Supreme Master Ching Hai's Quotes: Only the guilty are punished

In our society, ladies and gentlemen, all the powerful people in the world, in our society, the law only punishes someone who has done something wrong to the society. The animals, they have never done us any wrong. They live their life quietly, they’re eating whatever God provides them, they don’t harm us in any way. Even if in some cases they do, because we destroy their habitats, because they have nowhere to live, they have no more food in nature for them to eat, so they have to come to us, trusting that we would share with them some food, because we took away their habitat. In our society, if we took away something from someone, we’d pay back something. So the animals trusted that we would pay them back with some food. But, in any case, we always kill them, if they come too near.

If we want to call ourselves a civilized human race, we must protect the animals’ lives, which are linked to ours. We have to protect them because they are us – because if we don’t protect them, we are vulnerable because Heaven will not forgive us, because Heaven will not forgive us, if we treat other co-inhabitants unkindly.