Janet Gyatso, Talk title: Being with Animals: Buddhist Resources
January 27, 2022
This talk will explore what we can see when we pay close attention to animals, and what doing this can teach us about the value of the animal world. It will draw upon Buddhist notions of compassion and theories around meditation and other forms of self-cultivation. It will also touch on best practices with pets and other animals in our world today.
0:00 Introduction
8:06 Janet's introduction and formative experiences
18:53 Practicing watching and enjoying animals
31:16 The Buddhist foundations and broader questions of this work
41:00 The virtues we can learn from animals
44:47 Ethical conundrums in this project
47:44 Q&A: Encountering animals in meditation
50:58 Q&A: Animals' protective nature and deconditioning our understanding of them
57:38 Q&A: Negotiating Buddhist descriptions of animal inferiority
1:02:33 Q&A: Humanizing animals? Treating other humans with compassion
1:06:50 Q&A: Cats saving a child in India
1:08:10 Q&A: The role of other humans in our re-conditioning / loving different animals differently
1:17:44 Q&A: Clarifying Buddhist discourses on animals
1:20:57 Q&A: Animals having bodhisattva qualities
1:23:49 Q&A: Animals which resist being meditated upon
1:26:41 Concluding remarks
