Kindness, altruistic love, and compassion are qualities that do not harmonize well with bias. Restricting the field of our compassion not only dimini… - Matthieu Ricard

We must distinguish between spirituality in general terms, which aims to make us better people, and religion. Adopting a religion remains optional, but becoming a better human being is essential.

We continue to live in ignorance concerning the harm we inflict on animals; very few of us have ever visited an industrial breeding site or a slaughterhouse. We maintain a kind of moral schizophrenia that has us lavishing pampering our pets and at the same time planting our forks in the pigs that have been sent to the slaughter by the millions, even though they are in no way less conscious, less sensitive to pain, or less intelligent than our cats and dogs.

It is not more anthropomorphic to postulate the existence of mental states in certain animals than it is to compare their anatomy, their nervous system, and their physiology to ours. When an animal is visibly joyous or sad, why not call things by their names?