Unfortunate Destiny: Humane Beasts and Beastly Humans

Animals, in Levi-Strauss’ famous words, are not good to eat but “good to think.” In Unfortunate Destiny (New York, Oxford University Press, 2017), Dartmouth College religion professor Reiko Ohnuma delves into the heretofore largely unstudied area of animal representation in Indian Buddhism. “Buddhism saw the human being alone, among all beings, as uniquely capable of bringing about an end to the perpetual suffering that all beings experience…. The ultimate goal of Buddhism… was open to human beings alone.” Of all religions, Buddhism is perhaps the most human-centric. Though there are deities and conceptions of gods, the core figure of Buddhism is, or at least was, a human being.  It is because Buddhism is so focused on the human being that animal representation becomes such an important area of study. Buddhists understood the complicated relationship between the human being and the animal. Ohnuma effectively sums up this dichotomy, explaining that humans “can only define themselves in opposition to that which is non-human. …because human beings are animals, yet continually define themselves in opposition to all non-human animals, there is a simultaneous kinship and otherness, identity and difference, and attraction and repulsion in humanity’s relationship to the animal.” The book aims to discuss a small section of the wide variety of ways animals are represented in early Indian Buddhist literature. She stresses that this treatment is not meant to be comprehensive, “but only to bring forward those categories of animal representations that have been most striking to me and that I believe illustrate the predominant strains of early Buddhist thinking about the animal realm.” To the average reader, the book can be a bit challenging—nearly all of the terms and ideas and works referred to are likely alien to anyone not familiar with the religion and its subject matter can come across as niche at best. Additionally, many Buddhist texts seem to contradict one another, and it can be hard, if not frustrating, to follow Ohnuma’s messages in the face of these incompatibilities. However, I do think that the book is worth reading as a glimpse into a huge but largely unstudied realm of the human experience as well as a timely reminder to modern readers about what it truly means to be human.

The book is clearly organized into a preface, three parts (each with an introduction and two to three chapters, with every chapter beginning with a relevant quote), a conclusion, and various supplementary materials. Its preface provides a relatively good introduction to the book, introducing readers to the subject of animals in Buddhism and Buddhism compared to other religious traditions, laying out the format of the writing, as well as providing the book’s aim and limitations. It’s to the point and wastes no time in getting to the meat of the book.

Part I of the book is titled “Unfortunate Destiny”, matching the book’s title. This section of the work takes a much narrower look at the nature of the animal realm and the unfortunateness of those born into it. The first of two chapters in this section (titled, once again, “Unfortunate Destiny”) discusses the horror of being an animal in the Buddhist cosmos. “To be an animal… is to live a miserable and pathetic existence, to suffer intensely, to lack the intelligence that makes spiritual progress possible, and to die in a state of abject terror, with little hope of ever attaining a higher rebirth.” There are five possible rebirths—god, human, ghosts, animals, and hell-beings. The first two are brought about by good deeds whereas the latter three are considered (you guessed it) “unfortunate destinies” brought about by immoral deeds. Rebirth into these last three categories is to be avoided at all costs. To be reborn as an animal is to have a fate right next to the torments of hell. “To be an animal” Ohnuma writes, “is to live a short and brutish lifetime replete with suffering; constantly oppressed by ‘hunger, thirst, heat, and cold’; continually devouring and being devoured by others; mindlessly engaging in promiscuity and incest; tormented and enslaved by human beings; lacking in language, reason, intelligence, wisdom, and insight.” The challenge of being reborn as an animal is, to put it bluntly, that animals are too dumb to be moral or immoral. Though humans are born higher on the cosmic ladder of rebirth, only they are able to commit the five worst sins. Being human is about knowing the difference between right and wrong, of being capable of restraint. Animals lack of intelligence has moral repercussions as they are largely immune to moral or spiritual betterment. Ohnuma concludes this first chapter by asking “What hope is there, then, for the animal?”

The answer lies in the second half of this section, where she delves into stories of animals redeeming themselves and achieving salvation. Two poignant examples are stories of the suicides of a snake and a buffalo. Each of these animals, by knowingly committing suicide in various ways, release themselves from suffering. Their non-natural suicide asserts the total incompatibility of the animal state with moral agency, self-cultivation, and final release from suffering.

