Ordinary Grief - the Hopelessness of Hope

Grief is an expression of letting go of our hopes - or our desire for the world to be other than it is - as those hopes dissolve and sink in the inevitable and uncontrollable tides of life.

A series of recent experiences find me grieving.

But the genesis of these thoughts on grief was in my first experience of total grief as an opening. A reservoir of grief associated with killing animals. Something I had done to feed my family for more than 10 years. Animals we raised on the farm. Animals that we treated kindly, fed and nurtured... only one day to separate them from their herd, single them out and then kill them. Up close and personal. Looking them in the eye. Ending their life. Skinning them, gutting them, dismembering them, slicing and chopping them. Feeding them to our children and our dogs.

The brutality and violence. The ultimate betrayal.

All this I had done willingly, without real reservation and only a little trepidation around minimising suffering for the animal. The grief was never acknowledged or even really sensed. But it was stored.

One day, when I had enough space to notice, it came pouring out, along with a thousand other griefs stored in my life, in a stream of tears that lasted days. An enormous reservoir of unacknowledged grief that cracked, crumbled and left me wondering if I would drown, if I would ever recover.

I didn't recover, nor would I want to. Since that time I have felt every grief more clearly.

What I did discover was an opening. The suffering was not necessary. Instead it was contingent on my confused relationship with conflicting hopes and desires that were overriding an innate kindness and compassion. I stopped killing animals and found different ways to feed myself, my family and my dogs. The font of that grief ceased to flow the day I resolved to stop killing.

But the sources of grief are myriad. Farming, like life more generally, provides endless circumstances to activate our complex and conflicting hopes. Little griefs around the weather, what people will pay for what we grow, the fickle markets, the relentless regulatory and administrative burden...

For the past few weeks I have been grieving the loss of more complex hopes - for unfulfilled plans for the farm, lost potential in relationships that I value, and the slow dismantling of stories that I have used to explain and justify my being here now.

I have the choice to sink or swim. Sometimes, even when I would like to swim, it is hard to know which way is up. It has been like that recently. Dumped by the waves of life's ocean, I have swirled, struggling to breathe, vision a blur, wondering, as so often before - When will I surface?

This time however, for the first time, there is a second question - Can I surface without clinging to a new set of hopes?

Hope is delusion

In Peace is Every Step, Thich Nhat Hanh suggests that hope can be an obstacle to peace in our daily lives.

I had recently come to a similar conclusion.

Hope is about wishing for things to be other than they are. It is a form of desire, and an easily accessible distraction from being in the present moment.

Desire is human and probably unavoidable. Obviously, a capacity to succumb to our unskillful desires is a powerful source of suffering.

But not all desires are unhelpful or unskillful. Desire can help to develop intention and provide impetus for action in the present moment. When our desires are for skilful action, and to ameliorate suffering, they can be a powerful force in practice in the present moment.

However, even with skilful desires we can suffer. In this case it is the delusion around our skilful desires, rather than the desire itself, that can lead to suffering.

The delusions include the belief that we are in control of the fulfilment of our desires, that once fulfilled they will bring happiness, and that we can predict conditions for our future happiness. These are expressions of the fundamental human delusions about satisfaction, permanence and independence.

The attachment or clinging to the desire, in the face of these delusions, leaves no room for the present or for an uncertain future.

Recently I have been struggling with my hopes and desires.

We are changing our farm in a purposeful way in response to our values and our changing circumstances. This planning process is useful in coordinating our intention and motivating us to create a better farm.

It is also a trap. It is very easy to attach hope to the elements and timeline of such a plan. Inevitably, our hopes take us away from now, and freeze a view of our happy future. Suddenly the plan gets in the way of engaging with the present moment and accepting that the future is ultimately beyond our control. It gets in the way of accepting our ongoing capacity for dissatisfaction and the realities of future uncertainty and a conditioned arising well beyond our control.

In one short step our hope can become a source of agitation, frustration and misery.

Breaking up the Family Farm

A couple of days ago a wave hit my universe. My parents clearly indicated that they are looking to move on from the farm.

For 17 years we have run a family farm. My wife and I, our children and my parents.

During this time our circumstances have inevitably changed. We started with four adults working closely together on a common aim. Over the past 8 years I have increasingly worked alone with assistance from those around me when their time and energy permits.

That transition has not been an easy one. I have struggled with a sense of purpose, a sense of value, a sense of connection and usefulness, what it means to be a 'man', what it means to be human, what is required for a good life and what is enough.

All these questions have swirled in my head as I participate in (and try to manage?) the complex dynamics of eight closely related people while transforming a farming business to more closely align with my ethics, raising a family in a stable and loving environment, cultivating the loving relationship with my partner, supporting my parents and contributing positively to the broader community that supports our existence.

