Cruelty to animals and lamentation of a fish

A kind request to the readers of this article, as it will be published in a website and in journals. The writer was born in Sri Lanka (Ceylon) and lived in Europe most of his adult life. Now back in Sri Lanka, this article is based on the observations made in Sri Lanka. I hope it will bring to the attention of many animal lovers irrespective of cultural differences.

I am trying to emphasise the suffering caused to animals by humans. For this I am using personification of a fish. I invite the readers to read this article with patience and finally get to the lamentation of a fish as you read on. Writers in Sri Lanka talk about animal rights, and quote the founders of religions. Mainly the Buddha. If these writers understand the most intricate and fundamental thing involved, I will be more than happy. But they don’t seem to be. In any case let me point out as far as I understand, the important aspects. Freedom from discomfort is the one that causes as much discussion as any of the freedom for animals as well as humans.

Recently even the editorials in the Sri Lankan newspapers commented on animal rights. As an animal lover from my childhood I was pleasantly surprised about the empathy expressed by the editorials of the well-known and well-read English newspaper in Sri Lanka. In Sri Lanka (supposed to be a predominantly a Buddhist Country, at least in theory), I find some writers paraphrase and publish Buddha’s teachings left, right and centre with their own photographs attached to the articles. If the Buddha was living, he would never allow his photograph to be printed in newspapers. I personally think it is egocentric and an insult to the Buddha. Intelligent readers want the facts and philosophy and not the writers’ qualifications with their photographs. After all they are not film stars.

The Buddha was a thinking person’s teacher. Buddhism is all about suffering and means of putting an end to it. I have side tracked here a bit as I was trying to give the topic more focus. Let me get back to the point. What the writers forget is the PAIN. Pain is the basis of all suffering. Whether it is psychological pain or physical pain to animals or humans. Doctors give pain killers. What is pain? Is it something verbally describable? We can never experience someone else’s pain. A mother can empathise with her only child’s pain. She can never experience the pain of her child.

So, let me state that pain is a complex experience involving sensory and emotional components: it is not just about how it feels, but also how it makes you feel. And it is these unpleasant feelings that cause the suffering we humans associate with pain. By definition we humans are animals. Nonhuman animals cannot translate their feelings to language that humans use in the same manner as human communication, but observation of their behaviour provides a reasonable indication as to the extent of their pain. Just as with doctors and medics who sometimes share. No common language with their patients, the indicators of pain can still be understood. The topic of animal consciousness is beset with a number of difficulties. It poses the problem of other minds in an especially severe form, because animals lacking the ability to use human language, cannot tell us about their experiences. Also, it is difficult to reason objectively about the question, because a denial that an animal is conscious is often taken to imply that it does not feel, its life has no value, and that harming it is not morally wrong.

The 17th-century French philosopher René Descartes, for example, has sometimes been criticised for providing a rationale for the mistreatment of animals because he argued that only humans are conscious. His famous saying “Cogito ergo sum”: I think therefore I am. This should be changed to I suffer, therefore I think. Many moons ago, when I was a kid, bullock cart was a means of transport for goods and people in Sri Lanka. I was a keen observer of these carts which passed my doorstep in Kandy. When the carter wanted to go faster it beats the bullock with a heavy stick. Poor animal must have thought that the place where he was at that moment in time make it painful and it was running to a safe haven imagining in its mind.

 One of my teachers, Carl Sagan, the American cosmologist, points to reasons why humans have had a tendency to deny animals can suffer: Humans – who enslave, castrate, experiment on, and fillet other animals – have had an understandable penchant for pretending animals do not feel pain. A sharp distinction between humans and ‘animals’ is essential if we are to bend them to our will, make them work for us, wear them, eat them – without any disquieting tinges of guilt or regret. It is unseemly of us, who often behave so unfeelingly toward other animals, to contend that only humans can suffer. The behaviour of other animals renders such pretensions specious. They are very much like us.

People in many cultures do not like to be reminded of the connection between animals and meat, and tend to “de-animalize “meat when necessary to reduce feelings of guilt or of disgust. In the Western countries, I have seen meat is often packaged and served so as to minimise its resemblance to live animals, without eyes, faces, or tails, and the market share of such products has increased in recent decades; however, meat in many other cultures is sold with these body parts.

Lamentation of a Fish

Why was I born as a fish in this vast ocean? I cannot comprehend. But I presume that it may be due to my Karma during my cycle of re-birth. Some very strong tough men put a net round me while I was peacefully swimming. In addition to that they put a sharp thin object inside my throat, they called it a fishing-hook.  I was so happily living in the water swimming with my family. I was destined to live there. But at the moment I don’t even have a drop of water. And I am suffering in the scorching hot sun. I just cannot bear the pain that the wound has inflicted in my throat. I feel that I am dying at times and come back to life again.

A rich man touched my body to feel my flesh to see that it was good enough for a meal. After satisfying himself he giggled happily and took me by paying a lot of money to the fisherman. I heard the rich man telling his friend “I am going to offer this fish as food to Mahasangha (Buddhist Monks) and collect enough merit for me to attain Nirvana (Ultimate salvation)”.

May I ask you good people who are reading my sorrowful story, “Why do you people fulfil your charitable deeds this way? Please tell me. I cannot understand how you can attain Nirvana (Ultimate salvation) by killing me and offering my meat to Mahasangha (Buddhist Monks). Taking my flesh by force is stealing. Don’t you realise it? Now after eating my flesh and satisfying their taste buds, the monks will preach the virtues of non-violence. These monks also will tell the participants that they (monks) will be passing the merits to those who are present in front of them and also to their dead relatives who are living elsewhere after re-birth. How can they do good deeds after gulping down a carcass?

Finally, you steal my flesh for your charitable deeds. You fulfil your taste buds by stealing and eating my flesh. Further, you pass on merit to others by eating and donating my flesh. The irony is after using and eating my flesh, you never think of passing even a little bit of merit to me as gratitude!!!

“Lamentation of a Fish”

was a Sinhalese poem- I am not aware of the author’s name. “Maluwakuge Andonawa”. I made an attempt to translate it to Sinhalese to suit this article here.

Sampath Anson Fernando,

Shenfield, England / Colombo,

Sri Lanka