“No philosophers so thoroughly comprehend us as dogs and horses.” -Herman Melville
Have you ever had the strange experience of feeling misunderstood by everyone you knew, and then had a dog jump on your lap to give you the love you were seeking? Human intelligence is a double edged sword. Reason can sometimes pierce the mysteries of nature, but it can also leave us so lost in abstractions that we are uprooted from our own biological truth. I have always found it wondrous that dogs seem to understand when we are sad even when our friends do not. Unlike us, dogs do not seem to get lost in their plans or regrets. They are four-legged Buddhas mostly living in the here and now. They recognize the pain of a kindred mammal through their own animal tissue. The answer to many of our world problems lies sleeping in our benumbed human tissue. Empathy is a powerful litmus test to tell if our own hearts have fallen into numbness. Almost by definition, we cannot feel it when our own hearts go numb. Dog-like empathy toward ourselves and others is a way of making sure that intellectual abstractions have not eclipsed our own very tender mammalian hearts.