Dependent Origination and Karuna in Human-Animal Relationship in Khumbu

Abstract

This paper examines the human–animal relationship in Nepal’s Khumbu region through an examination of pastoral and logistical practices in the Himalaya, where yaks, naks, and jyokpoes (Yak cow hybrid) serve as primary carriers for both local subsistence and the tourism economy. It engages with an ethical paradox: despite the region’s cultural framing as a non-violence zone, the continued reliance on animals as load-bearing agents in harsh ecological conditions raises questions within contemporary animal rights and welfare discourses. The paper argues that Sherpa engagements with animals are not best understood as instrumental exploitation, but as ethically mediated interdependence grounded in Buddhist ontological and moral thought. Drawing on a mixed method of empirical observation, personal interviews with six Sherpa inhabitants of the Himalaya and interpretive analysis of secondary sources, it also borrows insights from Buddhist concepts of pratītyasamutpāda (dependent origination) and karuṇa (compassion) for theoretical anchorage. It proposes that Sherpa practices enact a compassion-regulated interdependence in which animals’ labor is utilized without denying their moral status as sentient co-inhabitants. This framework sustains, rather than resolves, the tension between use and care, contributing to environmental humanities and animal studies by foregrounding a Himalayan Sherpa model of relational ethics.