My parents' intention to leave presents a painful irony, and also provides a 'lesson' for practice.

A large part of our motivation for a family farm was to be available to my parents in the latter stages of their lives. To be close enough to offer support, but also to give them the opportunity to be involved in something meaningful (family & farm), at whatever level they were capable, for as long as they liked. I had imagined a contented and contributing 'retirement', a slow withdrawal to a comfortable and supported sunset of their lives.

The obvious irony is that, despite our good intentions, our fantasy was different to my parents' imagined future existence and from their lived experience. They no longer want what we thought they would want (if ever they did), and it is also likely that we behaved other than they expected.

The less obvious irony is that I have arrived at an intellectual resolution of many of my personal struggles. This allows a lived experience of relative joy, love, compassion and occasional equanimity.

However, I still find my tendency is to react rather than to respond in the face of this major and immediate uncertainty. Equally disturbing is my immediate reactive focus on material rather than emotional and existential concerns.

How easy it is for immediate circumstance to subvert the practice of years. How quickly the joy, love, compassion and equanimity flee in the face of difficult circumstances.

On the one hand it is a relief to be able to recognise that I have reached the boundaries of my skill. On the other, it is painful to know that the embodiment of my practice still rests on such ambiguous and fragile foundations!

Sitting vs Doing

This morning I was reading Thich Nhat Hanh's Living Buddha, Living Christ. TNH writes:

If you read the Bible  but do not practice, it will not help much. In Buddhism, practicing the teaching of the Buddha is the highest form of prayer. The Buddha said, “If someone is standing on one shore and wants to get to the other shore, he has to either use  a boat or swim across. He cannot just pray, ‘Oh, other shore, please come over here for me to step across!’”. To a Buddhist, praying without practicing is not real prayer.

I have always thought of prayer as a form of meditation. I have always thought that prayer was designed to help inform our day to day interaction with the world. 

Similarly, I have always thought the object of formal meditation is to nourish and inform our daily practice of life/the dharma.

Formal mediation helps me to lead a more ‘meditative’ life. The experience of sitting meditation, in all the forms that I practice, assists me in more fully realising the dharma in my every day life. 

I agree with TNH - the practice of the dharma in the moment is the highest form of prayer. But in order to step towards this highest form I know I need the formal sitting. I also need the teaching, reading, thinking and support of the people and world around me.

Formal meditation, the guidance of skilful teachers and the love of those that support me have been crucial in my cultivation of the Path. Cultivating the Path in my day-to-day life is my opportunity to practice the highest form of prayer.

Engaged Buddhism: Personal Responsibility vs Proselytising

There is the temptation, in adopting a personal ethical framework for farming, that we feel impelled to promote its validity more generally. The compulsion might be motivated by good intention, an underlying sense of insecurity, or an egoist vindication of our choice.

It would be particularly easy in adopting a farming approach that attempts to eradicate human imposed suffering on animals to dive headfirst into the acrimonious political milieu surrounding animal rights that exists in most western countries.

Indeed, the relative merits of personally versus socially engaged practice is the subject of current and quite vigorous debate in the broader Buddhist community. While one side of the debate focuses on personal behaviour and enlightenment, there are many Buddhists who feel a responsibility to apply the insights of their practice in influencing social, political, environmental and economic injustice.

For example, Thich Nhat Hanh’s reinterpretation of the five precepts for lay life could be viewed as a call to act in the face of suffering wherever it may occur, not just in our personal sphere.

In our case, farming represents our major interaction with the broader community. It is not a private practice. These views have been published for anyone to read. Nor do we remain silent on our values when questioned. In that sense we are highly engaged, particularly in our local sphere.

However, as individuals and farmers, we steer clear of instructing others on the ‘shoulds’ of life. We provide an unambiguous example of our interpretation of Buddhism’s implications for farming. We make our interpretation freely available for all to see. But we avoid actively ‘convincing’ others of the ‘truth’ of what we do. The judgement of others is beyond our control, as are most things in our lives. There are cycles of suffering in trying to control the uncontrollable.

We also suspect that proselytising as a misinterpretation of engaged Buddhism. Instead, engaged Buddhism asks us to respond skilfully to the suffering we see in the world where we can – in other words to enact our ethical underpinning. It is in our actions that we hope to provide not only a concrete response to suffering that results from injustice but an example that inspires others to examine more closely our motivations.

Engaged Buddhism does not ask us to actively solicit conversion to our point of view. Rather it opens a door to a different view on life, a door through which people may choose to pass.

We leave it to others to notice or seek out our example if and when it is relevant and to make their own judgement on its value. They will either find the ‘truth’ in our practice and respond, or our concerns and considerations will seem irrelevant.

What is Buddhist Farming?

