Confucianism put the lives of the people in the top priority. Compassion 仁 is the highest ideal of Confucianism. This compassion is first and foremost directed to the fellow humans; the peasants first, the country second, and the king last (民为贵，社稷次之，君为轻). However, it doesn’t mean Confucianism discourage compassion for animals. It simply means animals can be sacrificed, whether it is pig or dog, to sustain the lives of the people. Treating animals as equal or higher priority than human is considered ridiculous and immoral. The same applied to gods and ghosts. 人为万物之灵。
The king of Qi State asked Meng Zi 孟子 about ways to govern the country. Meng Zi said: “I hear that, for a prayer ceremony, the king saw a cow being brought to the slaughtering house. The king ordered for the cow to be spared because you empathized with the fear and trembling of the cow. You said that you disliked seeing innocent beings to be killed. When the butcher asked whether the ceremony should be cancelled, you disagreed but ordered to replace the cow with a goat. Is that true?” The king replied: “That is true.” Meng Zi said: “With a heart of compassion like this, the king will be able to properly govern the country. The peasants may think that the king is being stingy to use a cheaper goat to replace the more precious cow in the ceremony, but I know the king is showing compassion for the cow. Please forgive the peasants for misunderstanding your kind heart. You dislike seeing innocent beings to be killed. By the way, how is innocent goat compared to innocent cow?” The king laughed and replied: “I also don’t understand what was I thinking. However, it was not because of ungenerosity that I replaced the cow with a goat. It is not surprising that the peasants misjudged me of being stingy.” Meng Zi said: “That’s OK. It was a natural and true expression of a heart of compassion! Since you only saw the cow but not the goat, therefore you didn’t think too much that the goat will also feel fear and tremble when it is brought to the slaughtering house. When a true gentleman 君子 see an animal happily running about, he will have well wishes for it to continue living. When a true gentleman see an animal crying in grief, he will never eat the meat. Because of that, a true gentleman will stay far away from the kitchen.”
Confucianism does encourage compassion for animals but not at the same level as humans. When a person truly has a compassion heart, he will naturally show compassion for all beings; he will not advocate killing of innocent beings in the name of his religion or ideology. Therefore, Confucius only taught us to cultivate ourselves in terms of virtue, equanimity and wisdom, much like Buddhism. Buddhist monks can eat meat 三禁肉 on the conditions that 1) he didn’t kill the animal himself, 2) he has no reasons to believe that the animal was specifically killed to serve him, and 3) he didn’t see or hear the animal being killed.
Many people talk about compassion for animals but keep a blind eye on poverty, migrant detention, refugees, bombing of innocent people, and other sufferings of humans.
RESILIENT KID 