Compassion Towards Animals Quotes

Kindness and compassion towards all living things is a mark of a civilized society. Conversely, cruelty, whether it is directed against human beings or against animals, is not the exclusive province of any one culture or community of people.

Humans — who enslave, castrate, experiment on, and fillet other animals — have had an understandable penchant for pretending animals do not feel pain. A sharp distinction between humans and 'animals' is essential if we are to bend them to our will, make them work for us, wear them, eat them — without any disquieting tinges of guilt or regret. It is unseemly of us, who often behave so unfeelingly toward other animals, to contend that only humans can suffer. The behavior of other animals renders such pretensions specious. They are just too much like us.

Dominion does not mean domination. We hold dominion over animals only because of our powerful and ubiquitous intellect. Not because we are morally superior. Not because we have a "right" to exploit those who cannot defend themselves. Let us use our brain to move toward compassion and away from cruelty, to feel empathy rather than cold indifference, to feel animals' pain in our hearts.

A simple act of kindness and compassion towards a single animal may not mean anything to all creatures, but will mean everything to one.

Walk in kindness toward the Earth and every living being. Without kindness and compassion for all of Mother Nature’s creatures, there can be no true joy; no internal peace, no happiness. Happiness flows from caring for all sentient beings as if they were your own family, because in essence they are. We are all connected to each other and to the Earth.

Ethical vegetarians eat only plant-based food in order to show compassion toward animals and other humans and to benefit the planet.

I believe that Human Kindness, Compassion and Caring towards all life, will always prevail. No matter how cruel the night, the dawn will break and Africa will still be here along with all its wild beauty.

True Compassion is showing Kindness towards animals, without expecting anything in return

The fundamental work of the Somatic Coach is to guide the person to feel and be with this animating force that makes them alive. This is life moving toward life.

It is clear that something is seriously lacking in the way we humans are going about things. But what is it that we lack? The fundamental problem, I believe, is that at every level we are giving too much attention to the external, material aspects of life while neglecting moral ethics and inner values. By inner values, I mean the qualities that we all appreciate in others, and toward which we all have a natural instinct, bequeathed by our biological nature as animals that survive and thrive only in an environment of concern, affection, and warm-heartedness-or in a single word, compassion. The essence of compassion is a desire to alleviate the suffering of others and to promote their well-being. This is the spiritual principle from which all other positive inner value emerge.

[T]he old stories of human relationships with animals can't be discounted. They are not primitive; they are primal. They reflect insights that came from considerable and elaborate systems of knowledge, intellectual traditions and ways of living that were tried, tested, and found true over many thousands of years and on all continents. But perhaps the truest story is with the animals themselves because we have found our exemplary ways through them, both in the older world and in the present time, both physically and spiritually. According to the traditions of the Seneca animal society, there were medicine animals in ancient times that entered into relationships with people. The animals themselves taught ceremonies that were to be performed in their names, saying they would provide help for humans if this relationship was kept. We have followed them, not only in the way the early European voyagers and prenavigators did, by following the migrations of whales in order to know their location, or by releasing birds from cages on their sailing vessels and following them towards land, but in ways more subtle and even more sustaining. In a discussion of the Wolf Dance of the Northwest, artists Bill Holm and William Reid said that 'It is often done by a woman or a group of women. The dance is supposed to come from the wolves. There are different versions of its origin and different songs, but the words say something like, 'Your name is widely known among the wolves. You are honored by the wolves.' In another recent account, a Northern Cheyenne ceremonialist said that after years spent recovering from removals and genocide, indigenous peoples are learning their lost songs back from the wolves who retained them during the grief-filled times, as thought the wolves, even though threatened in their own numbers, have had compassion for the people.... It seems we have always found our way across unknown lands, physical and spiritual, with the assistance of the animals. Our cultures are shaped around them and we are judged by the ways in which we treat them. For us, the animals are understood to be our equals. They are still our teachers. They are our helpers and healers. They have been our guardians and we have been theirs. We have asked for, and sometimes been given, if we've lived well enough, carefully enough, their extraordinary powers of endurance and vision, which we have added to our own knowledge, powers and gifts when we are not strong enough for the tasks required of us. We have deep obligations to them. Without other animals, we are made less. (from her essay "First People")

Really good writing has purpose and that purpose should be to shape other minds to desire truth and a more noble purpose in life and to become more thoughtful and knowledgable about important things like being kind and loving towards all living beings on our planet and not just humans but all animals.