It is clear that there are three key dimensions to a Buddhist farming practice. These are the:

1. Overarching commitment to decision-making and action that concords with Buddhist principles.
2. Implementation of a system of farming in line with these principles.
3. Particular commitment that, as moral agents, our actions do not cause suffering to the animals that share the farm with us.

The first requires a focus on acting skilfully with respect to suffering in each moment and not attaching to either our future aspirations and fears or historic achievements and failures.

There is no question that we will make both skilful and unskilful decisions. Sometimes they will be made purposefully, sometimes in ignorance, and sometimes in the absence of all the relevant information. They will, in turn, ameliorate or promote suffering.

Our aspiration is to cultivate the Path in all its dimensions to the best of our understanding in every present moment and in every present circumstance. Remonstrations for past failures of commission or omission (be they near or far) or aspirations for future successes will only lead to more suffering.

For the second, it is apparent that is possible to devise systems of farming that are consistent with a broader Buddhist life practice and in particular do not require animals to suffer. These systems are also capable of producing food and maintain functional ecological systems.

However, they will not be found in the agro-industrial world. Agro-industrial systems are highly problematic at best and, where they involve farming animals for human consumption, anathema to basic Buddhist philosophy[1].

Agro-ecological systems that do not involve the slaughter of animals for food, crop protection or other purposes provide a suitable starting point for Buddhist farming. These systems can be designed to incorporate animals to underpin their ecological integrity. Unfortunately, there are few existing examples to serve as models for the aspiring Buddhist agro-ecologist.

For the third, simple and objective standards exist to guide a farmers interaction with other sentient animals on the farm. Both the UNESCO Universal Declaration of Animal Rights (1978) and the Declaration of Animal Rights[2] written by Orian and Penzel (2011) offer such standards. Neither declaration precludes the interaction of humans and animals. The former provides for humane killing of where justified. The latter sets more stringent and detailed standards to ensure that human needs and desires do not cause suffering for animals.

For the Buddhist farmer the UNESCO standard would offer a minimum benchmark, with Orian and Penzel’s declaration providing a more refined goal. In either case a Buddhist agro-ecology would exclude animal slaughter for any reason except perhaps for compassionate and humane euthanasia in dire circumstances.

This allows a clearer statement of our intention as Buddhist farmers. We aspire to coordinate our ethical beliefs with our day-to-day actions by:

1. Acting skilfully in each present moment to ameliorate suffering caused by attachment, aversion or delusion.
2.  Letting go of our attachment to perceived past and potential impending failures and successes with respect to those aspirations.
3. Working to create functional and sustainable ecosystems that grow food for our community.
4. Encouraging animals to be integral components or our agro-ecology.
5. Ensuring that all animals on the farm are free to be animals, and to lead a life without fear of suffering at the hands of humans.

At present, though our farming practice meets much of this intention, some practices on the farm do not.

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[1] With respect to animals, this is a view clearly supported by Singer and Mason’s (2006) last chapter titled What Should We Eat, which judges all forms of industrial animal farming as unethical.

[2] http://declarationofar.org/declaration.html

The Gift of the Dharma

The gift of real knowledge of the Dharma is freedom - freedom from the doubt over practice, and freedom from guilt and fear.

The freedom from the decision to practice stems from the act of knowing the Dharma. In the light of our knowledge we can no longer claim ignorance. Instead we choose to live skilfully or unskilfully.

Once we know the Path, we know the skilful and unskilful. Once we know the path, we know our relationship to it, and we are in practice. There is no purpose in trying to cling to something that we know, or trying to ignore it as if it could somehow be un-known.

But knowing the Dharma also means we are freed from our guilt of the past or fears for the future.

While we will bear the consequences of our past actions and those of the world around us, this does not condemn our present or future.

Our present is the moment when we can act differently to alleviate or overcome the present potential for suffering. The remarkable freedom to choose the scope and depth of our actions is ours. We can always choose to reach for enlightened action right now – to diligently cultivate the Path.

The Path, in all its dimensions, is an opportunity to confront the world with an open heart. It is an opportunity that is renewed every moment, to start again, to seek to act in this moment to ameliorate rather than accelerate suffering.

Being aware of the path in relation to our choices, we choose to be either skilful or unskilful on a moment-to-moment basis. Seeking to ‘punish’ ourselves for past unskilful action is a perpetuation of the unskilful. It heaps misery on suffering. Craving a skilful future is also unskilful. It only serves to dig deeper the hole of ignorance.

Ideals and Failure: Sins of Omission

Having released ourselves from the cumulative burden of individual past unwise action (sins of commission), the Eightfold Path could still be viewed as an ethical system to be perfected – a goal to achieve because it has meaning in and of itself – the path to a goal of ultimate enlightenment or heaven.

