A law recognising that animals are sentient will help protect them. But engaging compassionately with other beings is central to our true humanity
A few weeks ago Tessa arrived in my life – a sweet-natured brindled greyhound, recently retired from racing. I’ve joined the fraternity of dog owners and the larger group of animal lovers all of whom know very well that animals think and feel and love. So the announcement in the Queen’s Speech last week of a bill recognising animal sentience was welcome, even if it simply fills a gap previously covered by EU law.
The real debate goes further. What do we mean by sentience and which animals do we include? As sentient beings, should animals have rights and how far do they extend? Are they legal rights? Current laws ban animal cruelty, so should new ones outlaw intensive farming practices that still seem cruel to many observers?
These are difficult questions, but they’re also important. The starting point for Buddhists is the first of our ethical precepts which asks us to avoid harming other beings, especially by taking their lives. Stated positively, this means treating all ‘living’ or ‘sentient’ beings with kindness. We speak of ‘all beings’ and not just ‘all people’ because consciousness comes in many forms.
Drawing a line between sentience and non-sentience imposes an artificial limit on our understanding of life. And it also limits us. To counter that, a common Buddhist meditation practice fosters an attitude of universal loving kindness – the Buddha described it as cherishing all beings with a boundless heart, like a mother’s love for her child.
Monks living in the jungles of South Asia are taught that if a tiger or an elephant approaches them they should stay perfectly still and direct loving kindness towards it. People have been doing this for hundreds of years in the belief that the animals will sense their kindness and won’t attack because they don’t see them as a threat.
I’m not planning to try that for myself, but I do know how it feels to step into nature, letting my obsessions fall away, and opening my senses to the woods and fields, to the birds and animals, approaching the world with a friendly attitude, feeling that I’m sharing the space with countless other beings.
Laws can protect us from the belief that animals simply exist to serve our needs, but we don’t need a law to tell us that animals are sentient. We know that instinctively when we look at animal, like Tessa, and see them there, looking back at us.