For one who sets himself to look at all earnestly, at all in purpose toward truth, into the living eyes of a human life: what is it he there beholds that so freezes and abashes his ambitious heart? What is it, profound behind the outward windows of each one of you, beneath touch even of your own suspecting, drawn tightly back at bay against the backward wall and blackness of its prison cave, so that the eyes alone shine of their own angry glory, but the eyes of a trapped wild animal, or of a furious angel nailed to the ground by his wings, or however else one may faintly designate the human 'soul,' that which is angry, that which is wild, that which is untamable, that which is healthful and holy, that which is competent of all advantaging within hope of human dream, that which most marvelous and most precious to our knowledge and most extremely advanced upon futurity of all flowerings within the scope of creation is of all these the least destructible, the least corruptible, the most defenseless, the most easily and multitudinously wounded, frustrated, prisoned, and nailed into a cheating of itself: so situated in the universe that those three hours upon the cross are but a noble and too trivial an emblem how in each individual among most of the two billion now alive and in each successive instant of the existence of each existence not only human being but in him the tallest and most sanguine hope of godhead is in a billionate choiring and drone of pain of generations upon generations unceasingly crucified and is bringing forth crucifixions into their necessities and is each in the most casual of his life so measurelessly discredited, harmed, insulted, poisoned, cheated, as not all the wrath, compassion, intelligence, power of rectification in all the reach of the future shall in the least expiate or make one ounce more light: how, looking thus into your eyes and seeing thus, how each of you is a creature which has never in all time existed before and which shall never in all time exist again and which is not quite like any other and which has the grand stature and natural warmth of every other and whose existence is all measured upon a still mad and incurable time; how am I to speak of you as 'tenant' 'farmers,' as 'representatives' of your 'class,' as social integers in a criminal economy, or as individuals, fathers, wives, sons, daughters, and as my friends and as I 'know' you?

Rather than struggling to be a 'perfect' vegan—freaking out if you accidentally ingest an animal ingredient you hadn’t heard of before—adopt the 'practice makes progress' approach. Keep trying new recipes and share them with friends and family. Do all you can to avoid animal byproducts, but don’t beat yourself up if you eat something by mistake.

Opioid circuits and dopamine pathways are important components of what has been called the limbic system, or the emotional brain. The circuits of the limbic system process emotions like love, joy, pleasure, pain, anger and fear. For all their complexities, emotions exist for a very basic purpose: to initiate and maintain activities necessary for survival. In a nutshell, they modulate two drives that are absolutely essential to animal life, including human life: attachment and aversion. We always want to move toward something that is positive, inviting and nurturing, and to repel or withdraw from something threatening, distasteful or toxic. These attachment and aversion emotions are evoked by both physical and psychological stimuli, and when properly developed, our emotional brain is an unerring, reliable guide to life. It facilitates self-protection and also makes possible love, compassion and healthy social interaction. When impaired or confused, as it often is in the complex and stressed circumstances prevailing in our “civilized” society, the emotional brain leads us to nothing but trouble. Addiction is one of its chief dysfunctions.

Humanity is not only ‘great acts’ spending thousands, putting your name on headlines. Humanity is to be kind to every living being, to be compassionate towards all, even to the tiniest animal, seen and unseen. Some people consider killing ants or pest normal, but I find it is an act of extreme cruelty. By killing them you violate their rights to live. We must remember that the earth and the universe belongs to all of us. We are just another species out of millions of species, and we share the universe with them and most importantly, remember that we belong to each other.

