There they are, dotting the hillsides and plains all across the country. Other than children in the backseats of cars or vans, few notice the wide-eyed cows and calves that lumber innocently along their self-created paths behind barbed wire. The lives of cows are quiet and uneventful. Or are they? These precious bovines are not just fodder for meat or leather; they are precious beings–as are all animals, birds and fish–regarded by many Hindus in India as sacred. How can anyone even think of killing it? No cow is an it; every cow is a she. What can we learn from the gentleness of bovines in our mist? Basho, the father of Japanese haiku, said: Go to the pine to learn from the pine. In the same spirit, I say: Open your heart to the cows and deepen your capacity for kindness and ahimsa (harmlessness). in that other world moo means mu*sweet grassa newborn calfnuzzling her mother*her face, her gazethat one could bemy mother now*freeway driveif I could, I would jointhe congregation of cows