Rabbits, Buddhism, and Politics of the Fancy

In Buddhism, we respect all sentient beings equally, without distinction. In the context of that universal respect, we also have a corpus of instruction and admonition covering the singular or particular qualities of specific beings.

While it could be fair to say that much of this proceeds at the level of folklore, it nevertheless serves an important purpose. There are countless numbers of beings, but by finding and understanding the indivisibly sacred aspect of just a single one of them, we can introduce ourselves to our own precious buddha nature -- ultimately transcending the myth of liberation and beings-in-need-of-liberation.

So, now I would like to talk about Oryctolagus cuniculus, or domestic rabbits.

It would appear that rabbits share common ancestry that begins along the Iberian peninsula, and from there they spread all over the world. Thus, the rabbits that one encounters in China, for example, originally descend from the Iberian rabbits. Since archaeological evidence indicates the presence of rabbits in China at an extremely early date, this process must have taken place in very remote antiquity.

The degree to which this spread was natural or assisted is something that nobody really knows.  The argument is that it was assisted. I have heard and read speculation that early travelers commonly carried wicker pens of domesticated rabbits, bred for food and fur. Again, there is archaeological evidence that the Roman armies, for example, domesticated rabbits for this purpose.

If and when the question of rabbit domestication is fully and finally answered, it will shed new light on human travel and contact in pre-history or proto-history. In the meantime, if you want to know more, a good book to have is Harry Thompson and Carolyn King, The European Rabbit: History and Biology of A Successful Colonizer (although it seems rather expensive if you are only casually interested). There is also the rather less satisfying Domestic Rabbits and Their Histories: Breeds of the World, by Bob Whitman.

Now, in Buddhism, we have our own stories about rabbits, and for some reason, these stories appear to center on their altruism, self-sacrifice, and unselfishness. How, or even why, we have come to symbolically associate rabbits and the bodhisattva ideal is something that nobody can answer. The common story, that most Buddhists will immediately recall, is of the rabbit who leaps into a fire to offer himself as food for a wandering yogi.

It is interesting to contrast that vision of rabbits with the knowledge of their widespread use in medical research. In the United States alone, over one million rabbits are caught up in research each year, some of it rather less compelling than one might wish to entertain. I am thinking of the use of rabbits in the cosmetic industry, which to my mind is indefensible.

Old Rabbit, as he appeared August 16, 2005.

He passed away at Oceanside, California,

in July 2006, at approximately 15 years of age. 

He was the finest animal I have ever known.

The patriarch of my own dynasty, the late Old Rabbit, was blind in one eye because he had been used for testing cosmetics. He was resourceful enough to bust himself out of the jug, and made his way to my feet -- quite literally -- by hopping along the back roads and suburban lanes, fending off danger at every turn. I immediately gave him refuge, and I can truthfully say that he completely changed my life thereafter. To this day, I honestly believe he was a bodhisattva in rabbit form.

When we examine such matters, it is usually in terms of the five certainties, i.e. the certainty of the teacher, retinue, dharma, time, and place, which accounts for the Samboghakaya, but we often neglect to consider the rather more probative five uncertainties of the Nirmanakaya, viz. the uncertainty of the form of the teacher, manifesting as required, the uncertainty of the form of the retinue, which seems conditioned by particularities, the uncertainty of the form of the dharma, which is conditioned by the requirements arising from the minds in need of dharma, the uncertainty of place, which can be anywhere in the six realms of existence, and the uncertainty of time, which can be past, present, or future.

Thus, if we look at the issue one way, we can say, "Well, these rabbits that are being harmed by medical testing are animals, they do not possess higher reasoning, and they didn't make a conscious, altrusitic decision to sacrifice themselves." Yet, if we look at the issue another way, it is not impossible to think that a Buddha broke off a million fictitious rabbit forms, with the specific intent that they fictitiously sacrifice themselves for the betterment of a million fictitious human forms -- or indeed, that just one form was fictitiously sacrificed by way of illustration. Please be assured that I am not stating this as (1) the case, (2) the correct case, or (3) the incorrect case. I am merely setting up speculative conditions we might all wish to think about -- coloring "outside the lines," as it were. There must be some reason why human experience has come to associate rabbits with altruism.

What does my heart tell me? My heart tells me that it is a form of suicide to harm or kill any living thing.