This provides a second potential trap of suffering around our almost inevitable failure to adequately cultivate the Path. It would be reasonable to ask: Have we done enough, particularly with respect to right view, effort, mindfulness and concentration to be good Buddhist practitioners? Is avoiding perpetrating wrongs adequate? Can an omission to do sufficient right things, a squandered opportunity to do ‘right’, be just as unskilful as committing something ‘wrong’.

For example, we could pre- and post-examine all of our farming choices and determine if we had done all we could to develop our skills as Buddhist agro-ecologists. Then we would have a Buddhist yardstick against which to measure our progress (as opposed to our lack of regress) and skilfulness. We would also have a measuring rod with which to beat ourselves for our failure. To do this, in my view, would be a serious misinterpretation of the Buddhist approach.

I have come to think that there is a space between the third and fourth Noble Truths – a gap between realising that suffering can be set aside, and the method prescribed to achieve that end. The pause for practitioners that I can now see is occupied by a realisation that:

• Life is essentially meaningless in all the conventional terms that we usually use to ascribe meaning.
• That the purpose of the Eightfold Path is not to achieve a goal but to describe a way of life that allows us to engage with the present moment.
• That in cultivating the Path we provide conditions that enliven ourselves and reduce the opportunity to proliferate and perpetuate suffering from moment to moment.

In essence: The practice of the Path is the goal. The Path has no end, it can be easily lost, confused or ignored, and it does not lead to a particular destination.

Acknowledged in this realisation is our choice. We are free agents. We can choose views, thoughts, words, actions, livelihoods, efforts, mindfulness and concentration (the dimensions of the Path) that contribute to either alleviating or accelerating suffering.

The choice is to follow, tend, and ultimately age, get sick and die in the act of cultivating the Path. That is all there is to secular Buddhist practice. No discernable rainbow, no heaven, no real prospect of eternal enlightenment.

What is available are flashes of enlightenment on a moment-to-moment basis – access to this living heaven that our way of viewing finds hard to see. There is also the prospect that we might access that moment-to-moment enlightenment on a more regular basis if we skilfully tend the Path in all its dimensions. We might also access it with increasing depth and breadth and be able to share in it with others.

The consolation of Buddhist philosophy is the freedom to choose without judgement but not without consequences. Skilful choices promote loving, joyful and compassionate consequences that can lead us to a sense of boundless equanimity. Unskilful choices play on our fears, cravings and delusions.

The Path is not a rod by which we are judged and with which we chastise ourselves when we are inevitably found wanting. There is no need. Buddhism is quite clear that our ‘punishment’ for failing to do ‘right’ is the same as for doing ‘wrong’. The punishment is inherent in the consequences of our actions. We suffer for both committing ‘wrongs’ and omitting to do ‘rights’.

Ideals and Failure: Sins of Commission

The dictums of Buddhism regarding right livelihood are clear, as are those of right thought, words and actions. However, farming is a messy business at best, and day-to-day life entails compromise and our human capacity for mendacity, miscalculation, mistake or misfortune.

This sets a potential trap. Aspiring to meet the dictums of right livelihood (or any other ‘right’ action) we can punish ourselves when commit individual actions that knowingly or inadvertantly fall short of the ideal.

One of my discomforts with the Abrahamic faiths is the strong focus on the inevitability of sin, and some future terminal reckoning for those sins. In essence we are doomed not only to failure, but also to some future ultimate judgement for our failures against an somewhat uncertain but nonetheless daunting standard.

One of the consolations of Buddhist thought is its essential acknowledgement of our humanity with all its contradictions, lusty wilfulness and frailty. It includes our capacity for unwise action, makes no real judgement on those actions, instead highlighting the inevitable and very real immediate and ongoing consequences of those actions.

In essence Buddhism and the Abrahamic faiths share the acknowledgement that as humans we inevitably err. But their interpretation of the basis for error and the consequences of our errors are fundamentally different.

For example Christianity, my native faith, talks of our capacity for evil, damnation, repentance and redemption in some future state. Notwithstanding a Christ who can cleanse us of our sin – a concept that I find both consoling and somewhat disturbing – Christianity has always played on the anticipation of future gross fear of eternal damnation and sublime forgiveness as motivators for ethical action in the present moment.

By contrast, Buddhism reduces the world to the nexus of now. It focuses on our capacity to act in each present moment either skilfully or unskilfully with respect to suffering.

In Christianity we are told that we are born sinners and God will punish us at some future date for our sins. In Buddhism there is a clear understanding that suffering is the ‘punishment’ for unwise actions. It is not withheld until some day of judgement, but flows from the moment of action. It is the difference between being punished (by God) for our sins, as Christianity suggests, and being punished by (the karmic consequences of) our ‘sins’.

