"Adolf Hitler was an animal lover to the extent of being a strict vegetarian. While loving animals like that, he slaughtered six million human beings from the Jewish community alone during a short period of five years." by Gamini Viyangoda
(December, 22. Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) In 1982 the cattle population in Sri Lanka had been 6.7 million, the Ven. Athuraliye Rathana Thero has said while participating in budget debate in parliament. Out of this, cattle had constituted 1.3 million while the rest were buffaloes. But by 2000, this cattle population had decreased by 114,000, the Thero had sadly pointed out.
It is not clear whether his sadness is caused because the cattle population is being dwindled as an economic resource or because he is upholding the cattle's right to life as a supreme principle. As he is a Buddhist monk and is drawing on the Buddhist tradition and going by the spiritual values of Buddhism, we can safely presume that it was his pure compassion for animals that had inspired him in bringing this matter up in parliament.
If that is the case, we would further expect him to stand up for the cause of other animals' rights as well; like chicken, pigs, sheep, fish etc., for in Buddhism no animal is to be deprived of life for whatever reason.
Brigitte Bardot, a popular actress who is spearheading an animals' rights organisation in France had a poster campaign some time back to sensitise her society to the plight of animals at the cruel hand of the so-called civilised man.
In that poster I can remember, some of the animals depicted were a dog, cat, seal, fish and a horse. One thing, I vividly remember was - the list had no animal that is taken as a delicacy in the Western menu! Brigitte Bardot does not subscribe to the Buddhist creed. Hence she has the right of preferential compassion towards the animal kingdom. That is why there was not a single animal that she liked to eat in this list of so-called 'poor creatures' depicted in the poster.
But Ven. Athuraliye Thero being a Buddhist monk cannot claim to have the same right. As long as he is in a saffron robe he is duty bound to protect not only cattle but also all other animals, including chicken, goats, pigs etc., that are voraciously consumed in Sri Lanka.
This special compassion for cattle is to be generally seen in our society, which I suspect to be a Hindu influence. Those who don't eat beef but eat other meat always rationalise the discrepancy by pointing out to the usefulness of a cow in our daily life.
So, as a mark of respect to the service a cow had rendered to man in the agrarian society, we should refrain from eating its meat -- the argument goes. Usefulness may be a strong ground for Brigitte Bardot to use a discriminative yardstick to love animals and eat animals at the same time according to her palate's desires, but Buddhism has no place for such discrimination.
On Poya days all butcheries are closed in this 'virtuous' Sri Lanka. Even in supermarkets meat is not available but fish is in plenty. Not only that, by-products of meat like sausages can be bought. Once I asked a salesgirl jokingly whether it was not a lesser sin to sell one bullock's meat than selling thousands of sprats on a Poya day. How the flesh of a fish is not considered as meat is beyond my comprehension.
Such contradictions abound when a country is going to be governed by pseudo ethos no one seriously adheres to. The prohibition of showing scenes of smoking and taking of alcohol even if such scenes constitute an integral artistic part of the film is laughable, to say the least. In some films, while the scene where the offending bottle of arrack is discernible is ruthlessly censored, its follow-up, namely the same drunken man staggering towards his home and beating his wife or killing someone under intoxication is shown with no qualms!
The cattle population in New Zealand is nine million, double that of its human population which is 4.5 million, the Ven. Thero pointed out. The fact that a country where there are more cattle than human beings happens to be more developed than Sri Lanka is interesting material for some academic research, I suppose.
It is true that environment friendly political thinking is firmly taking root in the developed world? We can see 'green parties' exercising immense power in Australia, New Zealand and Europe.
But one thing is certain: that these people have ventured into rights of the animal kingdom only after ensuring -- not only in legal terms but also in social conventions -- the basic rights of human beings. Before the '70s when human rights were not firmly codified and faithfully adhered to, there were no 'Greens' as such in politics.
Now, what is the principled stand of the political party that Ven. Athuraliye Rathana Thero represents in parliament on this point? According to them, there is no ethnic problem but a terrorist problem in Sri Lanka, which has to be crushed militarily. What instantly comes to my mind is the ancient story of Angulimala who was a bloody terrorist to whom Lord Buddha preached the dhamma.
Before protecting the cattle population, we as laymen in general and they as Buddhist monks in particular, should strive to protect human beings. If the President or any other minister campaigns for war and asks for the blood of the enemy, they as Bhikkus who are coalition partners in the government should discourage that destructive tendency and make some concerted effort to seek a peaceful solution. Under no circumstances are they permitted to condone violence, directly or indirectly.
The parcel bomb in Nugegoda recently took 19 innocent lives including that of a little school girl. The LTTE is alleged to be the perpetrator of this heinous crime. Three days prior to that, 11 school girls travelling in a bus near Kilinochchi were killed by a claymore bomb alleged to have been masterminded by government security forces or their paramilitary groups. Now, is there any difference in the value of life between that of the girl killed in the south (Nugegoda) and the girls killed in the north (Kilinochchi)?
We witness this type of killings in Iraq on a daily basis. Even today a female suicide bomber has exploded herself killing 16 people and injuring 27 in Iraq. There, rather than accusing those human bombs we tend to hold George W. Bush as culpable for making Iraq a killing field. The picture of Saddam Hussein's Iraq that George W. Bush tried to portray as a menace of terrorism at the beginning of the invasion is in tatters today even in his own camp.
Adolf Hitler was an animal lover to the extent of being a strict vegetarian. While loving animals like that, he slaughtered six million human beings from the Jewish community alone during a short period of five years.
That Brigitte Bardot, today in her old age is an activist in the extreme right anti-Semitic National Front in France, which denies the historical existence of concentration camps and gas chambers in Europe does not stop her still fondly loving animals!