This leads us to the great divide between the American Rabbit Breeders Association (ARBA, to which my daughter and I both belong) and the House Rabbit Society (HRS), which I touched upon in Monday's post covering my visit to the ARBA National Convention.

I will confess that I was frequently disturbed, and often, downright astonished when I heard the comments of some ARBA people. These are folks who arguably appreciate rabbits rather more than the average person. Yet, they were able to tell rough stories of spanking a rabbit who peed on them, of "eighty percent culls," in search of a perfect show specimen, and of "processing" rabbits from a litter so that the doe could quickly move on to a future, hypothetically more ideal litter.

What should I say? I do not know what to say. Should I say that friends don't eat friends?

If you do such terrible things, over and over again, feeling satisfaction that you have done them, I will not tell you that you will burn in Hell. I will tell you that you will likely be reborn as a rabbit, in the hands of someone very much like yourself, and you will continue to be so reborn lifetime after lifetime in unequally generous proportion to the number of rabbits you have harmed.

You want to do what to me?

The domestic rabbits one finds these days are universally the product of hobby breeding. To take an example: the New Zealand White, which I fancy, is not from New Zealand, but from an American breeder named W.S. Preshaw, who in 1916 bred them for their meat and fur. (*) The Netherland Dwarfs, which I also fancy, first began as show animals in the early twentieth century. They made it to Britain in the late 1940s, and weren't imported to the United States until the 1960s. These are just two examples. You can study the history of the other breeds, and they all tell more or less the same story. Bunnies are business. To arrive at today's idealized pets, it would seem we have traveled a bloody, callous, and barbaric road. Well, what do you think happens to rabbits that don't "make the grade?"

So, in Monday's post, I envinced sadness that House Rabbit Society, which engages in rabbit rescue and no-kill sheltering  -- to which I also belong and strongly support, affectionately calling them the "Rabbit SWAT Team" -- wasn't overtly represented at the ARBA convention. I was particularly disappointed that HRS San Diego wasn't there, since I direct a fair amount of sponsorship their way, and I fully expected to see them.

I hold out a great deal of hope that HRS can eventually cause the show breeders to knock off the murderous double-standard. I think a logical place to begin is by changing the judging criteria for shows. I think that if ARBA adopts points for humane practices, this will be an important first step. If ARBA is slow, then HRS can start sanctioning its own clubs, and hold its own shows, promoting humane values like rescue, rehabilitation, and education. HRS has already had success with preventing national chain pet supply stores from selling "Easter rabbits" to mindless masses. Maybe someday they can even play a role in eliminating rabbit from the human diet -- bunnies are lovable, but frankly speaking, they aren't nutritious on any level. Now that humankind has invented the wheel, I see no reason to still consider rabbits as edible.

My remarks provoked a number of letters from members of both ARBA and HRS, all with varying degrees of concern lest I misunderstand the matter at hand. Be assured, I do not misunderstand.

As a Buddhist, it is my hope that ARBA and HRS will declare a cease-fire, lay down their arms, and engage one another in useful peace talks that lead to greater understanding on both sides.

As a human being, it is my prayer that this greater understanding will result in fewer rabbit deaths,  mutilations, abandonments, and karmic misery for all concerned.

It should not be about the people. It should be about the rabbits.

These are just my passing thoughts.

(*) As an aside, I consider the New Zealand White to be the quintessential rabbit for Buddhists, but I am told they are the most difficult placements for adoption. This situation needs to be fixed. The NZWs are the ones most frequently in need of rescue and adoption because they are the ones most frequently used in research, and for horrid other purposes. Yet, as companion animals, they really are second to none. My beloved friend, the late Old Rabbit, was a New Zealand White. What we really need is an "alternative" New Zealand White club or affinity group with a whole new set of values. The rabbits can be shown with tags on their cages instead of tattoos in their ears.

UPDATED: Well, my two posts on the bunnies generated a lot of email and list discussion. Good. That is what they were intended to achieve. I would like to add that it seems fruitless for adults to butt heads over these issues, when what we should really be doing is concentrating on the young people. One of the things that struck me about the ARBA convention was the large number of young people, and we will get back to that in just a moment.

What we have here is a clash of values. To an extent, ARBA is expressing the values of a time that is long passed. When this was an agricultural nation, you could get away with all this talk of food and fur, and nobody would pay it any mind. There is almost a kind of nostalgia associated with this. HRS belongs to what we might want to think of as a more enlightened society. I do not know how realistic that is, but this is what we like to believe. HRS people tend to be from urban backgrounds, ARBA from rural backgrounds.

