can you explain why animals are considered lower realm

[Erin Wells]

Recently, my dog has developed a problem with her eyes. After a series of doctor visits, it turns out she has glaucoma, and I was warned that if her treatment is not successful, her eyes will have to be removed. The reason is her eyes will still cause considerable discomfort yet she will be blind, so there is no point in having them.

The veterinarian explained that although to a human this sounds terrible, that dogs do not feel sorry for themselves and easily morph their dependence on eyesight to their other senses and there is no indication at all that they suffer due to the loss of this sense. I have confirmed this by my own personal experience, my brother has a heinz57 little dog that evidently inherited some wiener dog genes that have rendered him blind, and he's the most joyful creature you ever met. He plays, chases, wags, loves, exactly like a sighted dog.

So my question for the monastics, why is the animal realm considered lower? To me, it seems that much of the suffering that the Buddha has offered us a lifeline to avoid is already avoided, by creatures that share our earth. I know animals have many times fewer choices, but they seem to already employ advanced spiritual techniques.

I don't think I could suddenly become blind and compensate without skipping a beat with my other senses, unless I was spiritually advanced. Or a dog.

Can you please shed light on what Buddha meant by animals in the lower realms? many thanks!

[Ajahn Brahmali]

Dear Erin,

The first important point is to remember is that the animal realm is very diverse. To be someone's pet animal is probably not very bad at all, but the vast majority of animals live in far worse conditions. As a monk I live very close to nature, and I can observe the kangaroos in our monastery very closely. Their suffering is very evident. Firstly, they are completely at the mercy of the weather. In winter when it rains, they are obviously very cold. On a hot sunny day, with their coat of fur, they are clearly very hot. Next, they are very afraid. They are always listening for threatening noises and they jump for fear whenever they hear an unfamiliar sound. And the kangaroos in our monastery are tame by comparison to the one's in the bush. The bush kangaroo's are so scared that if they scent you from a 100 metres away, they will start running at full speed. Then there is the greed and aggression. Most people think of kangaroos as cuddly animals, but the reality is that they have very little time for each other, always competing and fighting for food. Then there are all the parasites that live on their bodies, their injuries and other illnesses, their being shot regularly by the local farmers, their dying the most horrific and undignified deaths. And this is just what I have observed. I suspect there is a whole psychological dimension to this which I am not even aware of.

And it gets much worse. Kangaroos are among the higher animals. The vast majority of animals live in far worse conditions. Think of the billions of mosquitoes and flies, the trillions of worms and maggots, etc. Life for these beings is short and brutal. There's no compassion or understanding, no help or sympathy. It's dog eat dog, as they say!

I am sure being Erin's dog is a very nice life, but even being a pet can sometimes be very difficult. You are completely at the mercy of your owner. If they are violent or uncaring - which is not that uncommon - there is nothing you can do but suffer in silence.

That is all about the suffering of animals. Then there is their lack of possibility of spiritual growth. As an animal, you are basically trapped in samsara.

So, there's my perspective. And that's why I think animal rebirth is considered a lesser form.

With metta.

[Stuart Corner]

Hi Erin,

I would just like to add that dogs and humans live in different worlds - your dogs primary sense is smell, and this is how she primarily knows the world, whereas your primary sense is sight ...

... your dog has poor vision close-up - their eyes are more flattened than humans and they cannot alter the focal length of their lens as well as us - a dogs eyes are more sensitive to light and movement and so do much better at dusk for spotting moving prey at distance than we do, but their resolving power and colour perception is correspondingly much less, which is why they often cannot see something right under their noses ... if they are not using their good distance vision (as say a sheep dog does to see hand signals from the shepherd at distance) then there will be much less lost of their world when they go blind ...

... on the other hand a dogs sense of smell is legendary and is still to be beaten by the most sensitive electronic equipment we have - just a couple of facts - they have around 220 million scent receptors, we have about 5 million - an average size dog has about 7 square meters of nasal membrane, we have about half a metre (and we're bigger), they can smell in stereo, have mobile nostrils, their snouts have features that trap and accumulate odours, rather than flushing them out each time they breath (although they can do this when not sniffing) and they can follow scents by sniffing up the gradient in the air ...

... correspondingly the percentage of brain matter associated with sight appears to be large compared to smell in humans and the percentage of brain matter associated with smell appears to be large compared to sight in dogs ...

... the other thing to note is that humans are masters at manipulating their world and we tend to build our modern environment around our primary sense which means that we find it much harder to acclimatise if we loose our sight ...

... so maybe it might be better for you to try to imagine loosing your sense of smell as a comparison to your dog loosing their sight - it's not too hard to imagine as this often happens when we have a cold or blocked nose, and it's not such a big deal for humans.

Stuart
xxx

[Alex Blackford]

Awarness & Development

Hi

I agree with your observations on animals, as far as I have observed they do not hold grudges and almost completely live in the present moment. They have the ability to let go without difficulty going from angry to calm in an instant which is something us humans struggle with all too often.

