Mindfulness communities today speak often and eloquently about compassion, presence, and care for the world. It reveals a tension between mindfulness as a practice of inner awareness and mindfulness as an ethical way of living—a tension worth sitting with. It forced a deeper question to the surface:What does it mean to practice mindfulness if our compassion does not extend to all beings who suffer? To exclude animals from our circle of care is to quietly limit the very heart of compassion practice. When compassion expands to include nonhuman beings, mindfulness becomes whole again.

Source: Washington Post March 10, 2026 16:10 UTC