Yoga and Animal Ethics

This open access book offers a comprehensive understanding of yoga theory and practice as it bears on several dimensions of animal-related ethical reflection and action. "Yoga" has become a household word in recent decades and, increasingly, has drawn physical yoga practitioners to explore its philosophy; significantly, classical yoga philosophy and praxis are deeply grounded in realizing the self in relation with all beings as non-material selves. Therefore yoga provides an ideal entry-way into contemporary animal ethics discourse, contributing particularly in its appeal to the experiential dimension of human self-understanding in relation to nonhuman animals.

Ch 1: Introduction—Bringing Yoga and Animal Ethics Together.- Part I: Yoga and the Dialectics of Animal/Self Sacrifice.- Ch 2: Yoga as Reaction to Animal Sacrifice.- Ch 3: Dharma, Yoga, and Animals in the Mahabharata.- Part II: Yoga Ascent, Animal Ethics: Body, Self, and Other in Classical Yoga.- Ch 4: Yoga Ethics: Restrains (yama) and Observances (niyama).- Ch 5: Embodied Yoga in Pursuit of Equal Vision.- Ch 6: Minding Animals: The Meditational Turn.- Part III: Being Animal, Becoming Devotional Subjects.- Ch 7: The Bhagavadgita’s Three Approaches to Animal Ethics.- Ch 8: Animals, Personhood, Wonder, and Bhakti-yoga.- Ch 9: Concluding Reflections: Yoga, Animals, Environment.

Kenneth R. Valpey is a research fellow of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, and a fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, UK.