Kim Stallwood

Issues surrounding suffering, not only experienced by humans and animals but also by myself as someone who spends a lot of time in melancholic thought, are something that I think about most of the time. I was impressed with how the Buddha answered these fundamentally important questions about the nature of suffering.

Buddhism and Engaged Buddhism offered me new insight into why we treat animals the way we do. And what can be done about it. I discovered it is possible to combine together what I learnt as an animal advocate with what I read in Buddhist ethics to form a new enlightened strategy to achieving moral and legal rights for animals. This influenced how my Animal Dharma came into being. This is why I chose truth, compassion, nonviolence and interbeing as my four key values. The foundations for my Animal Dharma are my social justice political advocacy combined with Buddhist ethics.

The Buddha taught about suffering in the Four Noble Truths.

The First Noble Truth is to acknowledge suffering as an integral part of the nature of life. The sorrows and joys we experience; life’s imperfections, frustrations and dissatisfactions; and the seeming impermanence of life, which is often in conflict with our attachment to things — they all contribute toward producing the suffering we experience.

The Second Noble Truth is to understand suffering as desires which occur like a “thirst” that accompanies all our emotions and thoughts. First, we acknowledge suffering’s existence and then we recognise our actions result in suffering for our selves and others.

The Third Noble Truth is to understand that suffering can be only stopped when we quench the thirst for desires, things and attachments. Buddhists call this perfected state Nirvana. Suffering can be prevented and stopped if we become more aware of ourselves and our actions.

The Fourth Noble Truth is the Middle Path which leads to realisation of Nirvana. It is insufficient to simply understand the Four Noble Truths. Nirvana can be attained only with effort. True selflessness and altruistic behaviour will help to prevent suffering and promote justice.

So, we can acknowledge suffering as something which is real in our lives; that suffering comes from our desires; that it is possible to end suffering; and there is a right way to extinguish suffering. These are the Four Noble Truths as taught by the Buddha, who also taught that the way to extinguish suffering is by following the Noble Eightfold Path, which describes how to live ethically, thereby redressing the in-balance we experience in the world.

Learn more about my forthcoming book, Animal Dharma, here.

My spiritual connection with veganism is with Buddhism and Engaged Buddhism. So, my spiritual approach to being vegan is material or, rather, my material vegan lifestyle is influenced by the spiritual message of Buddhism. Can I please be a secular-non-practicing-Buddhist-spiritual-grumpy-vegan?

This is why I find myself writing about the Way of Vegan, which is inspired by my learning about the Way of the Buddha. So, being vegan today is more than the material veganism of my past. But it has not become a spiritual practice either. My material cruelty-free vegan lifestyle is now influenced by my understanding and interpretation of the practical ethics within the practice of Buddhism. I want to keep one foot in the material vegan world and reach over with my other foot to touch with my toe a new world, the secular, ethical Buddhist vegan world. This is important to me today because I wish to infuse my life with my key values of truth, compassion, nonviolence and interbeing. It is not because I want an enlightened spirituality tomorrow.

The Way of the Buddha is the Middle Path taught by the Buddha to develop equally compassion (karuna) and wisdom (panna). The Middle Path inspires, in part, my commitment to achieving the moral and legal rights for animals by balancing the utopian vision of animal rights with the pragmatic politics of animal welfare. Buddhism inspires my animal advocacy practice because it offers important insight into understanding suffering. All suffering is my concern but it is how we treat animals that I particularly care about. We have already seen how the animal industrial complex is responsible for the exploitation of billions of animals annually. We are, of course, complicit with this exploitation because it is our consumerism which drives the consumption of animals that the animal industrial complex provides. Ourselves and the animal industrial complex are to blame for animal exploitation. But there is more to understand about animal exploitation than this view of it as a market place phenomena, with all its attendant issues of the alternative vegan lifestyle and animal advocacy.

The deeper understanding I sought about why we treat animals the way we do inspired me to read books about Buddhism, which lead me to also discover Engaged Buddhism, the application of Buddhism to the advancement of social justice. It was intriguing to learn, for example, the Buddha asked, What is suffering? What causes it? Is it possible to stop suffering? And, if so, how do we prevent suffering from occurring?

Learn more about my forthcoming book, Animal Dharma, here.

Being vegan is more than just adopting an optional, non-animal dependent, cruelty-free, material lifestyle. It is more than just the food we chose to eat, the clothes we wear and the things we fill our homes and lives with. Yes, as vegans, we should be proud that our cruelty-free lifestyle is not dependent upon animal exploitation. Estimate the number of animals you have not consumed since you stopped eating meat, eggs and dairy. Be proud of the number of animal lives you saved and your contribution toward creating a peaceful and compassionate world. For many years this was — and still is — my approach to being a vegan. I am a cruelty-free consumer. I am a vegelical. I promote veganism and animal rights whenever I can for the animals, the planet and our own well-being. But my thoughts and feelings about being vegan evolve, as I know they do for many. My challenge is to understand how my veganism changes and the impact it makes on my animal advocacy practice.

