap. Right now she is antsy: she sees me packing, loading a van. She senses that change is afoot, but doesn’t know how it will impact her. She’s clearly in her element in the quiet retreat cabin we’ve been sharing in Natural Bridge, Virginia, for the past few weeks. “Ah no, not again,” I hear her think. “You’re not taking me away from this Shenandoah Valley paradise, its tantalizing deer and burbling streams and crunchy leaves to frolic in. We’ve been taking the most fabulous walks! This is the perfect home for us.”

Yes, Ma MouMoune, we’re leaving Natural Bridge and moving north. I’m antsy too: new home, new job. I don’t know what you’re thinking, but I feel what you’re feeling. No fears: I’ve got your shaggy back, now and always.

♦

Dharma teacher and Tricycle contributing editor Pamela Gayle White has been writing about life with her dog, Moune, for the last three months on Tricycle’s blog. You can read her earlier posts, “Ma Moune” and “A Special Bond.” 

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