A Plea For Compassion For All Animals

by Jennie Richards · Published July 3, 2018 · Updated April 13, 2019

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Buddhist monk and author, Matthieu Ricard, has an important message for us. He asks each of us to treat all beings, human and non-human animals, with deep compassion and respect. We have a moral imperative to treat all animals, not only our pets, but all animals with the same respect and compassion. He asks us to stop behaving with arrogance toward animals because they are not here on this planet for us:

“We have this kind of arrogance humans beings do, that 8 million other species are there simply just ‘for us.’ They are at our disposal. Humans have been given this immense power, and we blindly use this power to abuse other animals, without any clear justification at all. It doesn’t make any sense that we love dogs, eat pigs and wear cows.”

He reminds us all animals are sentient beings as humans are. And if we’re concerned about the suffering of others, then we must include all sentient animals and beings in our concern about their suffering, not only some beings. Human beings are animals too, and all animals feel pain and suffer, and seek happiness and freedom, in the same way. They are no different from us. Though non-human animals may look different, they feel emotions, have desires, maintain needs and wants, and have feelings — just like we do.

We have an evolutionary imperative to embrace all animals in our compassion — not just our pets — but the cows, pigs, chickens, goats, lambs, calves, sheep, fish — they all feel pain and suffer the same way as we do. We should not treat them any differently than our pets, but give them the same respect and compassion.

It’s time to change the way we think, feel and behave toward animals. All animals.

The book, “Plea for the Animals: The Moral, Philosophical, and Evolutionary Imperative to Treat All Beings with Compassion,” is available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Here is a review on Psychology Today. More about the book on Matthieu Ricard’s website.