Wat Makes us Human?

[…] Could it be that what makes us human is quintessentially our capacity for inner reform and transformation, a capacity facilitated and nourished by spiritual wisdom, ethical reasoning, reflection, and conscious choice? 

—From the book Cow Care in Hindu Animal Ethics by Kennth R. Valpey (HH Krishna Kshetra Swami), published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2020. The legal open access download version is available at https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-28408-4

To Rethink our Relationship with Animals

Question: Why did you write Yoga and Animal Ethics?

Answer: As environmentalism has gone mainstream in recent decades, increasingly people are seeing the connection between how humans (mis)treat animals and environmental degradation. Yoga’s rising popularity tells me a similar story: People are seeing the need to connect (the original meaning of the Sanskrit word yoga) with nature and with themselves in ways that are beneficial for all. With my new book I wanted to show how the dots connect between yoga and animal ethics to explore how the whole of these two areas—yoga and animal ethics—can bring us to a greater vision than the two individual parts. 

Question: What are your major messages?

Answer: The first two chapters excavate ancient Indian rituals of animal sacrifice that spawned a quiet revolution of yoga, grounded in the ethics of non-harm (ahimsa). Then I take readers through each of the eight “limbs” of classical (ashtanga) yoga as ways to rethink our relationship with animals—as like us humans, as not like us, and as indistinct from us. I conclude with insights from my own bhakti-yoga tradition, showing how the rising tide of devotional yoga raises all ships—all living “vessels” by re-visioning who we are in fundamental ways.

Question: How does your work differ from others that are concerned with the same general topics?

Answer:  There has been great writing on animal ethics during the last few decades. Much of this follows Western models of ethical and moral deliberation, especially in the area of “animal rights.” This work is all good and valuable, and my aim is simply to enrich the discussion by calling attention to Eastern—particularly Indian—insights. This is a promising means to help us step back and see a wider horizon of ways to view ourselves as persons who happen to be living in the very special and strange “clothing” that are human bodies. 

Specifically, I focus on four broad aspects of yoga that can help open us to the reality of other living beings. First is attention, a central principle of any yoga practice, that needs to be applied to our relations with animals. Next is yoga discipline, the embrace of certain practices of self-restraint that are liberative for ourselves leading to liberative relations with animals. Third is yoga ontology—opening up to the “depth psychology” of who we actually are and what is our potential for being with other beings. Finally, and closely related with these three aspects of yoga, is self-transformation, which sets a trajectory of internal change that stretches the envelope of cultural convention to effect positive change in our environment.

Question: Are you hopeful that as people learn more about the unexpected connections, they will pay more attention to important questions about how they view and treat animals?

Answer: Of course, we always hope that what we write will stimulate meaningful discussion leading to positive consequences for the world. In my case, I hope and anticipate that others will take up the task of bringing yoga culture and animal ethical thought together in inspiring ways. The crying need of our world is creative and effective ways to bring about cultures of cooling down, as we are presently like the proverbial frog boiling in the fires of runaway human extractive economy and consumption. I like to think that ancient ways of yoga can be a significant part of the answer to this need, such that the living world—homo sapiens included—might yet have a chance to survive and thrive.

—From the intervew with HH Krishna Kshetra Swami by Marc Bekoff for the online-magazine Psychology Today on the book Yoga and Animal Ethics by Dh. Kenneth R. Valpey, published by Palgrave MacMillan in 2025. The legal open access download version of the book is available at: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-93361-5. The whole intervew is avalilable at: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/animal-emotions/202601/yoga-the-essence-of-animal-ethics-kinship-and-rewilding