In Buddhism the degree to which we suffer now and into the future depends on how we choose to act now and into the future. We are released from the guilty burden of past and future failures, but must firmly face up to our responsibility for our current actions and acknowledge their potential consequences.

Frameworks for Compassionate Treatment of Animals

The issue of what constitutes compassionate treatment of animals is complex. Ricard’s general principle that “Every living being has the right to live and not be the victim of suffering imposed on it by others” is a useful foundation.

However, it requires expansion and further interpretation to be a practical guide for day-to-day action. 

A clear example of the need for such a guide is provided Dr Peter Jensen[1]. He discusses the need for strong objective standards to avoid self-serving behaviour in complex moral and personal decisions. In discussing voluntary human euthanasia and using his mother as an example, Jensen notes:

And do you not feel that even when it is someone we love dearly, we cannot help thinking about what a difference there will be for us - even financially - when that person is no longer there? Perhaps you are too noble for such thoughts to arise. I tell you that I am not; and therefore I am not noble enough to be involved in such decisions. Money is not the root of all evils; it is the love of money; and I know the stirrings of greed; perhaps you do, too.

Jensen’s cautionary admonition intentionally uses his beloved mother and the coarse greed for individual financial gain. If a deeply moral and spiritual person can admit this base conflict, how much easier might it be to subvert our good intentions in the heat of a difficult moment when matters of apparently less significance are at stake?

It is for this reason that clear standards for action are required. They remove the need for case-by-case decision making, remind a farmer of their responsibilities and commitments, and avoid self-serving or misguided decisions with respect to animals.

There are a number or existing frameworks that attempt to balance the relative rights of humans and other sentient animals and more clearly articulate the bounds of moral human-animal interaction. One example is the Universal Declaration of Animal Rights adopted by UNESCO in 1978[2].

A more recent example is the Universal Declaration of Animal Welfare[3] proposed by the Global Animal Law Project. This is aimed at national legislative action to recognise the fundamental rights of animals. This declaration states:

For the purposes of this Declaration, animal welfare includes animal health and encompasses both the physical and psychological state of the animal. The welfare of an animal can be described as good or high if the individual is fit, healthy, free from suffering and in a positive state of wellbeing.

And that:

… the “five freedoms (freedom from hunger, thirst and malnutrition; freedom from fear and distress; freedom from physical and thermal discomfort; freedom from pain, injury and disease; and freedom to express normal patterns of behaviour)” provide valuable general guidance for animal welfare.

A third example is the Declaration of Animal Rights[4] drafted by Orian and Penzel (2011). This declaration is focused on individual action and includes the provisions that:

• All animals have the right to be free, to live their lives on their own terms, as intended by nature.
• All animals have the right to eat, sleep, be physically and psychologically comfortable, be mobile, healthy, safe, and fulfill all their natural and essential needs. As such, all animals are to be free from hunger, thirst, and malnutrition; physical discomfort and exhaustion; confinement against their will, bad treatment, abusive or cruel actions; pain, injury and disease; fear and distress; and free to express their normal patterns of behavior.
• All animals have the right to reproduce, live with their offspring, families, tribes or communities, and maintain a natural social life. They have the right to live in their natural environment, grow to a rhythm natural to their species, and maintain a life that corresponds to their natural longevity.
• Animals are not the property or commodity of humans, and are not theirs to use for their benefit or sustenance. Therefore, they are to be free from slavery, exploitation, oppression, victimization, brutality, abuse, and any other treatment that disregards their safety, own free will and dignity. They should not be slaughtered for food, killed for their skins, experimented on, killed for religious purposes, used for forced labor, abused and killed for sport and entertainment, abused for commercial profit, hunted, persecuted or exterminated for human pleasure, need, or other ends.
• Humans shall do whatever is within their means to protect all animals. Any animal who is dependent on a human, has the right to proper sustenance and care, and shall not be neglected, abandoned, or killed.

Both declarations recognise the fundamental right of animals to lead relatively natural lives free from suffering or the fear of suffering at the hands of humans.

They offer useful guidelines for the treatment of any animal by humans that accord with Ricard’s primary principle while at the same time providing more detailed guidance on the types of behaviour that would breach this principle. 

They can clearly be applied an agro-ecological setting and provide a useful starting framework for an aspiring Buddhist farmer.

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[1] http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/boyerlectures/lecture-6-jesus-freedom-and-the-choices-we-make/3312426

[2] https://constitutii.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/file-id-607.pdf

[3] https://www.globalanimallaw.org/database/universal.html

[4] http://declarationofar.org/declaration.html

Right Relationship between Farmer and Animals

In the final chapter of A Plea for the Animals, Ricard discusses animal rights and human obligations. Ricard states clearly that the rights of animals and humans are different based on their relative needs. He makes the point that: “Put a million dollars in front of a sheep: it won’t have much of a reaction, and if you take it away that won’t bother it at all. A man will react in a entirely different fashion.”

