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Dharma Voices for Animals

The Buddha Taught Compassion for All Beings. We Take That Seriously.

We started as a group of friends troubled by a simple dissonance: Buddhism teaches compassion for all sentient beings — and yet animal suffering on an almost unimaginable scale happens with the quiet consent of Buddhist communities around the world. Something didn't add up. So in 2011, we decided to speak up.

Dharma Voices for Animals is today the only international Buddhist animal advocacy organization in the world. We work where the majority of Buddhists actually live: in Asia. Sri Lanka, Thailand, Vietnam — these are the places where temple by temple, monk by monk, cooking class by cooking class, we invite Buddhist communities to bring their practice into alignment with their values. In the US, we support Dharma centers in doing the same.

From Dissonance to Practice

Our approach is rooted in the Dharma, not in protest. We offer temple talks, film screenings, plant-based cooking classes, and community events. We work with monks, nuns, and lay practitioners — not to lecture, but to explore together what the Buddha’s teaching on non-harming truly means in the context of modern food systems. We also run a monthly Mindfulness and Meditation Sangha specifically for animal advocates — because we know that this work, too, requires inner sustenance.

The question we hold is an old one, and it remains urgent: if compassion is the heart of the path, where does it end?

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  • What becomes possible when the world's 500 million Buddhists begin to extend their practice of non-harming to all the beings who share this Earth?
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