Yet the problem with being an animal is more to do with awareness! Animals are bound to live by their programming and must live by their instincts and they have little ability to observe the world around them outside of their animal programming, a dog can only see the world as a dog and cow as a cow etc etc... If something causes a dog to be scared it will be scared, if it causes it to be angry it will be angry and if it causes it to suffer it will suffer yet we as humans have the ability to go beyond our programming and study and appreciate the world around us, we can learn to understand our feelings and emotions and embrace them to become better people than we were before.

We have the ability to learn how not to be bound and ruled by our instincts and emotions and use this understanding not just for our selves but for others including animals and make our lives happy and peaceful without the need for conflict, aggression and unnecessary suffering that can come from being bound to our emotions and instincts like an animal.

We therefore have the ability to work towards a permenant state of contentment and onwards towards enlightenment.


Alex

[Bhante Nandiya]

Animals live dominated by fear, with the exception of "alpha" animals who live dominating by fear. Most animals are intensely fearful, scattering at the slightest sound or movement. While it may not be obvious with pets, you should also consider that most animals have no friends and little friendliness. Even in pack/mob animals, there is often little friendliness and it's more grouping together for mutual protection. Pack/mob/flock animals often bully and terrorize those of lower ranking, particularly the weak (the idea of protecting the weak is uniquely human). Carnivores are often incredibly brutal to their own. For example male lions will kill cubs, and in many pack species females will kill each other's infants, this even occurs within the same pack, even between mothers/daughters/sisters. The idea of actually looking after another creatures baby is quite alien to many animals, they would rather kill the babies of others for the sake of competitiveness or just ignore it. Granted a few animals will adopt other's children, but this tends to be the exception rather than the rule. When a sheep's newborn lamb dies, the sheep can be induced to adopt another lamb, by skinning the dead lamb and putting the skin onto a live lamb. The mother will then recognize the lamb as it's own. Usually, a sheep wont look after a baby that isn't her own.
In bird nests, the fist-hatched will often kill the later-hatched, or just starve them out of existence. Many birds are prodigious eaters of other animals, they terminate hundreds of lives in a single day, either swallowed alive, or pecked to pieces, or dashed to death, all of those hundreds of lives would rather not have died that day, particularly to something which to us would be like a flying tyrannous rex (if you think it'd be a nice, quick, clean death, say that to the guy on the toilet in Jurassic Park 1).
Many kinds of animals which look kind of social, actually have very unpleasant social interactions. For example in duck species, the male is often much larger than the female and the point of this size-disparity would not so much seem to be to impress the ladies, but give them no choice. Drakes often mercilessly harass and bully female ducks since they have no need to be nice (and similar behavior is seen in many species with bigger males).

While it might seem that animals bear with this quite impressively, it might be accurately compared with how humans behave in a concentration camp, in what is actually seen is a form of submission due to chronic powerlessness. Animals which do have power, often abuse it relentlessly, as is also seen in humans who have absolute power.

I remember in Thailand, when I went with the monks on alms round, I saw two dogs. One had lost of all it's hair (I guess to disease), the other was licking it. It was quite touching, both the diseased dog fortitude, and the other dog's kindness. It's not that animals are in any way inferior as beings to humans, but on the whole their state of existence is far less pleasant with far more pain, it's called a state of deprivation because you're deprived of so much, and have to fight so much to just survive.

[Erin Wells]

Thank you for the posts. I misunderstood, that by lower realm the Buddha only means that realm contains more suffering.

My parent that raised me belonged to a Christian congregation that taught that animals are lower, they don't have minds or souls, they are put here by God for humans to use, and that God does not really care for them or offer them any salvation which is only for humans who are made in his image.

I could never understand how the creatures that outnumber us and share our planet could be so easily dismissed, since they seem to have many of our same feelings, and abilities that we don't have ( i had no idea how a dog's senses worked but it was interesting to hear Stuart's explanation)

Ajahn Brahmali's explanation of the life of the kangaroos I guess gives me a lot to think about. I am a city dweller, the animals I know are mostly pets. I don't get to observe the birds or other creatures around in depth.

But I do sometimes have to go support computers at the animal shelter, I dread going because you have to see the suffering of all the pets that end up there. And I suppose if you looked at global conditions for animals the shelter would not be considered a truly terrible place because they do have food, and fairly comfortable place to stay. In magazines like national geographic, sometimes the plight of creatures is so terrible, I can't bear to look at the photos or read the stories.

Thank you all for your replies.

[Erin Wells]

Also, now that I think about it, my dog is able to do okay because we are supporting her emotionally and keeping her comfortable with medications and the help of skillful doctors. If she were a wild animal she would go blind and I don't like to think of what her fate might be.

Even if not wild, I remember times when I had to be at the animal shelter and tearful owners turned in dogs to be euthanized that had medial problems that their owners could not afford to address.

So, again thanks to all. I was not understanding this at all correctly.

