My boundless gratitude goes first of all to my spiritual masters, who have given a direction, a meaning, and a sense of joy to every moment of my existence, and in particular to those who inspired in me the wish to become a vegetarian: Kyabje Kangyur Rinpoche and his sons Pema Wangyal Rinpoche and Jigme Khyentse Rinpoche; as well as to those spiritual masters who opened my heart to altruistic love and compassion, Kyabje Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche and His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama.
I am very grateful to the Shining Hope Foundation, which is dedicated to humanitarian, animal, and environmental causes, for the support they provide to a mobile clinic project that cares for forty thousand patients per year in Bihar, India, under the aegis of our humanitarian association Karuna-Shechen. This support has allowed me to devote to the preparation of this book the time that I would otherwise have had to spend in finding the financial resources necessary for the accomplishment of that project.
I thank with all my heart Carisse Busquet and Christian Bruyat for their patient and expert proofreading of the French manuscript and also Raphaële Demandre, Martine Fournier, Caroline Lesire, and Ilios Kotsou, who carefully read through particular chapters and provided me with valuable suggestions. The errors and imperfections that remain are due to my own limitations alone.
I am very thankful to Jacques Sémelin, a prominent specialist in mass violence and a professor at the Institut d’Études Politiques in Paris for having twice read through the chapter called “The Mass Killing of Animals—Genocide versus Zoocide” and having taken the time for a long and impassioned conversation about it; to Norin Chai, head of the veterinary service of the Jardin des Plantes Zoo in Paris, for reading over the pages concerned with zoos and for the information she generously provided me with; to Gérard Busquet for his valuable suggestions and information about India, Hinduism, and Islam; as well as to Francis Wolff, professor at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, for having received me and engaged in discussion with me in a spirit of openness and cordiality, in spite of our very different views, on the question of our relationship with animals and about the corrida in particular.
Thanks to Jane Goodall for her inspiration and for the understanding we share, and to Jean-Baptiste Jeangène Vilmer for our exchange of letters and for our common commitment.
Finally, I cannot adequately express my gratitude to my editors Nicole Lattès, my longtime friend and editor, and Guillaume Allary. They attentively read and reread many versions of the manuscript and provided me with kind guidance every step of the way, as well as to the entire team at Allary Éditions, which worked hard to create and promote this book. May this Plea for the Animals help to lessen the suffering of all beings!