Part II of the work is entitled “When Animals Speak.” In this section, Ohnuma focuses on the animals found in the Pali jatakas. The animals in these stories, as opposed to those in Parts I and III, are highly anthropomorphized and capable of advanced speaking abilities. One poignant example of the morbidity of the animal’s fate is in her analysis of Chris Noonan’s 1995 film Babe, wherein she peels back the innocent façade of the movie to reveal the animal’s plight underneath. The first chapter is entitled “(Human) Nature, Red in Tooth and Claw” followed by a Buddhist quote on human nature: “Human beings say one thing with their mouths and do another thing with their bodies.” The section very much reads like an animal’s version of A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy or Gulliver’s Travels, though the stories tend to be more morbid than comedic. Part II is, in my opinion, most poignant to modern readers, as it reminds humans of their capability for cruelty in their actions and institutions. Numerous moral lessons resound to contemporary ears in these stories. One story discusses a king whose chariot has been chewed upon by dogs. Enraged, the king orders that dogs be killed wherever they are seen. The leader of the dogs approaches the palace and interrogates the king. After a series of questions and responses, the leader of the dogs responds, “Great King, just now you said that because it was dogs who chewed up the leather of your chariot, you have ordered dogs to be executed, commanding that all of them are to be killed, wherever they are seen—and yet now, you are saying that the purebred dogs in your household are not being killed. This being the case, you are following the [four] evil courses of passion, [hatred, delusion, and fear] … A king, when deciding on a punishment, should be [as impartial] as a scale… The dogs who have grown up within this royal household, the purebred dogs endowed with beauty and strength — They are not being executed. This is not true exception; this is the murder of the weak!” By ordering all dogs to be killed instead of the few dogs who committed the crime (and by excluding the palace dogs), the king himself becomes guilty of a crime. Far from administering legal punishments, “he is, in fact, committing ‘murder.’” The other fallacy mentioned is that the king has failed to distinguish between the individual and the species. If an animal can be judged to be guilty, they must have moral agency. If a king then wishes to punish said animal, that animal must be tried as an individual, not as a species. The king here lumps together the actions of a few individuals into punishments for all of that group.

Part III steps away from moralizing animals and focuses more on the function of animals in relation to the Buddha. Entitled “Animal Doubles of the Buddha,” Part III focuses on the specific individual animals that the Buddha encounters in his travels and categorizes the three based on their relationship to him. This section is the least pleasant to read, as it delves deep into the world of Buddhist literature that most readers are still strangers in. There is also difficulty in adjusting to animals that are no longer anthropomorphic and capable of speech following the second part. Nonetheless, the book charges ahead. The three following stories are categorized as animal doubles of the Buddha. In this section, Ohnuma shows that “animal characters allow the epic story to ‘try out alternative plots and personalities’– they provide ‘a kind of narrative thought experiment’ and present us with ‘possibilities that no mere doubling by means of another human subplot could.’”

The book is certainly an educational experience. More than that, the book transforms the way that the reader sees animals in literature and, consequently, the world. One gains a new respect for the various life forms that inhabit this planet with us, as well as a new drive to distance ourselves from our animalistic tendencies of hatred and unnecessary violence towards our own species, irrational fear and anger, and uncontrollable desire. Though these lessons are valuable and worth learning, the journey is not necessarily an easy or always enjoyable one. Past the novel nature of the subject matter, the book has other failings. Its organization, though sections are clearly separated, can be confusing and arbitrary at first and readers may find it difficult to keep track. One often becomes lost in the barrage of different stories and forgets why they are there in the first place. While there is sufficient evidence provided, there is little guidance on the author’s part on the significance of each piece. I highly recommend the reader to first read the conclusion (there are no spoilers, I assure you) before engaging with the rest of the text, as it provides a necessary framework. Additionally, many of Ohnuma’s conclusions derived from provided stories are incompatible with various other stories. Animals at one time are subhuman and only capable of base desires with an inability to understand morality but are also capable of moral deeds and greatness and humanity. The process of reading through the book, to a very logical reader, can be infuriating at times. It’s important to note that these issues often arise when dealing with literary traditions. There are rarely any set rules that each writer plays by, and it is difficult draw any perfect conclusions.

Ohnuma’s supporting material suffers from a general lack of thematic consistency. Some sections focus very much on other scholarly literature about the topic at hand while others focus on moral philosophy and some comments just seem to come from her mind (as when she is discussing the individuality of animals through her dog Dusty). It isn’t so much the case that these examples are ineffective in clarifying certain concepts, but the variation in supporting ideas adds to the frenzy arising from the work’s unclear structure. Despite these reservations, Ohnuma does achieve her goal. It is difficult to communicate about a niche topic in a field most are unfamiliar with, and her target is likely academic as opposed to a lay audience. Following the conclusion of the book, the lay reader still leaves with a basic understanding of some of the various ways animals are represented in Buddhist literature. As Ohnuma notes, “while animals remained distinct from human beings through their lack of language, animals themselves became a language through which Buddhist authors could speak—and, on occasion, animals themselves could be heard.”