However, while our needs (and rights) may differ, they coincide perfectly at times. From a Buddhist perspective the most fundamental coincidence of human and animal rights is based on our ability to suffer, and the desire of all sentient beings to live a life free from undue suffering.

Ricard goes on to discuss the concept of moral agents and moral patients. Moral agents are those who are capable of deciding to do or not do what morality dictates. This presupposes an ability to formulate and understand notions of morality. Moral patients are those who are only affected by the morally good or bad actions of moral agents, and are “… incapable of formulating moral principles and deliberating on whether or not their actions have a moral basis before carrying them out.”

Humans are generally considered moral agents, but animals are generally considered to be moral patients. Moral agents recognise a duty to moral patients.

In short, it is in suffering that the interests of humans and animals as well as the principles of Buddhism clearly coincide. Further, humanity’s moral agency and the central tenets of Buddhism exhort humans to set aside any action that imposes suffering on animals.

This leaves Ricard to suggest that a seminal article of a hypothetical Universal Declaration of the Rights of Living Beings would by that “Every living being has the right to live and not be the victim of suffering imposed on it by others”.  

Resolving the Challenge

Perhaps the most convenient solution to the ethical dilemma of farming and animals is simply not to farm at all. There appears to be sufficient precedent in Buddhism to suggest that this is an entirely appropriate course of action.

To do so would not be without consequence.

It would cede the land we manage to others who would probably continue to perpetuate the type of suffering we seek to avoid. It would relieve our direct culpability, but do little to ameliorate suffering in general.

It is also clear that confronting ‘what is’ and doing this ‘where we are’ is likely to provide an honest response to our situation and a clear focus for practice.

Finally, if a resolution to the challenge of animal treatment could be found, then we could continue to contribute to our community doing something that we have come to view as a vocation. That vocation would make a contribution not only by providing nutritious food, but also by doing so in a way that does not cause suffering to our fellow sentient beings - a small contribution to the amelioration of suffering, but a contribution nonetheless.

These three reasons were more than sufficient to motivate us to try to harmonise our farming and Buddhist practices. Having made this decision it was clear that we needed a framework for making decisions regarding our relationship with animals that share our farm.

In agricultural systems animals have traditionally been vehicles for either production (meat) or destruction (pests). In both cases their ultimate fate was generally slaughter. Clearly, the Buddhist precept of non-harming, and its corollary of livelihood free from causing harm (right-livelihood) render conventional agricultural practice untenable.

However, set against Buddhism’s interdiction on the exploitation of animals was our ecological understanding that both herbivores and carnivores are crucial to ecological systems.

It was also clear that Buddhist practice does not preclude the incorporation of animals into agro-ecological systems. Rather, the practice of right livelihood excludes the raising of animals for slaughter, killing animals because they are inconvenient pests, or simply exploiting those animals that are integrated into our agro-ecology.

This process of realisation and decision led to two clear conclusions concerning a Buddhist approach to farming:

(1) We cannot expect to be free from suffering while participating in traditional forms of animal industries for food production. These forms include traditional egg and milk production as both of these involve systematic animal slaughter. These forms also include farming crops using methods that require animals to be killed in order to protect the crops.

(2) We can continue to farm and to accommodate a wide range of animals into our farming ecology providing we maintain a right relationship with those animals. No animal can be viewed as a problem that requires harm as a solution. A preliminary definition of harm includes not only death, but also precludes anything that results in animals suffering from our intentional or unintentional actions.

The Buddhist Farmer's Challenge

It goes without saying that Buddhism is an ethical not a scientific or productive pursuit. It is not surprising that its view of farming differs from ecology or industrial and ecological farming approaches.

A Buddhist perspective does not preclude the use of scientific information or the achievement of production goals. However, it does clearly define a space of appropriate behaviour in which those goals may or may not be met.

Animals are the best illustration of the challenge Buddism presents for all forms of contemporary western farming, even the most progressive forms of ecological agriculture.

Buddhism’s philosophical basis for the compassionate treatment of animals is clearly elucidated by Matthieu Ricard (2016) in his book A Plea for the Animals. Ricard is a French writer and Buddhist monk who lives and practices in Nepal. His arguments concerning the treatment of animals are founded in his previous work titled Altruism – The Power of Compassion to Change Yourself and the World (Ricard, 2015). They closely parallel the essential Buddhist aspect of altruism outlined by Batchelor in Alone with Others: An Existential Approach to Buddhism (1994).

