Venerable Master Hsuan Hua:
If you liberate life, it increases your compassion.
Liberating life is just liberating yourself. Why?
Because you and all living beings are basically one substance.
By a Tang poet: Fish
Walking around the pond,
I watch the fish swim about.
Yonder a young lad lets down
The hook on his fishing rod.
You could say we share a love for fish,
But with different aims in mind.
I came to feed these aquatic beings;
He came to take their lives.
Jeremy Bentham:
…The question is not,
Can they reason?
nor Can they talk?
but, Can they suffer?
