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One of the great blindnesses, and I think humanity is going to look back at this,
at the thousands of years of violating animals from other species.
If we were looking at another planet, if one species on another planet was doing what we do to
non-human animals and we saw it from a distance,
we'd be appalled; but we're desensitized.
So meat eaters on this planet average about 7,000 animals in a lifetime.
And for me, personally, this is the place of
seeing bias and overcoming this tendency to create unreal other,
this is the one that's actually the hardest for me to talk about.
And I wanted to name that with you because
I care a lot, it's very emotional in me, it's like
sensing a concentration camp in my backyard that is just going on and on and on
with all the suffering of animals. And it's hard to talk about because
we as a collective are so habituated to othering animals
that it's often not that conscious.
There's an assumption they're just not as important, there are more important things
and we're not habituated to seeing the daily violence that goes into
our daily diet - like we don't connect the dots - and
we don't want to feel bad about ourselves so when the topic comes up there's a defendedness
and either we feel guilty deep down that we're participating in something wrong
or were outraged that another person's trying to make us feel morally wrong
so there's a lot of bombs that can go off in this territory of othering...
So my hope is that, as we,
each of us, sincerely wants to widen the circles of our heart, that we can
explore this too together, without guilt or shame
but really asking the same questions: where does it hurt?
Can we look at where it hurts for these other animals,
and can we see the gold, can we see the sacredness of life?
I'll share a bit about my own story, my own unfolding in this domain,
because I figured I just wanted to be real personal about it in this class,
that I became a vegetarian when I was 21, when I joined a spiritual community
- so that's almost 45 years ago, I'm 65 -
and between now and then, I've been a vegetarian except for a handful of years
when I got sick and I started eating chicken and fish because I thought that was going to help
and it didn't, and then I went back to being vegetarian and then I became vegan
because, the more I learned about the meat industry the more
what I thought was vegetarian and wasn't causing as much harm
was actually no different.
I remember one time being at a retreat
down at this really beautiful Center in the Shenandoah,
and during our early morning hours, a lot of farmland around,
we could hear the sounds of these mother cows lowing;
they had just been separated the week earlier from their calves and
so they were grieving. And, as many of you know, in the meat and dairy industry
farmers continually impregnate cows and then they separate from the calves
and then impregnate them again and separate them,
and there's a deep mother-child attachment, like in all mammals... So
listening to this, I mean you can imagine sitting in this early morning meditation
and that's the sound we're hearing is these grieving cries of mother cows
and it broke my heart and it broke other people's hearts,
in fact we started in the afternoon doing a loving-kindness practice for them and so on...
But it was really the first time that I imagined, close in,
where does it hurt?
That these were real beings, sentient beings and they were suffering.
So over recent years, as I mentioned, I've learned more
and for a while I was eating eggs as being a vegetarian and then
I found out that no matter where we get them - organic, free-range etc. -
when the chickens hatch, when the baby chickens hatch from their eggs,
all the males are ground up alive.
You can check it out, that just happens;
it's like at all, even the most organic free-range places, that's what they do,
with the male babies: they just grind them up alive.
And the females, then their beaks are cut
because they're in such squash quarters that they would scratch each other
too much, and so they would get their beaks cut.
So I've never toured an industrial farm or a slaughterhouse, but I have
watched films, and I do it on purpose
because I feel like part of waking up out of bias
is learning to look right into where the suffering is that we're not willing to look at
so I've kind of sat through them
and of course they're horribly disturbing; like if I imagine my dog
going through what these other mammals are going through
and, you know, in some way
living in a tiny pen so I can't move and then
you know, being herded and terrified into a slaughter
- like they ground them up and they know what's going on because the other
other animals are being killed right by them... it's inconceivable.
So, I mentioned that it's so hard for me to talk about because
it makes me weep.
And so I have this prayer that
more and more will move towards a plant-based diet;
not a rigidity like 'everyone should be a vegan' - it's not that.
It's can we collectively open our eyes to suffering and respond by moving in that direction.
Some people do it because they really get the
effect on planet Earth; this is considered the second
biggest environmental hazard to the earth, the first being fossil fuels.
Some do it for health... but for whatever the reason,
it's part of compassion to widen that circle.
So we're exploring unreal othering
and how to come above the line, wake up out of it,
and to know that all unreal othering is interconnected;
so whether we're unreal othering someone in our family because they're not cooperating,
or someone who's perceived of difference for their race or their religion,
all of it reinforces the same contraction of the heart, disconnection from compassion.
I was reading Dr. A. Breeze Harper and she's the author of 'Sistah Vegan',
it's a book about Black vegan, Black female vegans.
Well she organized a conference and it's called
'The vegan praxis of Black Lives Matter'
and it's really cool because as she's shown,
the whole purpose of the conference is to show anti-racism work goes hand in hand
with the dismantling of all oppressive systems, including those
that abuse and oppress non-human animals.
Dick Gregory says this, he says: 'Animals
and humans suffer and die alike.
Violence causes the same pain, the same spilling of blood,
the same stench of death, the same arrogant cruel and brutal
taking of life; we don't have to be part of it.'
So we close together with the reflection of how,
individually and collectively,
we can deepen our commitment to caring and action, to waking up these hearts.
And we begin by just remembering that
the path of awakening compassion has to be compassionate,
in other words, we can't guilt ourselves or blame ourselves,
because that just deepens the same suffering.
Instead it's that very sincere question:
'where does it hurt?'
You might remember the poet
Warsan Shire, she was born in Kenya and she's a British writer,
so she lived in both a dominant culture, which is kind of
you're marked by greed and exploitation, and a non-dominant, violated culture.
Here's what she writes:
'They set my aunt's house on fire.
I cried the way women on TV do, folding at the middle like a five-pound note.
I called the boy who used to love me, tried to say 'okay', my voice,
I said: 'Hello?', he said 'Warsan, what's wrong, what's happened?'
I've been praying, and these are what my prayers look like:
'Dear God, I come from two countries: one is thirsty, the other is on fire,
both need water.'
Later that night, I held an atlas in my lap,
ran my fingers across the whole world and whispered:
'where does it hurt?'
It answered: 'Everywhere, everywhere, everywhere.'
Our hearts are not free if there's any part of this living world we're excluding.
The hope of our humanity is that activists will get spiritual, will go for this all-inclusive
all-inclusive compassion
and those that are waking up their hearts will know to bring it into the world actively.
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