Buddhist animal rescue: press and tour info

[Guest guest]

The below article is about Lama Kunzang Dorjee who is touring the USA right now

for the schedule please see: www.animalsavingtrust.org

Bhutanese Lama Saves Animals from Slaughter

 

A Buddhist teacher in Bhutan has set up an unusual network of sanctuaries in the

hills and jungles of the tiny Himalayan kingdom and in its giant neighbor India

to care for hundreds of animals saved from slaughter.

“I would like to save as many animals as I can, but it won’t be possible to save

them all,” the lama, Kunzang Dorjee, said in an interview. “No one can do that.

But we have to do whatever we can.”

 

Monasteries and private individuals have donated funds for the sanctuaries, Lama

Kunzang said. Money has even been raised by taxi drivers who support his work.

Bhutan’s government also pays a small amount.

 

Saving animals is common among Buddhists, who believe saving the lives of other

sentient beings will create positive karma that can affect the nature of future

rebirths. Saving the lives of animals destined for slaughter is frequently

prescribed by lamas as a form of spiritual practice.

 

I would like to save as many animals as I can, but it won’t be possible to

save them all,

 

Lama Kunzang Dorjee

 

Lama Kunzang said that butchers have also called to see if they can sell their

animals, and that this has sometimes led to difficulties. “They would raise the

price, but we would try to negotiate and bring them down,” he said.

 

Local villagers paid by Lama Kunzang now feed and look after the animals he has

saved so that they can live out their lives in peace.

 

Lama Kunzang began to rescue animals seven years ago, he said, when five bulls

escaped from a slaughterhouse and made their way directly to his monastery in

Kalimpong, India, passing other houses on the way.

 

The bulls refused to leave the temple grounds, and it seemed to him that they

were seeking help, Lama Kunzang said.

 

When a butcher arrived to reclaim the bulls, Lama Kunzang bought the animals and

kept them at his monastery. Later, Lama Kunzang said, he was also moved to pity

when he saw bulls running from a slaughterhouse in neighboring Sikkim.

 

“So, I thought this was some kind of message for me—that this was my destiny,

what I should be doing,” he said.

 

“I thought to have [these sanctuaries] in every part of Bhutan, so that people

would look at that and some people would become vegetarian, and even so that the

people who slaughter would abandon that work,” he said.

 

Zach Larson, an American Buddhist and editor of the recently published book

Compassionate Action, said the practice—called tse-thar in Tibetan—of saving

animals is actively promoted by one of his own teachers, a Tibetan lama now in

his 90s living in Nepal.

 

“Chatral Rinpoche himself, every year, saves anything from insects and reptiles

to all kinds of mammals, birds, or fish,” Larson said.

 

“Chatral Rinpoche is most famous for his annual fish release in Calcutta, India.

He purchases 70 truckloads of fish which have been live-caught to be sold, and

purchases them so they can be released back into a protected part of the Indian

Ocean.”

 

“So that’s several million fish,” Larson said.

 

“According to the Tibetan Buddhist view, there is no real hierarchy among

nonhuman sentient beings,” Larson said. “So they don’t differentiate between

saving the life of an insect when you have the opportunity, or saving the life

of a yak or a frog.”

 

Though “merit,” a kind of positive energy, can be gained by saving lives, Larson

said, this is always dedicated to the further benefit of others and never for

one’s personal advantage alone.

 

“So at no point do you want to do something like tse-thar for your own

meritorious benefit, such as: ‘This will help me have a longer life. This will

help me gain more money.’ That is not the proper motivation.”

 

Virginia-based psychologist and Buddhist practitioner Lorne Ladner, a student of

the Tibetan lama Zopa Rinpoche, said he has practiced tse-thar with friends, and

this has led to a feeling of deeper connection among the group and with the

animals being saved.

 

Ladner called tse-thar the “real” practice of compassion. “It’s one thing when

you sit alone in a room and you sort of think about compassion. But it’s another

thing when you have a sentient being in your hands.”

 

Original reporting by Richard Finney. Edited for the Web by Sarah Jackson-Han.