Encyclopedia of animal rights and animal 518

Religion and Animals: Reverence for Life | 475 extend their caring and compassion not only to other human beings, but to dogs and halibut, turkeys and hogs As a result, many Hindus have been vegetarians for centuries, eschewing flesh in their diet, and also abstaining from reproductive eggs, such as chicken eggs Pantheistic and panentheistic religions, which teach that the divine is indwelling in the world around us, in all that exists in this great universe, also teaches respect for nature Pantheism and panentheism discourage human arrogance and pride, greed and dominion, which might otherwise lead people to believe that we are superior to nonhuman animals, that we are somehow separate and more important than other earthbound creatures Hinduism, like all great religions of the world, teaches people that every aspect of the natural world shares in the divine, is divine For pantheists and panentheists, the spiritual life demands respect and reverence for all living beings and for the natural world in general Hinduism provides but one example of earth-centered beliefs and their accompanying ethics Every religion teaches pantheism or panentheism in one form or another; each religion teaches that the world is sacred, and that every calf and garter snake holds some measure of the divine Further Reading Buck, William, trans 1973 Mahabharata Berkeley: University of California Dwivedi, O P 2000 Dharmic ecology In Christopher Key Chapple and Mary Evelyn Tucker, eds., Hinduism and ecology: The intersection of earth, sky, and water, 3–22 Cambridge: Harvard University Embree, Ainslee T., ed 1972 The Hindu tradition: Readings in Oriental thought New York: Vintage Harrison, Paul A 2004 Elements of pantheism Tamarac, FL: Llumina Press Nelson, Lance E 2000 Reading the Bhagavadgita from an Ecological Perspective In Christopher Key Chapple and Mary Evelyn Tucker, eds., Hinduism and ecology: The intersection of earth, sky, and water, 127–64 Cambridge: Harvard University Press Prabhavananda, Swami, and Manchester, Frederick, trans 1948 Svetasvatara Upanishad: The wisdom of the Hindu mystics: The Upanishads: Breath of the eternal New York: Mentor Lisa Kemmerer RELIGION AND ANIMALS: REVERENCE FOR LIFE Reverence for life is a concept pioneered by the Alsatian theologian and philosopher Albert Schweitzer in 1922 According to Schweitzer, ethics consists in experiencing a “compulsion to show to all will-to-live the same basic reverence as I to my own.” The relevance of Schweitzer’s thought to modern debates about animals is significant According to Schweitzer, other life forms have a value independent of humans, and our moral obligation follows from the experience and apprehension of this value This insight is essentially religious in character and therefore basic and nonnegotiable Schweitzer was undoubtedly prophetic “The time is coming,” he wrote, “when people will be astonished that mankind needed so long a time to learn to regard thoughtless injury to life as incompatible with ethics.” Further Reading Barsam, Ara Paul 2008 Reverence for life: Albert Schweitzer’s great contribution to ethical thought Oxford: Oxford University Press