By healing our mind with great compassion, we will be able to solve all our own problems and those of others. The positive thought of compassion will not only help us to recover from sickness but bring us peace, happiness, and satisfaction. It will enable us to enjoy life. It will also bring peace and happiness to our family and friends and to other people around us. Because we will have no negative thoughts toward them, the people — and even the animals — we deal with will feel happy. If we have loving kindness and compassion, our prime concern will always be not to hurt others, and this itself is healing. A compassionate person is the most powerful healer, not only of their own disease and other problems, but of those of others. A person with loving kindness and compassion heals others simply by existing. (p. 8)

Humans recognize the duality, autonomy, and latitude range of the mind and the body, and all humans comprehend their impending mortality. Unlike other animals, humankind knows despair brought about by understanding the inevitability of death of all living creatures. The radius of human thought touching upon the longitude of our transient existence causes infinite pain. Seeking to ameliorate existential anguish incites us to ponder spiritual matters, and this sphere of mental activity spurs us to contemplate the perimeter of unknown frontiers. Our ability to understand the compass of life and death allows us to view the circumference of the world as consisting of a past, a present, and a future in relation to our own lives. How a person views the range of their earthly life and how a person rationalizes their march towards a deathly outback creates a system of beliefs that separate people into classes, and the variations amongst class members’ belief systems supplements who we think we are.

Mahabharata states: “What we eat in this life, eats us in the life after death.” We must not forget the chain of karma: Compassion and non-cruelty toward animals are linked morally and spiritually to world peace. Killing an animal for food, even one that we raise ourselves or hunted, is a violent act, which we forget in consuming its flesh. Today, cruelty extends beyond the mass killing of animals to the systematic, anti-life, anti-humane treatment of animals, from the time they are born to the time they are “harvested,” as if they were a cash crop. Animals are deprived of their natural habitat and life cycle for the expediency of the meat industry. Individual killing of animals for food is the first step in the cruelty process. The profit-motivated nature of industrializing animals, as if they are inanimate objects and void of any rights, feelings, or soul is the next step in the expansion of cruelty. The way animals, chicken, and fish are treated today is at a level of cruelty that staggers the imagination. When eating these animals, we take the vibration of this cruelty and death into our consciousness, often without even thinking of what we are bringing into our own bodies and encouraging in our own environment.

men having power too often misapplied it; that though we made slaves of the negroes, and the Turks made slaves of the Christians, I believed that liberty was the natural right of all men equally. This he did not deny, but said the lives of the negroes were so wretched in their own country that many of them lived better here than there. I replied, "There is great odds in regard to us on what principle we act"; and so the conversation on that subject ended. I may here add that another person, some time afterwards, mentioned the wretchedness of the negroes, occasioned by their intestine wars, as an argument in favor of our fetching them away for slaves. To which I replied, if compassion for the Africans, on account of their domestic troubles, was the real motive of our purchasing them, that spirit of tenderness being attended to, would incite us to use them kindly that, as strangers brought out of affliction, their lives might be happy among us. And as they are human creatures, whose souls are as precious as ours, and who may receive the same help and comfort from the Holy Scriptures as we do, we could not omit suitable endeavors to instruct them therein; but that while we manifest by our conduct that our views in purchasing them are to advance ourselves, and while our buying captives taken in war animates those parties to push on the war, and increase desolation amongst them, to say they live unhappily in Africa is far from being an argument in our favor. I further said, the present circumstances of these provinces to me appear difficult; the slaves look like a burdensome stone to such as burden themselves with them; and that if the white people retain a resolution to prefer their outward prospects of gain to all other considerations, and do not act conscientiously toward them as fellow-creatures, I believe that burden will grow heavier and heavier, until times change in a way disagreeable to us. The person appeared very serious, and owned that in considering their condition and the manner of their treatment in these provinces he had sometimes thought it might be just in the Almighty so to order it.

