Part VII - It's a dog's life
"The position and
treatment of animals in Buddhism is important for the light it sheds
on Buddhists perception of their own relation to the natural world, on Buddhist
humanitarian concerns in general, and on the relationship between Buddhist
theory and Buddhist practice.
Animals have always been
regarded in Buddhist thought as sentient beings, different in their
intellectual ability than humans but no less capable of feeling suffering. Moreover, the doctrine of rebirth held that any
human could be reborn as an animal, and any animal could be reborn as a human. An
animal might be a reborn dead relative, and anybody who looked far enough back
through his or her infinite series of lives would eventually perceive every
animal to be a distant relative. The Buddha expounded
that sentient beings currently living in the animal realm have been our
mothers, brothers, sisters, fathers, children, friends in past rebirths. One
could not, therefore, make a hard distinction between moral rules applicable to
animals and those applicable to humans; ultimately humans and animals were part
of a single family. They are all interconnected." – Animals in
Buddhism, Wikipedia
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