[Dee Randell]

Is protecting the weak solely a human trait? We'll see herds protecting young from attack by predators, lionesses attempting to rescue cubs that aren't their own. Even a recent study showing rats rescuing their companion over receiving chocolate treats.

Even for humans, protecting our weak seems to be a recent thing, looking after our elderly, caring for our impaired young as a community, even as a race. Whereas in the past maybe those people wouldn't have found such widespread compassion. Being poor and crippled in a 'poor' country even today doesn't mean you'll have protection and empathy from the wider community, maybe even be ostracized for being a perceived burden.

So I'm not sure, maybe empathy and compassion aren't solely for humans, but we can understand it, foster it and promote it better than animals?

But yes I think animals just have to endure without complaint.

[Ajahn Brahmali]

Dear Dee,

Good point! No doubt you are correct in pointing out that sympathy is possible also in the animal realm and that sometimes it is missing among humans. On average, however, I think humans are more compassionate than animals. Otherwise we wouldn't be humans in the first place!

With metta,
Ajahn Brahmali

[Bhante Nandiya]

Thank you for the posts. I misunderstood, that by lower realm the Buddha only means that realm contains more suffering.

My parent that raised me belonged to a Christian congregation that taught that animals are lower, they don't have minds or souls, they are put here by God for humans to use, and that God does not really care for them or offer them any salvation which is only for humans who are made in his image.

I could never understand how the creatures that outnumber us and share our planet could be so easily dismissed, since they seem to have many of our same feelings, and abilities that we don't have ( i had no idea how a dog's senses worked but it was interesting to hear Stuart's explanation)

In contrast, in Buddhism, all beings on the great merri-go-ground of samsara, take turns at being reborn in different realms. The Buddha speaks in a very matter of fact way about human->animal rebirth and vice-verca. Thus you may consider that there are no humans or animals, only beings who have been reborn as humans or animals.

[Erin Wells]

Bhante, that leads to some interesting thoughts.

I guess another question has come up, if it's okay to ask.

Most people I know are Christian, they are taught about an afterlife. Most seem to think they would like heaven to be true but think that it really probably isn't, and you probably just live, die, lights out and that's the end of that.

But, if there is rebirth you have lived many many times, as dogs, bugs, birds, humans, dog again. And this is samsara.

Isn't it kind of the same thing though, rebirth or not life is sometimes happy, somtimes not, but at the end of every life to the creature living it, it just the end. And if you don't know you're cycling around, how does it make a difference if you get off the merry go round?

[Ajahn Brahmali]

Dear Erin,

This is a kind of ignorance is bliss argument!

Imagine you could wipe out all your memories of the past. Would you then be willing to wake tomorrow in terrible suffering?

With metta.

[Erin Wells]

Ajahn Brahmali and all
thanks for your posts

In my experience, ignorance isn't bliss it just means you get hit harder because when you don't know you aren't ready for it.

I find no matter how old I get, what experiences I have, I never found the teaching of the Buddha to be wrong (even though some things I thought a long time ago there was no way they were true had a funny way of turning out to be right).

Maybe someday it will come clear.

[Stuart Corner]

Hi Erin,

... all beings are the owner of their actions, heir to their actions, born of their actions, related through their actions, and have their actions as their arbitrator. Whatever they do, for good or for evil, to that will they fall heir ... from AN 5.57

inheritance is often a bequest from a parent to their children, so one way to look at it is to see our 'future selves' as if they are our children ... most people want the best for their children, so how do we make sure that we leave our 'future selves' a good inheritance? - well, it would be good for them to be born in the human or deva realm, better for them to be born in the human or deva realm and to hear the dhamma, but best of all would be to give them the gift of a shot at complete freedom from suffering by entering the stream - this way walking the path becomes (in part) an act of generosity made out of compassion for our future selves.

Stuart
xxx

[Richard Nagyfi]

Dear Erin,

This is a kind of ignorance is bliss argument!

Imagine you could wipe out all your memories of the past. Would you then be willing to wake tomorrow in terrible suffering?

With metta.

That was one awesome answer!

By the way Erin, our pet Spaniel has ceased recently. She lived a really luxurious life, we spoiled her in every way possible. We loved her so much, that our friends kept telling us, that if they could wish for any kind of life for themselves, they would all wish to become a dog at our house. However, it became clear to me really quickly, that no matter how much comfort we are providing, our little pet doggy will always have a lot of suffering in her life that we can not do anything about. Germs, fleas, thicks, tummy aches, etc, they are all minor irritations that all dogs have to endure troughout their lives. Our dog also had the bad habbit of being afraid of thunderstorms. She had associated a bad experience with storms as a pup, and couldnt relearn how to react to them. Every time a storm would come, she would go crazy and try to chase the rainy clouds, until the storm was over. Obvioulsy her barking and running until near exhaustion never had any effect on the weather, but her seeing the clouds disappear would give her positive reinforcement, that it actually worked. If she was human we could just tell her, that there is no point chasing the rain - since she was a dog, all we could do is dry her dirty fur and scold her.

Also: thanks for the info on dog nostrils Stuart, it was interesting