only the dead keep secrets." "it is not easy. Taking a life, even when we knew it was required." "most people want only to be cared for. If I had no softness, I'd get nowhere at all." "a flaw of humanity. The compulsion to be unique, which is at war with the desire to belong to a single identifiable sameness." "someone always gains, just like someone always loses." "most women are less in love with the partners they choose than they are simply desperate for their approval, starving for their devotion. They want most often to be touched as no one else can touch them, and most of them inaccurately assume this requires romance. But the moment we realize we can feel fulfilled without carrying the burdens of belonging to another, that we can experience rapture without being someone's other half, and therefore beholden to their weaknesses, to their faults and failures and their many insufferable fractures, then we're free, aren't we? " " enough, for once, to feel, and nothing else. " " there was no stopping what one person could believe. " " I noticed that if I did certain things, said things in certain way, or held her eye contact while I did them, I could make her... Soften toward me. " " I think I've already decided what I'm going to do, and I just hope it's the right thing. But it isn't, or maybe it is. But I suppose it doesn't matter, because I've already started, and looking back won't help. " " luck is a matter of probabilities. " "you want to believe that your hesitation makes you good, make you feel better? It doesn't. Every single one of us is missing something. We are all too powerful, too extraordinary, and don't you see it's because we're riddled with vacancies? We are empty and trying to fill, lighting ourselves on fire just to prove that we are normal, that we are ordinary. That we, like anything, can burn. " " ask yourself where power comes from, if you can't see the source, don't trust it. " " an assassin acting on his own internal compass. Whether he lived or died as a result of his own choice? Unimportant. He didn't raise an army didn't fight for good, didn't interfere much with the queen's other evils. It was whether or not he could live with his own decision because life was the only thing that truly matters. " " the truest truth : mortal lifetimes were short, inconsequential. Convictions were death sentences. Money couldn't buy happiness, but nothing could buy happiness, so at least money could buy everything else. In term of finding satisfaction, all a person was capable of controlling was himself. " " humans were mostly sensible animals. They knew the dangers of erratic behavior. It was a chronic condition, survival. My intention is as same as others. Stand taller, think smarter, be better. " " she couldn't remember what version of her had put herself into that relationship, into that life, or somehow into this shape, which still looked and felt as it always had but wasn't anymore. " " conservative of energy meant that there must be dozens of people in the world who didn't exist because of she did. " " what replace feelings when there were none to be had? " " the absence of something was never as effective as the present of something. " "To be suspended in nothing, he said, was to lack all motivation, all desire. It was not numbness which was pleasurable in fits, but functional paralysis. Neither to want to live nor to die, but to never exist. Impossible to fight." "apology accepted. Forgiveness, however, declined." "there cannot be success without failure. No luck without unluck." "no life without death?" "Everything collapse, you will, too. You will, soon.

