By Dr. Michael Tobias and Jane Gray Morrison

Following are excerpts from the article. Read the full article here.

The non-violence corollaries of Bhutan’s Buddhist legacy at first glance would appear unambiguous. The very founder of Bhutan’s dominant Drupka Kagyupa tradition of Tibetan Buddhism was the Venerable Jigten Sumgon (1143 -1217) a vegetarian like so many of the great teachers from Tibet, including Marpa, Milarepa and Padmasambhava. Buddhism commends complete abstinence from the consumption of flesh, or from being party to any form of harm to other life forms. In the Buddha’sMahaparinirvana Sutra, the Shakyamuni Buddha conveys to his Bodhisattva disciple, Kasyapa, “Oh Kasyapa! From now on, tell my disciples to refrain from eating any kind of meat.”⁴ Tibetan Buddhists largely refrain from any non-vegetarian consumption during the month of Buddha’s Birth and of his Enlightenment.5 In Bhutan, contemporary monastic tradition has, in some instances, also translated into a highly pro-active, if discrete stance with respect to saving animals from slaughter.

Ahimsa, the Jain principle of non-violence that was embraced by Mahatma Gandhi himself, derived from Buddha’s elder contemporary, Lord Mahavira, the 24th Jain Tirthankara. Gandhi recognized that while non-violence was one of the most important ideals worthy of human aspiration, he also believed that absolute nonviolence was not easily achieved. Nonetheless, one of Gandhi’s most powerful thoughts is encapsulated in his decree, “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.⁶ In a similar vein, Albert Einstein wrote, “Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.” Leonardo da Vinci had weighed in with the thought, “I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men.”

. . .

Just as Tibetan Buddhists try to refrain from any involvement in the destruction of animals during Holy periods, so too, do the Bhutanese. Discussions as to whether the consumption of meat is “un-Buddhist” constitute a very serious, ongoing debate within the country, but there is no escaping the reality that Bhutan, by conservative estimates, is no more than 15% vegetarian.

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Bhutan, as with some other nations, including Suriname, Germany, New Zealand and Canada, has engendered large amounts of protected area proportionate to their land base. Bhutan has also inspired other nations to institute their own versions of Gross National Happiness. For example, Mongolia, Costa Rica, Iceland and the Netherlands have each established “well-being indicators.” But, no country other than Bhutan has enshrined such an all-encompassing primary forest canopy policy in terms of constitutionally protecting a sizeable portion of its in situ forest biodiversity. That, in and of itself, places Bhutan in an animal rights league of its own considering the suite of taxa, compounded by the global average of 3 million individuals per species, dwelling within such a canopy. That, most assuredly, represents animal protection at a spectacular level. Suriname and Canada each have more hectares of “avoided deforestation” to date. And, the nearly 100 million vegetarians in India (or roughly 9% of the entire nation, Hindu, Buddhist and Jain) obviously constitute the world’s largest non-violent footprint. But Bhutan’s Buddhist values and conservation moral compass are suggestive, at the policy and judicial levels, of a powerful combination of sophisticated understatement, restraint, and pragmatic, heartfelt strategy.

4. See “Nirvana Sutra”, Chapter 7, in Lord Buddha’s On the Four Aspects.
6. See Mahatma Gandhi’s speech, “The Moral Basis of Vegetarianism”, The London Vegetarian Society, November 20, 1931.

By Michael Tobias and Jane Gray Morrison

In this essay Tobias and Morrison provide a very brief overview of the Jain environmental orientation in terms of its relevancy to current global ecological issues. This contains excerpts; you’ll find the full article here.

Reigning doctrines of Jain tradition focus upon that which is most ecological of all: a light human footprint in the guise of the all-encompassing ahimsa, non-intervention or non-violence; aparigraha, non-possession; moksha marg, the path of purification to enlightenment; anekant, tolerance and non-absolutism; and satya, truth in all dealings.The collective energies of these callings have harbored stunning revelations, evident not only in Jain art and architecture but — most importantly — in the driving forces of an ancient vegetarian community that is global, vibrant and dedicated to peace. Peace itself might well be equated with non-violence and, hence, ecological integrity.

. . .

In 2008, India ranked 13th on the aforementioned Environmental Protection Index, the U.S. 7th. Sweden ranked number one. These rankings are ambiguous, to be sure. But were an equivalent index of environmental impact to examine communities specifically, I suspect the Jain aggregate might well be number one in the world, given their traditional aversions to industries that destroy nature and their refusal to engage in practices of animal agriculture or personal consumption of animal products. Even Mahayana Buddhist Bhutan, with its population of 630,000, is only 15% vegetarian, according to recent data, although that country’s Gross National Happiness Index has injected a fantastic ingredient of environmental conservation, personal satisfaction, ethical jurisprudence, good governance and indigenous spirituality into the formulas for extrapolating what a successful country really means in the modern world.

. . .

Conditions for farm animals in India are dreadful, but no more so than in most nations of the world, where approximately 50 billion (in addition to another 30 billion or more fish) are slaughtered annually for human consumption. The Jain model of non-violence could not strike a more powerful and iconic antidote to this crisis which is sweeping the planet. Indeed, by scientific consensus as much as 60% of all life forms on earth may well go extinct by mid-century if current consumption trends continue. That’s 60% of as many as a 100 million species, each harboring millions of individuals. While the average American is consuming 125 kilograms of meat per year – with many of those animals reared on cleared rainforest – a vegetarian diet actually saves at least one acre of rain forest each year. Data from the Eastern Ecuadorian Amazon in the late 1990s showed that as many as 30,000 to 60,000 species may be native to any one acre of rain forest. A single South American termite nest has been shown to contain approximately 3million individuals and in Pennsylvania, one acre of land was found to host 425 million creatures.1 After all the math is computed, it turns out that one individual who refrains from eating other creatures and pursues a path of deliberate non-violence may actually save billions upon billions of life forms.

Written by Michael Charles Tobias and Jane Gray Morrison
A Dancing Star Foundation Book for 2011
Published by Zorba Press

This robust consideration of 21st century conservation and animal protection utilizes New Zealand as a primary case study in conflict resolution. With New Zealand history, economics, art, conservation biology and contemporary industry, technology and environmentalism as the working sweep of metaphors, the book examines numerous instances of success and failure throughout the world, where the goal is non-violence, as well as the fruitful reconciliation of human life with the rest of the biological creation. Issues involving animal rights, animal liberation, ecological islands, new advances in immuno-contraception for controlling non-native invasive species and the evolution of a paradigm that can embrace large ecosystem protection, as well as that of individuals, are just some of the issues discussed in the book.

Other areas of focus concern the conversion of one way of life, one industrial or cottage industry paradigm to another based upon compassion, prudent long-term thinking and a salient recognition of what the authors describe as “destruction in increments” (or, in traditional terms, the “tragedy of the commons”). Choices, patterns and precedents are examined in detail which collectively define the challenges and moral tensions inherent to achieving ecological peace on earth for all concerned – from New Zealand to Bhutan; from Greenland to the United States; throughout the European Union, South America, Russia, China, India; and in extraordinary instances gleaned from past and present anthropological and ethological record

The book outlines, in sum, a new revolutionary vision for human collectives based upon compassion and pragmatic idealism. It argues that New Zealand is one of those extraordinarily complex, and inspired nations that can lead the way.