Sgo phyugs rnams ngan gsod mi byed pa'i re zhu/Full text
This is a petition by Khenpo Tsultrim Lodro addressed to Tibetan nomadic communities in Amdo and Kham, urging them to reform their methods of slaughtering livestock. He acknowledges that Tibetans generally possess Buddhist values—faith, compassion, and belief in karma—but argues that the two common methods of killing animals, suffocation by muzzle-binding and throat-cutting, cause extreme and prolonged suffering to the animals and accumulate grave negative karma for those who perform them. He illustrates this with a personal account of ransoming a yak from butchers, whose eyes had turned blue from prolonged suffocation but who nonetheless revived when the binding was loosened. His central argument is that animals share with humans the same desire for happiness and aversion to suffering, differing only in their inability to speak, and that just as humans are given anesthetics before painful medical procedures, the suffering of animals should not be disregarded. The text is a practical ethical appeal grounded in Buddhist moral reasoning rather than a philosophical treatise.
| Reference | sgo phyugs rnams ngan gsod mi byed pa'i re zhu [སྒོ་ཕྱུགས་རྣམས་ངན་གསོད་མི་བྱེད་པའི་རེ་ཞུ།]. [An Appeal to Refrain from the Cruel Slaughter of Domestic Livestock]. |
|---|---|
| People | Khenpo Tsultrim Lodrö |