It is the Great Ones, the masters of life, whose light illumines the pathway, even at its commencement, and grows brighter with each step. Their light shines continuously; and it is only the dark clouds in the minds of men that shut it out. These are the Buddhas of Compassion. A Buddha is one who has ascended the rungs of the evolutionary ladder of life, rung by rung, one after the other, and who thus has attained Buddhahood, which means human plenitude of spiritual and intellectual glory, and who has done all this by his own self-devised and self-directed exertions along the far past evolutionary pathway. He is an 'Awakened One,' one who manifests the divinity which is the very core of the core of his own being. The Buddhas of Compassion are the noblest flowers of the human race. They are men who have raised themselves from humanity into quasi-divinity; and this is done by letting the light imprisoned within, the light of the inner god, pour forth and manifest itself through the humanity of the man, through the human soul of the man. Through sacrifice and abandoning of all that is mean and wrong, ignoble and paltry and selfish; through opening up the inner nature so that the god within may shine forth; in other words, through self-directed evolution, they have raised themselves from mere man-hood into becoming god-men, man-gods — human divinity. Every human being is a Buddha unmanifest. Every human being has, in his inner constitution, not only the Celestial Buddha, the Dhyani-Buddha, which is his inner god, but his higher ego, which when expressing itself on earth as a man, is the Manushya-Buddha or Human Buddha. Ordinary men cannot fully and wholly manifest the powers of their higher spiritual will or ego, because ordinary men are too gross; they as vehicles are not yet sufficiently etherealized. They live too much in the planes of material being. They are passional; they are personal, consequently circumscribed, limited. Every human being is an unexpressed Buddha. Even now, within you and above you, it is your higher self, and your higher self is it; and as the ages pass and as you conquer the self in order to become the greater self, you approach with every step nearer and nearer to the “sleeping” Buddha within you. And yet truly it is not the Buddha which is 'asleep'; it is you who are sleeping on the bed of matter, dreaming evil dreams, brought about by your passions, by your false views, by your egoisms, by your selfishness — making thick and heavy veils of personality wrapping around the Buddha within. For here is the secret: the Buddha within you is watching you. Your own inner Buddha has his eye, mystically speaking, on you. His hand is reached compassionately downward toward you, so to speak, but you must reach up and clasp that hand by your own unaided will and aspiration — you, the human part of you — and take the hand of the Buddha within you. A strange figure of speech? Consider then what a human being is: a god in the heart of him, a Buddha enshrining that god, a spiritual soul enshrining the Buddha, a human soul enshrining the spiritual soul, an animal soul enshrining the human soul, and a body enshrining the animal soul. So that man is at the same time one, and many more than one. When a human being has learned all that earth can teach him, he is then godlike and returns to earth no more — except those whose hearts are so filled with the holy flame of compassion that they remain in the schoolroom of earth that they have long since advanced beyond and where they themselves can learn nothing more, in order to help their younger, less evolved brothers. These exceptions are the Buddhas of Compassion.

Love is the most mysterious experience in life. Love is something that you never fully learn; love is something that you ontinuously go deeper and deeper into. The mystery of love deepens more and more. Love cannot be explained. Love cannot be defined. Love can only be lived, but it can never be understood. Love is so vast, so infinite. If you allow love to happen to, you you are allowing the mystery of life to happen to you. And it is through the mysterious that one comes close to God. Love is the beginning of God. God is so far away, so we need something more human and concrete to approach him. That is what love is. Love is the possibility of reaching God. God is love in its unmanifest state. So never try to make a philosophy of love. There is not other way to know love except existential experience. Unless you experience love you don't know it. Existence needs experience. You have the capacity to know, to see, to feel and to be love. Become a friend to all that is. Become a friend to human beings, to animals, to trees, to birds and to rocks. Create the quality of friendliness. Let it flow towards everyone irrespective of nation, race, caste and creed. And then slowly your consciousness will start becoming universal. Friendship is a way to drop the ego and become egoless. The ego exists by creating enemies, because the ego exists through fight and conflict. The moment the ego disappears, all your boundaries disappears, and you become one with the universe.

Embrace self-love, kindness towards others, compassion for animals, and appreciation of nature. Cherish the miracle of life. You are the embodiment of wonder, marvel, and love itself. You are love; you are loved.

There are literally hundreds of organizations that are replacing the family unit: nurseries, daycare centers, nursing homes, psychiatric wards, domestic abuse hot lines, homes for unwed mothers.... All of these services are a sign that the system has exchanged the family for institutionalism.... The human race seems to be on a crash course toward destruction. People living in major American cities are hardened, desensitized, and seem more like robots. Man is not just an intelligent animal endowed with a greater reasoning ability, as some philosophers contend. Rather, man is an entirely different species with a personality that has the capacity for compassion, love, humanity, and spirituality.

