Theos-Talk Archives (April 2005 Message tt00384)

WHY DO ANIMALS SUFFER?
Article by H. P. Blavatsky
Q. Is it possible for me who love the animals to learn how to get 
more power than I have to help them in their sufferings? 

A. Genuine unselfish LOVE combined with WILL is a "power" in itself. 
They who love animals ought to show that affection in a more 
efficient way than by covering their pets with ribbons and sending 
them to howl and scratch at the prize exhibitions. 


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Q. Why do the noblest animals suffer so much at the hands men? I need 
not enlarge or try to explain this question. Cities e torture places 
for the animals who can be turned to any account for use or amusement 
by man! and these are always the most noble. 

A. In the Sutras, or the Aphorisms of the Karma-pa, a sect which is 
an offshoot of the great Gelukpa (yellow caps) sect in Tibet, and 
whose name bespeaks its tenets--"the believers in the efficacy of 
Karma," (action, or good works)--an Upasaka inquires of his Master, 
why the fate of the poor animals had so changed of late? Never was an 
animal killed or treated unkindly the vicinity of Buddhist or other 
temples in China, in days of old, while now, they are slaughtered and 
freely sold at the markets of various cities, etc. The answer is 
suggestive: 

. . . "Lay not nature under the accusation of this unparalleled 
justice. Do not seek in vain for Karmic effects to explain the 
cruelty for the Tenbrel Chugnyi (causal connection, Nidâna) shall 
teach thee none. It is the unwelcome advent of the Peling Christian 
foreigner), whose three fierce gods refused to provide for the 
protection of the weak and little ones (animals), that is answerable 
for the ceaseless and heartrending sufferings of our dumb 
companions." . . . 

The answer to the above query is here in a nutshell. It may be 
useful, if once more disagreeable, to some religionists to be told 
that the blame for this universal suffering falls entirely upon our 
Western religion and early education. Every philosophical Eastern 
system, every religion and sect in antiquity--the Brahmanical, 
Egyptian, Chinese and finally, the purest as the noblest of all the 
existing systems of ethics, Buddhism--inculcates kindness and 
protection to every living creature, from animal and bird down to the 
creeping thing and even the reptile. Alone, our Western religion 
stands in its isolation, as a monument of the most gigantic human 
selfishness ever evolved by human brain, without one word in favor 
of, or for the protection of the poor animal. Quite the reverse. For 
theology, underlining a sentence in the Jehovistic chapter 
of "Creation," interprets it as a proof that animals, as all the 
rest, were created for man! Ergo--sport has become one of the noblest 
amusements of the upper ten. Hence--poor innocent birds wounded, 
tortured and killed every autumn by the million, all over the 
Christian countries, for man's recreation. Hence also, unkindness, 
often cold-blooded cruelty, during the youth of horse and bullock, 
brutal indifference to its fate when age has rendered it unfit for 
work, and ingratitude after years of hard labour for, and in the 
service of man. In whatever country the European steps in, there 
begins the slaughter of the animals and their useless decimation. 

"Has the prisoner ever killed for his pleasure animals?" inquired a 
Buddhist Judge at a border town in China, infected with pious 
European Churchmen and missionaries, of a man accused of having 
murdered his sister. And having been answered in the affirmative, as 
the prisoner had been a servant in the employ of a Russian 
colonel, "a mighty hunter before the Lord," the Judge had no need of 
any other evidence and the murderer was found "guilty"--justly, as 
his subsequent confession proved. 

Is Christianity or even the Christian layman to be blamed for it? 
Neither. It is the pernicious system of theology, long centuries of 
theocracy, and the ferocious, ever-increasing selfishness in the 
Western civilized countries. What can we do? 

Lucifer, May, 1888