Yet for all the ease with which we connect and feel close to our pets and other animals, we all too often remain indifferent to the suffering of animals in general. As we smile at our pet’s antics or admire the qualities other animals display in the videos we enjoy so much, I think it would be good to reflect on our impact on the lives of animals more broadly. Many animals suffer terribly because they are put to work for our pleasure and comfort, or are raised for slaughter to satisfy our appetite for their flesh. We are able to be tender and loving toward the pet who sits at our side and yet be causing unbearable pain to the animals whose meat sits on our plate. We find this thoughts distasteful, and so we mentally distance ourselves by not tracing out the chains of causality and interdependence that link our bite of meat to the distress and terror of animals crowded together in narrow cages or filthy cattle yards. Our own taste for meat is a condition that makes us complicit in a chain of causal actions that results in suffering that we would never stomach if we had to watch it. That suffering is caused by us human beings and is rooted in our failure to recognize our connectedness to those beyond our immediate field of vision.

17th Karmapa
from the book Interconnected: Embracing Life in Our Global Society
Read a random quote or see all quotes by the 17th Karmapa.
Further quotes from the book Interconnected:
- Our intimate dependence on the natural environment
- Extend yourself and connect
- The opportunity to love
- Noticing the collective effects of our individual actions
- The full vividness of direct contact
- Time to act
- Recollecting kindness
- Outer and inner world
- Interdependent individual
- Freedom
- Knowing more is not a substitute for feeling more
- The best way to love oneself
- Gratitude
- Focusing on our inner interdependence
- A main condition for our selfishness
- Inner freedom is key
- His Loneliness
- Enthusiastically benefiting whomever we come in contact with
- Extending gratitude in all directions
- Limitless aspirations