My farming experience and Buddhist practice have served to starkly reinforce Ricard’s central thesis. For more than a decade, we conducted a relatively conventional goat dairy and beef cattle farming enterprise. Our farm raised animals for slaughter, slaughtered, butchered and traded in animals.

I lived the experience of Buddhism’s aphorism on the link between human suffering and the meat trade inherent in the ‘noble truth’ of right livelihood. I came to clearly see Ricard’s more sophisticated and nuanced treatment of the relative rights of human and non-human animals. I realized first hand the role our treatment of our fellow animals plays in our own suffering, the suffering of the animals we ‘owned’, and the broader suffering in our community and the world.

It was a devastating realization. It hit like a sledgehammer, without warning. One day, shortly after my first silent retreat, I was reading Walpola Rahula’s (1959) What the Budda Taught. His words on right livelihood leaped like an accusatory roar from the page.

To say I was shaken would be an understatement. It led me to the brink of an existential crisis. I had made farming my practice of life. Now it looked like this practice stood in direct contradiction to the equally fundamental philosophical practice of Buddhist ethics.

Was there a better way? Could we continue to farm at all? Is it possible to be a farmer and practice the core of Buddhist philosophy with any degree of integrity?

Ecology, Farming and Buddhism - The Role of Animals

Perhaps the starkest illustration of the difference between the science, farmers and Buddhists is in the way they view different ecosystem components, and particularly animals.

Farmers who practice industrial agriculture are primarily concerned with inputs, yields and overall efficiency of production. The pursuit of financially efficient production to its logical end takes no consideration of the health and wellbeing of animals except in as much as this impacts on short-term yields relative to short-term costs. The animal is simply a unit of production, and it is treated in a way that maximises the cost:benefit ratio with a strong time preference bias to short term financial rewards. Agro-industry takes a fundamentally utilitarian view of all production inputs, with a strong focus on maximising profitability.

Ecological agriculture, including Rhabi’s agro-ecology, Fukuoka’s natural farming, and Mollison’s permaculture, still take a somewhat utilitarian view of ecosystem elements. However, this view tends to focus on the system as a whole, what needs to be added to maintain it, and what can be sustainably harvested in an attempt to create a state of dynamic equilibrium.

Three key things distinguish ecological from industrial agriculture.

The first is the explicit supposition, broadly supported by ecological theory and research, that multispecies assemblages (complex ecosystems) are inherently more stable and productive per unit area than the simplified ecosystems such as those used in agro-industry.

The second flows from the first. As a consequence of the inherent productivity of more complex ecosystems it crucial that a broader perspective of both inputs and yields be used in assessing the value of agro-ecology. It considers a much broader spatial, temporal and societal cost:benefit analysis in trying to value the farm ecosystem.

For example, in comparing industrial agriculture to permaculture, Mollison considers more than just cash accounting, which is the general standard for industrial agriculture. Permaculture is also assessed on energy, environmental, conservation and social accounting. Mollison reasons that a short-term financial analysis (cash accounting) overlooks key costs and benefits that simply are not efficiently captured or are completely overlooked by a single market price for a unit of production.

Finally, ecological approaches to agriculture also consider the health and wellbeing of animals. Their practices are explicitly based on a philosophy of allowing animals to live a full natural life, a life that mimics the patterns and relationships in nature, up to the point where they are harvested (slaughtered) as part of the utilitarian yield of food for human consumption.

By contrast, Buddhism is unequivocal about the relative worth of sentient animals. They are not viewed simply as components of functional ecosystems. Rather they are living bodies with the capacity for fear and longing, and thus suffering. A farmer’s interaction with these sentient beings can either be harmful or kind. The degree to which the farmer creates further suffering for both themselves, the animals with which they interact and the world more generally, will depend on the nature of the interaction.

Thus, Buddhism’s generally more holistic life philosophy is quite specific about farming animals for slaughter. It is very clear that livelihoods that involve raising animals for slaughter or working in industries that are involved in slaughter or the products of slaughter are unwise as they promote suffering in the world. Buddhism is also clear that there is nothing to stop people doing these things, but they have inevitable consequences (sometimes interpreted as karma).

Ecology, Farming, Buddhism - Humans in Farm Ecosystems

While ecology must remain neutral in its observation and tends to view humans as outside the system, agro-industry values financial efficiency in the production of commodities and views humans as either labour inputs and/or recipients of financial rewards.

The agro-industrial approach is human-centric, with its ultimate aim the provision of food and fibre for human use.

Agro-ecology values not only marketable production but a range of less tangible non-market goods and services that a farm ecosystems can provide for people.

The Buddhist ethic is largely unconcerned with production outcomes but is far more concerned with the ethical integrity of any process in which the practitioner is involved, in the case of farming - production. Basic Buddhist principles can be extended, as Thich Nhat Hanh has done, to cover our relationship not only to people, but to all other sentient life forms, and to our relationship with all of life.