I am not saying you have to be religious to be vegan. Nor am I saying being vegan is belonging to a religion, although vegelicals often come across with a missionary zeal. Thankfully, Donald Watson, the founder of the Vegan Society of the UK in 1944, is not being acclaimed as a god of a new church espousing vegan spirituality. My inner grumpy vegan being ensures that anything which boils with the fervour of born again sentiment, including animal advocacy, is met with scepticism and disdain. Zealous vegelicalism of my past has evolved into sniffy vegelicalism of my present.

What I am trying to say is that my relationship to being vegan is different from when I first gave up all animal products. I feel there is something more about being vegan which is a progression from its material lifestyle aspects. Age and experience, and their attendant rewards of insight and wisdom, are making an impact on my understanding of what being vegan means. I am no longer willing to describe myself simply as a material vegan. But I do not consider myself to be a spiritual vegan either. So, what type of vegan am I?

Is there room in the house for a more-than-material-but-not-quite-spiritual-grumpy-vegan?

My forthcoming book, Animal Dharma, explores what it means to care deeply about animals and discovers how we can live peacefully with ourselves and others by proposing four key values: truth, compassion, nonviolence and interbeing–the interrelatedness of all.

This is the fourth in a series of podcasts in which I read out brief extracts from Animal Dharma. It is called “The Misanthropic Bunker.” When we live in a world which often seems to be floating in a sea of blood from the slaughter of billions of animals, it is tempting to hide in the misanthropic bunker. I explain why this isn’t an option if we want to achieve moral and legal rights for animals.

The Misanthropic Bunker

Please click here if you would like to listen to the first three podcasts from Animal Dharma “Camberley Kate Ward,” “Chicken Slaughterhouse” and “Becoming a Vegelical in the 1970s.”

My forthcoming book, Animal Dharma, explores what it means to care deeply about animals and discovers how we can live peacefully with ourselves and others by proposing four key values: truth, compassion, nonviolence and interbeing–the interrelatedness of all.

This is the third in a series of podcasts in which I read out brief extracts from Animal Dharma. It is called “Becoming a Vegelical in the 1970s.” I look back to what happened when I stopped eating meat when I was still living at home. Then, I became a vegan in 1976. There was now no turning back.

Becoming a Vegelical in the 1970s

Please click here if you would like to listen to the first two podcasts from Animal Dharma “Camberley Kate Ward” and “Chicken Slaughterhouse.”

My forthcoming book, Animal Dharma, explores what it means to care deeply about animals and discovers how we can live peacefully with ourselves and others by proposing four key values: truth, compassion, nonviolence and interbeing–the interrelatedness of all.

This is the second in a series of podcasts in which I read out brief extracts from Animal Dharma. It is called “Chicken Slaughterhouse.” I recall from my time as a student in England in the 1970s when I worked one summer in a chicken slaughterhouse. Who knew what impact this experience would have?

Chicken Slaughterhouse

Please click here if you would like to listen to the first podcast from Animal Dharma.

Camberley Kate Ward

My forthcoming book, Animal Dharma, explores what it means to care deeply about animals and discovers how we can live peacefully with ourselves and others by proposing four key values: truth, compassion, nonviolence and interbeing–the interrelatedness of all.

This is the first in a series of podcasts in which I read out brief extracts from Animal Dharma. The first is called “Camberley Kate Ward.” I recall from my childhood an elderly woman, Camberley Kate Ward, who rescued dogs. Did she plant the seed of compassion into my heart?

Camberley Kate Ward

Out of the Darkness: The Story of Mary Ellen Singer by Eric A. Shelman and Stephen Lazoritz, M.D.

As part of the preparation to writing my book, Animal Dharma, I have been researching Mary Ellen Wilson. She was the young girl in Manhattan in the late 1870s who was badly beaten and abused by a married couple who, under extraordinary circumstances, ended up ‘caring’ for her. The reason why Mary Ellen is so important is because she was rescued by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals as there was not equivalent organization to protect children. Henry Bergh founded the ASPCA in 1866 and went on to help establish the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children in 1874.

Presently, I’m reading a book, Out of the Darkness by Eric A. Shelman and Stephen Lazoirtz, M.D., which is a fact-based fictionalized account of what happened to Mary Ellen Wilson. It’s a fascinating chapter in the history of the animal rights movement, which I’m using as a signature topic to introduce the close relationship between human abuse and animal cruelty. Out of the Darkness may not be great literature but it is a great read as it brings vividly to life in my imagination an important moment when it was clearly demonstrated that those who rescued animals also cared for people. If only more people who cared about their own kind would think more about those who are other species.