THE SOUL OF THE WOLF : A Meditation on Wolves and Man. By Michael W. Fox. 131 pp. New York : Lyons & Burford, 1992 (1980). ISBN 1-55821-150-0 (pbk.)A few years ago I read a whole shelf of books on animals - Animal Rights, Animal Theology, Animal Experimentation, Ranching and the Meat-Packing Industry, and books on individual animals such as elephants, whales, gorillas, chimpanzees, pigs, sea otters, hamsters, and so on. Although all of the books were extremely informative, and left me with a considerably heightened respect for the many wonderful qualities and powers of our animal kin, one book seemed somehow different and more inspiring than the others : Michael W. Fox's 'The Soul of the Wolf.'
Although all of the books are still sitting on my shelves, I never open them anymore. I don't even like to be reminded of them. They're just too depressing. For what all of them have in common is that they bring home forcefully the enormity of the crime that we daily and unconsciously perpetrate against animals all across the globe. Tens of millions of animals are daily tortured to death in laboratories dedicated to the worship of Mammon. Tens of millions of others are cruelly slaughtered to provide some of the unhealthiest food that humans have ever eaten.
In contrast to the average unthinking selfish denizen of the modern world, who tacitly agrees to the prevailing evil, and who seemingly couldn't care less about the sufferings of animals, Michael W. Fox comes over not merely as a concerned and compassionate figure, but as a truly saintly person.
He has lived with wolves. He has seen very deeply into their nature. He respects them as fellow creatures with whom we have many things in common, but who at the same time are vastly superior to us in many respects. And he has understood, of course, that they too have a soul.
His book is at one and the same time both inspiring and profoundly saddening. We are inspired by the marvel that is the wolf; we are sickened at modern man's treatment of this fellow creature.
In the Buddhist Prajnaparamita literature there is a wonderful verse:
"For all creatures, O Lord, desire happiness; all creatures desire happiness and are averse to suffering...."
Most of us, presumably, are aware of this, but if you read Fox you will also become aware that wolves too are every bit as deserving of happiness, if not moreso, as the humans who are involved in a cosmic crime, not only against wolves, but against the whole of nature, for wolves too have souls.