The fundamental work of the Somatic Coach is to guide the person to feel and be with this animating force that makes them alive. This is life moving toward life. While the physical scientists of the seventeenth and eighteenth century asked, “Where are we?” in the universe; and the social scientists of the nineteenth century inquired, “Who are we?” in our relationship to nature and the unconscious; we’re now at a time of history when the question is “How are we?” in our interconnectedness and interdependence with life. I

Maybe if I gave an illustration then those that do not have ears to hear can be made to hear what Jesus is saying. If a Vegan were to go to a restaurant and eat a Vegan meal, only to later find out that the “tofu” they ate was really chicken, they are not defiled. This is because they would have only been defiled if they had willfully chosen to eat the chicken flesh contrary to their pure conscience. Their heart was pure and they had no desire to consume another sentient being’s flesh. Defilement in any area comes from the heart and leads to the evil actions. The eating of animal flesh is not what defiles, it is the decision to eat the animal flesh that defiles because it comes from a hardened heart that cannot be moved with compassion towards other beings.

The mind is doubt. Doubt leaves you tired and exhausted. That is why so many people in the world look so sad and serious. Existence is not serious. Look at the trees, the birds, the flowers, the animals, the rivers and the stars. The whole existence is joy and celebration, except for man because only man has the freedom to choose between living in the mind or living in the heart. And man has chosen to live in the mind, because the mind helps in the world to have money, power, position and possessions. But it destroys everything that is really worth having in life. We have to choose the heart. Once we have chosen the heart, trust, silence, truth, friendship, trust, compassion, creativity and freedom starts flowering. And just as you bring light into a dark room and the darkness disappears, the same happens with the heart. Suddenly your life is full of life, light, joy and truth. And then all doubts disappear. The heart never doubts, the heart simply knows. God is self-evident for the heart. The heart has its own approach towards reality. The heart has a direct, immediate connection with reality, with God. Be in the heart, live through the heart. Nourish the dimension of the heart.

I hiked on until I startled a wolf standing at the edge of a willow thicket. It leapt away, then froze and glanced back. One of its paws was mangled. Its head looked huge in comparison to its emaciated body. Slowly, on three legs, its ribs jutting out of its mangy gray coat, the wolf approached. I yelled, and it hopped back into the brush. The wolf followed me, whining, barking, and letting out ominous howls. A few minutes passed before it emerged from the brush and cut me off. It glanced around nervously then walked toward me. I yelled and waved my arms over my head. It stopped for a moment and then came closer. I had brought my brother Luke's .357 pistol - it was light for bears but, at the time, was the only handgun I had access to. I pulled the pistol from the holster and yelled as angrily as I could. The wolf froze, glancing skittishly back and forth, before hopping into the willows. I continued hiking, and the wolf paralleled me. Twenty minutes later, it cut me off and approached again. At thirty feet, I leveled the pistol and yelled. It glanced back and forth, looking both desperate and terrified, then hobbled closer. At twenty feet, I aimed the pistol. "Leave me alone!" I yelled as loud as I could. I'm not sure why I didn't pull the trigger. Maybe it was because I was confident it could not hurt me, armed as I was. Maybe it was because I don't like killing animals I don't eat. Maybe it was because I tricked myself into thinking there was hope the wolf would somehow survive. Maybe it was because I lacked the compassion to help it die.

Grace Compassion is a grace that allows for the flow of impersonal love toward others. Compassion expands your heart and anesthetizes your judgment of others. You are often inspired with the desire to embrace the other, but not from sentiment or pity. Rather, the deeper humanitarian cords that unite us as human beings animate within you. Lord, Compassion is a powerful grace. It does not discriminate. Having a compassionate heart can be risky. But what other choice is there? If I look upon others with harsh judgment, I must imagine myself in their shoes—because what I do to another person, I am doing to myself. So, open my heart to Compassion, Lord. Hover over me with endless guidance as I learn to live as one with all sentient beings. 11 Make ME RESILIENT Prayer I MARVEL AT THE RESILIENCE of nature, Lord.

