Animal Suffering from a Buddhist Perspective: A Reinterpretation of the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path

Abstract

The suffering of non-human animals has been debated for a long time, given the challenge of understanding the subjectivities of other beings. A general Buddhist perspective allows us to have a new frame of reference to this phenomenon that is not only theoretical, but also provides us with practical guidelines. This paper is an essay on animal suffering that proposes a general Buddhist perspective with an ethical emphasis. It addresses the issue through a reinterpretation of the Four Noble Truths formulation and the Noble Eightfold Path using them as frameworks to reflect on human actions and their consequences for other animals.