The Buddha supposedly said, “What is that one thing, which when you possess, you have all other virtues? It is compassion.”
It is compassion that makes us human among the animal kingdom, and sets us apart from most of its remaining members. Other higher-order mammals, such as dolphins, whales, elephants, and primates — especially the great apes — all have it in their capacity to express compassion toward others of their own and even different species.
Speciesism is a doctrine that asserts the superiority of humans over all other life forms, and bases this false premise on an erroneous understanding of what is believed to be a God-given entitlement to “subdue the earth”. But this very doctrine of speciesism negates and cancels the idea of what it means to be made in the image and likeness of God; in other words, of what it means to be simply human.
To be truly human means one no longer sees one’s station as being “above” other races and other species in the Earth. We are not above the animals, we are *among* them; we are in fact one of them. Enslavement by humans of other humans and animals, for the sake of personal gain, comfort, benefit, or utility, is among the most egregious of sins. It is rooted, not in any God-given entitlement so called, but in arrogance based on ignorance. Inhumanity, then, is always inhumane no matter if it be perpetrated on man or beast.
It is when we possess gratitude for what we have, and have accrued at no expense and without resort to the harming of other sentient creatures, that we then are experiencing what it means to be truly human. A grateful heart makes a joyful soul, even as joyful souls make a peaceful world.