Ecology, Farming, Buddhism - Ethics

Ecology, in its scientific objectivity, is required to be absolutely impartial in the face of values (except with regard to the quality of scientific practice). The farm ecosystem is simply a subject for observation and analysis. On the basis of objective historic observation and analysis, ecology can predict the range of quantifiable outcomes for a farm ecosystem that are likely to happen if a farmer acts in different ways. However, it must suspend any subjective judgement about the value of those actions or their outcomes. This restriction avoids potential bias that could cloud the communication of ecology’s aim of objective observation.

Ecology can answer questions relating to what we can do. It is, however, incapable of answering the essentially political and ethical questions of what we should do.

Ecology also exists in the world of normative deductive reductionist science. Fundamental to this approach is the maxim that a system can be broken into its parts (or relationships), and if the working of those parts can be understood, then the assembly of the component parts will describe the overall working of the system. In oft used terms: The system is the sum of its parts.

Over recent decades the value of deterministic scientific reductionism in the study of ecology has been seriously questioned. The predictive accuracy of scientific models of understanding becomes increasingly weak as systems become increasingly complex. Stochastic models and the idea of emergent properties (described below) have gained traction. Irrespective, science in general and ecology remain focused on a deductive reductionist footing.

Agro-industrial farmers are primarily concerned with inputs, yields and overall efficiency of production of specific commodities. The agro-industrial approach is primarily utilitarian and increasingly dependent on normative ecological science and financial analysis as its guiding beacons.

Agro-industry tends to view farm ecosystems as a canvas for efficient production for the benefit of farmers and consumers. As previously mentioned, the pursuit of efficiency within the deterministic scientific understanding tends to lead to the elimination of as many confounding variables as possible. Simplification and control are features of agro-industry. 

Similarly, the efficiency of agro-industrial models is measured through the narrow lens of financial profitability or near term money spent when compared to near term money earned. They are largely unconcerned with goods and services that cannot be traded. Their ethical operating space is defined by the regulatory restraints of government. These tend to mirror the somewhat nebulous collective ethical mores of the dominant political institutions.

By contrast, agro-ecological farmers have a clearly articulated, if still somewhat anthropocentric, ethical basis. The farm ecosystem is developed in pursuit of human benefit, but its development is bounded by principles beyond the regulatory restraints of ordinary agriculture. For example, the ethical underpinnings of permaculture include:

“1. Care of the Earth: provision for all life systems to continue and multiply.

2. Care of people: Provision for people to access those resources necessary to their existence.

3. Setting limits to population and consumption: By governing our own needs, we can set resources aside to further the above principles.”

Agro-ecologists, while remaining steeped in normative ecological science, also tend foster a ‘natural’ design ethic and are happy to work with what they view as unknown, or unknowable. They acknowledge the value of induction and intuition as useful complements to normative science, and regard the system as more than just the sum of its parts. They believe that, sometimes, when components are assembled, unexpected and unpredictable properties emerge (termed emergent properties).

Buddhism, with one notable exception discussed below, does not generally speak directly about the value of ecosystems in general or agricultural practice. Buddhism’s view is primarily ethical and more impartial (less anthropocentric). It is also essentially holistic, inductive and intuitive in its approach. Objectivity and the subject/object split of normative science could be viewed as anathema to Buddhism’s central maxim of interdependence.

Buddhism’s guiding ethic has nothing to do with productivity or naturalness, but instead is based on the extent to which an individual might contribute to the overall suffering or wellbeing of their fellow sentient beings[1]. It does however provide a clear framework for ethical interaction with our world, and would suggest that any view of a farm ecosystem that was not holistic would be incomplete.

This view of holism is based on complex interdependencies and impermanence or inevitable change, which would tend to suggest that nothing, including a farm ecosystem or a farmer’s potential impact upon it, is truly knowable. It would further suggest that any ‘value’ we tend to ascribe to a farming system or its outputs is contrived, and the degree to which we attach importance to that ‘value’ will be the degree to which we contribute to suffering for ourselves and fellow sentient being.

That is not to say that Buddhism does not speak to values. Just that the things it professes to value are generally not specifically focussed on the practice of farming. Buddhist ethics will have profound implications for anyone who attempts to integrate farming as a form of livelihood within their Buddhist practice. 

For Buddhism, the ‘value’ is in the way we interact with the system (the process of farming), not in the volume or quality of production that the system might theoretically be capable of producing (the outcomes). Buddhism also tends to work with aspirations based on skilful behaviours (with respect to the generation or amelioration of suffering), but views attachment to aspirations as counterproductive.

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[1] Sentient beings can be loosely defined as all animals that have the capacity for suffering.