It is good to love animals. But it is better to love human beings first.
(December, 22. Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) In 1982 the cattle population in Sri Lanka had been 6.7 million, the Ven. Athuraliye Rathana Thero has said while participating in budget debate in parliament. Out of this, cattle had constituted 1.3 million while the rest were buffaloes. But by 2000, this cattle population had decreased by 114,000, the Thero had sadly pointed out.
It is not clear whether his sadness is caused because the cattle population is being dwindled as an economic resource or because he is upholding the cattle's right to life as a supreme principle. As he is a Buddhist monk and is drawing on the Buddhist tradition and going by the spiritual values of Buddhism, we can safely presume that it was his pure compassion for animals that had inspired him in bringing this matter up in parliament.
If that is the case, we would further expect him to stand up for the cause of other animals' rights as well; like chicken, pigs, sheep, fish etc., for in Buddhism no animal is to be deprived of life for whatever reason.
Brigitte Bardot, a popular actress who is spearheading an animals' rights organisation in France had a poster campaign some time back to sensitise her society to the plight of animals at the cruel hand of the so-called civilised man.
In that poster I can remember, some of the animals depicted were a dog, cat, seal, fish and a horse. One thing, I vividly remember was - the list had no animal that is taken as a delicacy in the Western menu! Brigitte Bardot does not subscribe to the Buddhist creed. Hence she has the right of preferential compassion towards the animal kingdom. That is why there was not a single animal that she liked to eat in this list of so-called 'poor creatures' depicted in the poster.
But Ven. Athuraliye Thero being a Buddhist monk cannot claim to have the same right. As long as he is in a saffron robe he is duty bound to protect not only cattle but also all other animals, including chicken, goats, pigs etc., that are voraciously consumed in Sri Lanka.
This special compassion for cattle is to be generally seen in our society, which I suspect to be a Hindu influence. Those who don't eat beef but eat other meat always rationalise the discrepancy by pointing out to the usefulness of a cow in our daily life.
So, as a mark of respect to the service a cow had rendered to man in the agrarian society, we should refrain from eating its meat -- the argument goes. Usefulness may be a strong ground for Brigitte Bardot to use a discriminative yardstick to love animals and eat animals at the same time according to her palate's desires, but Buddhism has no place for such discrimination.
On Poya days all butcheries are closed in this 'virtuous' Sri Lanka. Even in supermarkets meat is not available but fish is in plenty. Not only that, by-products of meat like sausages can be bought. Once I asked a salesgirl jokingly whether it was not a lesser sin to sell one bullock's meat than selling thousands of sprats on a Poya day. How the flesh of a fish is not considered as meat is beyond my comprehension.
Such contradictions abound when a country is going to be governed by pseudo ethos no one seriously adheres to. The prohibition of showing scenes of smoking and taking of alcohol even if such scenes constitute an integral artistic part of the film is laughable, to say the least. In some films, while the scene where the offending bottle of arrack is discernible is ruthlessly censored, its follow-up, namely the same drunken man staggering towards his home and beating his wife or killing someone under intoxication is shown with no qualms!
The cattle population in New Zealand is nine million, double that of its human population which is 4.5 million, the Ven. Thero pointed out. The fact that a country where there are more cattle than human beings happens to be more developed than Sri Lanka is interesting material for some academic research, I suppose.
It is true that environment friendly political thinking is firmly taking root in the developed world? We can see 'green parties' exercising immense power in Australia, New Zealand and Europe.
But one thing is certain: that these people have ventured into rights of the animal kingdom only after ensuring -- not only in legal terms but also in social conventions -- the basic rights of human beings. Before the '70s when human rights were not firmly codified and faithfully adhered to, there were no 'Greens' as such in politics.
Now, what is the principled stand of the political party that Ven. Athuraliye Rathana Thero represents in parliament on this point? According to them, there is no ethnic problem but a terrorist problem in Sri Lanka, which has to be crushed militarily. What instantly comes to my mind is the ancient story of Angulimala who was a bloody terrorist to whom Lord Buddha preached the dhamma.
Before protecting the cattle population, we as laymen in general and they as Buddhist monks in particular, should strive to protect human beings. If the President or any other minister campaigns for war and asks for the blood of the enemy, they as Bhikkus who are coalition partners in the government should discourage that destructive tendency and make some concerted effort to seek a peaceful solution. Under no circumstances are they permitted to condone violence, directly or indirectly.
The parcel bomb in Nugegoda recently took 19 innocent lives including that of a little school girl. The LTTE is alleged to be the perpetrator of this heinous crime. Three days prior to that, 11 school girls travelling in a bus near Kilinochchi were killed by a claymore bomb alleged to have been masterminded by government security forces or their paramilitary groups. Now, is there any difference in the value of life between that of the girl killed in the south (Nugegoda) and the girls killed in the north (Kilinochchi)?
We witness this type of killings in Iraq on a daily basis. Even today a female suicide bomber has exploded herself killing 16 people and injuring 27 in Iraq. There, rather than accusing those human bombs we tend to hold George W. Bush as culpable for making Iraq a killing field. The picture of Saddam Hussein's Iraq that George W. Bush tried to portray as a menace of terrorism at the beginning of the invasion is in tatters today even in his own camp.
Adolf Hitler was an animal lover to the extent of being a strict vegetarian. While loving animals like that, he slaughtered six million human beings from the Jewish community alone during a short period of five years.
That Brigitte Bardot, today in her old age is an activist in the extreme right anti-Semitic National Front in France, which denies the historical existence of concentration camps and gas chambers in Europe does not stop her still fondly loving animals!
It is good to love animals. But it is better to love human beings first.
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