ABSTRACT
This chapter gives an overview of Zen ethics and explores general question of human obligations to animals. It deals with how doctrine of skillful means might provide exceptions to the precepts against harming animals. Zen Buddhism is a religious, cultural, and philosophical tradition with roots in India and China that has influenced Japan since the twelfth century. Human beings can be reborn as some species of nonhuman animals, which means that there is a greater sense of interconnectedness that makes Buddhism decidedly non-anthropocentric. The term hben is literally translated as skillful means and refers to the doctrine developed at length in the Lotus Stra, which Dgen reveres as one of the most authoritative Mahyan texts. Dgen identifies Buddha-nature with impermanence, which is a characteristic shared by all beings, including insentient things such as rivers and mountains. The cultural origins of the belief date back to pre-Buddhist Hinduism, so it is unlikely that Dgen interprets reincarnation according to these strict categories.