When one person becomes enlightened, his whole being becomes full of compassion towards all beings. The whole existence is filled by his compassion. Rivers of compassion start flowing from him and start reaching to everybody else – to men, to women, to animals, to birds, to trees, to rivers, to mountains, to stars. The whole existence starts sharing his compassion. These two are the qualities of Buddha: that he understands, and that he feels and cares.

You may enrich the world with your love for humanity, with your compassion toward animal kind or by standing up for a worthy cause.

Silence replaces conversation. Turning away replaces turning towards. Dismissiveness replaces receptivity. And contempt replaces respect. Emotional withholding is, I believe, the toughest tactic to deal with when trying to create and maintain a healthy relationship, because it plays on our deepest fears—rejection, unworthiness, shame and guilt, the worry that we’ve done something wrong or failed or worse, that there’s something wrong with us. ♦◊♦ But Sara’s description is more accurate and compelling than mine. Her line, “quietly sucks out your integrity and self-respect” is still stuck in my head three days later. It makes me think of those films where an alien creature hooks up a human to some ghastly, contorted machine and drains him of his life force drop by drop, or those horrible “can’t watch” scenes where witches swoop down and inhale the breath of children to activate their evil spells of world domination. In the movies, the person in peril always gets saved. The thieves are vanquished. The deadly transfusion halted. And the heroic victim recovers. But in real life, in real dysfunctional relationships, there’s often no savior and definitely no guarantee of a happy ending. Your integrity and self-respect can indeed be hoovered out, turning you into an emotional zombie, leaving you like one of the husks in the video game Mass Effect, unable to feel pain or joy, a mindless, quivering animal, a soulless puppet readily bent to the Reapers’ will. Emotional withholding is so painful because it is the absence of love, the absence of caring, compassion, communication, and connection. You’re locked in the meat freezer with the upside-down carcasses of cows and pigs, shivering, as your partner casually walks away from the giant steel door. You’re desperately lonely, even though the person who could comfort you by sharing even one kind word is right there, across from you at the dinner table, seated next to you at the movie, or in the same bed with you, back turned, deaf to your words, blind to your agony, and if you dare to reach out, scornful of your touch. When you speak, you might as well be talking to the wall, because you’re not going to get an answer, except maybe, if you’re lucky, a dismissive shrug.

• religions are, overall, radically friendly toward anymals; • people tend to be ignorant of these prevalent teachings; and • our current economic choices (bolstered by our collective spiritual ignorance) perpetuate anymal industries that profit from untold misery and billions of premature deaths.

Religions are, overall, radically friendly toward anymals.

1. As the Industrial Revolution proceeded, modern society created for itself a self-congratulatory myth, the myth of “progress”: From the time of our remote, ape-like ancestors, human history had been an unremitting march toward a better and brighter future, with everyone joyously welcoming each new technological advance: animal husbandry, agriculture, the wheel, the construction of cities, the invention of writing and of money, sailing ships, the compass, gunpowder, the printing press, the steam engine, and, at last, the crowning human achievement—modern industrial society! Prior to industrialization, nearly everyone was condemned to a miserable life of constant, backbreaking labor, malnutrition, disease, and an early death. Aren’t we so lucky that we live in modern times and have lots of leisure and an array of technological conveniences to make our lives easy? Today I think there are relatively few thoughtful, honest and well-informed people who still believe in this myth. To lose one’s faith in “progress” one has only to look around and see the devastation of our environment, the spread of nuclear weapons, the excessive frequency of depression, anxiety disorders and psychological stress, the spiritual emptiness of a society that nourishes itself principally with television and computer games…one could go on and on.

We do not care much if others are sick, if nature is sick as long as it doesn't directly affects us. Coronavirus is just a wake up call to return to our loving self. And killing each other and animals isn't loving, neither noble. Be a Hero, step out of this vicious cycle, show love&compassion, Be Veg.