Buddhist attitudes toward animals have long reflected a tension between two competing perspectives. One is a “cosmological” view grounded in karma and rebirth, which often treats animals as having a lower moral standing than humans. The other is an “equality” view, which holds that all sentient beings deserve equal moral consideration because they are capable of suffering. This chapter examines that tension through a comparison with Kantian and neo-Kantian moral philosophy. I argue that the Buddhist cosmological view shares important structural similarities with Kant’s indirect duty view of animals, according to which animals matter morally only indirectly through their relation to human moral life. Both approaches have been widely criticised. I then explore whether defenders of the Buddhist cosmological view could respond to these criticisms by appealing to Kantian conceptions of animal agency and to Christine Korsgaard’s neo-Kantian account of moral standing. I argue that these strategies ultimately prove difficult to reconcile with core Buddhist commitments.