SENTIENT BEINGS

Sentient Being Definition: A creature that can suffer and feel pain, mostly animals and humans.

This past weekend I participated in a half-marathon that benefited the local 4-H program. While I

was running, I sorted through my mixed feelings that I had for this particular program and contemplated the distribution of my monetary donation. I was a 4H member when I was a child and I have also actively participated in the 4H groups that my daughter joined.

In 1902 A.B. Graham started a youth program in Clark County, Ohio to help young people gain the skills needed to be proactive forces in their community and develop ideas for a more innovative economy. Do you remember visiting the 4H exhibit at the county fair? Perhaps you may have spotted a sleeping child curled up next to her cow or sheep. The child raises an animal and cares for it for one year, shows it at the fair, and then sells it for slaughter. The going price is over-inflated so the 4Her can turn a profit with the lure of making money for college. I hope this isn't the innovative economy that Graham had in mind when he began the program. The older children in the program say that after a while they quit naming the animals, while still participating with the prospect of the college fund outweighing the suffering of the animal.

There are now 4H rural clubs in every state of the nation. 4Hers today are tackling the nation's top issues such as global food economy, global warming, sustainable energy, food safety, and childhood obesity. With all these issues in the fire, why are we still teaching these children to raise and bond with an animal only to see them sent to slaughter? If my rant hasn't gotten you fired up, check out this article from

One Green Planet.

In Buddhist teachings, sentient beings are those who are capable of experiencing suffering (Dukkha). Why is society able to turn compassion on and off? I'm sure you have heard endearing stories of the occasional cow or pig who manages to escape from the slaughterhouse and then the community rallies for the animal when it is captured and pardoned from returning to the slaughterhouse and sent to a sanctuary to live out its natural life. Everybody has a feel good day and then goes home to their hamburger, pork chop or steak dinner. How have we become so complacent? It seems as if we are all sleepwalking and only have brief periods of lucidity when there is a major event or news story. Every year the U.S. President pardons a turkey on the White House lawn (except Barack Obama who pardoned two!) and that turkey is sent to a sanctuary to live out a natural life. This makes everyone happy and they sit down to their dinner of dead bird with all the fixings. If there ever was a bogus excuse for a Holiday, Thanksgiving is the one. The Pilgrims and Indians feasted on native fruits and vegetables, fish, shellfish, native birds, and deer (what was available to them). Then came winter and more than half of the settlers died. Each year in the U.S. we kill 45 milliion turkeys for Thanksgiving so we can sit at the table with relatives we don't like and recreate a meal by feasting on a slaughtered sentient being. Yes, turkeys to do want to live and do have personalities and do feel pain. Then we kill another 22 million turkeys for Christmas dinner so we can invite the relatives over again for another fight. Am I being too facetious here? Did you know that 600 milliion chickens had to die for the Super Bowl? I just wanted to make the point that at some time in their lives people need to have values and address them. If you have a companion animal, how can you eat another animal at the dinner table? Once we begin to find our authentic selves and admit that animals are not ours to wear, torture, or eat, we begin our path to vegetarianism and veganism.

Maybe it is because I am an Empath that I feel profoundly depressed when I pass a semi-truck filled with precious cows. Or the other day when I was saddened to see a sparrow in the middle of the road trying to pick up a friend who had been run over. I guess that some people are just filled with too much ego to have feelings for sentient beings, which by the way means humans too. Let me know your opinion on this matter or any topic that I have touched on. I look forward to your comments.

Until next week.....

Keep Dreaming

Coleen