Seeking to find counsel and understanding of why my spirit felt so stirred, I fell back to the only reasonable thing a private, Meru man would do: Google. "animals have souls" was the search query.
http://www.all-creatures.org/murti/tsnhod-08.html
It gives biblical references and logic around the fact that animals too have souls. Great quote from the article:
But let us suppose for a moment that it could be shown that animals lack immortal souls, does it follow that their moral status is correspondingly weakened? It is difficult to see in what sense it could be. If animals are not to be recompensated with an eternal life, how much more difficult must it be to justify their temporal sufferings?
If, for an animal, this life is all that he can have, the moral gravity of any premature termination is thereby increased rather than lessened...In short, if we invoke the traditional argument against animals based on soullessness, we are not exonerated from the need for proper moral justification.
Naturally this did not make me feel any better, but did shed some light as to why on a moral basis i felt like such a murderer.
On a less philosophical note, I feel terrible on a variety of basic levels:
1. We hadn't named the puppy yet.
2. I was in a hurry, and failed to see the little mut on my path as i reversed. Had i been a bit more relaxed and "present", i probably would have seen him.
3. I watched him die. In between trying to find a vet's number , cursing like a sailor, and some rudimentary first aid, it was gruesome to see him gasp for life as it escaped from him. That 2 minutes was eternity.
4. The conversation btw myself, the gardener, and cook was startlingly inhumane: "aaah hako..katakufa..we enda kazini" - said the cook. For the rest of the conversation it was almost like it was the lil pups fault that it wasn't aware that i was driving away.
All in all, not a way to begin a morning.
Suddenly I'm thinking about animal cruelty in a whole new way. Yes we have been granted dominion, but to what extent?
What are your thoughts on how we treat our dogs in this country? (animal treatment is too broad, lets start from those nearest & dearest) Is it out of convenience that we choose to think of them as inanimate and spirit-less? So that we can conveniently justify our mistreatment?
Where do animal souls go? Is there a dog heaven? Where-ever they go, I pray he (dear un-named pup) may rest in peace.