I started keeping rabbits as pets in 1956, strictly on a child's emotional basis, without any interest in animal husbandry. I didn't much care for 4-H, because I knew a lot of kids in 4-H who took what I call the barnyard hatchet approach. That is just how they were taught. I was taught differently, and all of my life, I have been unable to abide any harm being done to animals.

Nevertheless, I always enjoyed the shows. Where else could you go to see a large number of rabbits? In those days, it was common to show rabbits at the county or state fair: just something that younger kids traditionally did. The judging was on the care one gave one's rabbit, as evidenced by the rabbit's appearance. There really wasn't much interest in adhering to a hypothetical ideal, because these were all just farm kids showing off the same common breeds.

Maybe I am a bit hypocritical, because while I enjoyed going to the shows and seeing the rabbits, I really disliked the notion of disrupting them for no good reason. I have written about this elsewhere, and if you use the search function at right, you might be able to find those comments.

At the ARBA National Convention in Del Mar, I was interested to find a new friend for my best friend. I decided to find a rabbit there because I knew they would have "market" animals that would otherwise be killed, and I knew I would get a chance to meet young people. I did meet a young lady who had a rabbit destined to die, and by the time I walked away with that rabbit, I will wager you that young lady's perspective had changed forever. Put quite simply, she had never been exposed to the ideas I shared with her. She had never heard the proverbial "other side of the story."

All human beings have the same nature. On a certain level, we already know what is right and wrong. Our hearts instruct us, but as we go along, the heart's small voice is often drowned out by louder voices and we become confused. This is the nature of samsara.

If you were to go to the ARBA shows and confront the young people there, they would all describe themselves as animal lovers. Yet, in the same breath, they could speak to you -- seemingly without emotion -- about "culling," or "processing," and not wanting to get "too attached" to rabbits they raised for slaughter. This is not because they are inherently bad people. This is simply how they have been taught.

So, my gripe is that HRS was not there to teach them. These ARBA kids of today can easily become the HRS nightmares of tomorrow. They can also become the heroes. Do you want to concentrate all of your resources on crisis management? Or, do you want to throw a few dimes at prevention through education? This is an old story.

In private correspondence, related to this post, I asked a reader if she could imagine the impact of HRS members joining ARBA en masse, serving on committees, and most importantly -- voting on measures and elections. I asked her what it would be like if HRS organized its own, non-competitive shows, and started its own, non-competitive specialty clubs.

If the human participants in these new shows and clubs were judged on humane values, don't you think it would make a difference? What if the kid who walked away with the blue ribbon and the big grin got them by rescue work? By rehabilitation work? By education work? What if the youthful exhibitors got a nice certificate when they signed a pledge to regard rabbits not as food or fur, but as valuable sentient creatures to be protected from exploitation? What if the trophy went for kindness instead of competition?

If HRS starts sanctioning specialty clubs, or basically starts taking ethical control of the ARBA sanctioned clubs, instilling a new set of values, I think this will have a big impact. Nobody raising Netherland Dwarfs, for example, even considers the words "food" or "fur," so half the battle is already won. The rest of the battle is responsible breeding practices and basic animal welfare.

As for ARBA, they have to change with the times. Fur production in the U.S. is worthless, so the notion of raising rabbits for fur is just ridiculous. That battle will have to be fought in China and France. The notion of rabbits as food is likewise ridiculous. If you are trapped on a deserted island with a million rabbits, you will still die of malnutrition. I hope ARBA can make these changes by themselves; that it won't take boycotts, or lawsuits, or the other available tools of change. I agree with the reader who suggested that ARBA members should pull shifts as HRS rescue volunteers, so that they can see what the HRS people have to deal with.

When you see what some humans do to animals, you might not like humans very much.

I also believe ARBA needs to fundamentally rethink what they are teaching young people. I mentioned HRS to a breeder at the ARBA show, and he dismissed it, saying, "They're worse than PETA." Well, PETA doesn't condone killing animals, and Buddhists don't condone killing animals, so as a Buddhist, I have to ask: what is so wrong with PETA? Are they a bit strident? Yes, they are. Maybe they need to be. Should ARBA condone killing animals? Is that what they want to teach their 21st century children? That killing is fundamentally "necessary?"

So, what am I advocating? Just a little give and take. If everybody can learn to proceed from their true nature, it shouldn't be all that difficult.