Calling all veggies

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samabudhi

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Here's a thought. Suppose the cow is a Bodhisattva who would sacrifice it's own life for the benefit of other sentient beings. Who then am I to deny this sentient being the opportunity of generating good karma by sustaining me? Bearing in mind that this cow has been my mother and father who nutured and cared for me in previous lives. What a selfish act on my part! Akin to rejecting your parents support through school. Nope, instead you reckon you’re gonna save them the financial suffering and give school a miss. :D
 
a cow can sustain a being without having to kill the cow, yogurt, milk, chesse, ghee and so forth..

metta,

~v
 
seattlegal said:
Why do cows say mu? :D
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i want a cow.

i wish i had a cow. i would keep her safe in the pasture & in the barn all year round. feed her hay & make sure her water never froze over. then milk her twice a day. (& of course shovel the poop).
 
cows are nice, but once u live around them for as long as i have (almost all my life) all the fun is taken out of it. i have cows in the felid behind my house. theyre fun to look at but i dont like it when they wake u up at 5 am by mooing. but, as far as the eating meat thing, i try not to do it if i can help it, but if i have nothing else, then ill eat it. but, its all a matter of opinon. i heard that H.H. the Dali Lama ate meat on ocassion. con anyone confirm that? i cant remember where i heard that since my memory is horrible. but anyway.

be well in peace
 
yeah i read that H H Dali Lama eats meat. i could be wrong but i think he even eats it once a day, for health reasons suggested by doctors.

i think its ok to eat meat aslong as it wasnt killed specifically for you, but then again meat is killed for the consumer. and if the consumer doeant want meat then there wont be as much animals being killed. i dunno, seems like a complicated subject.

i'm still pondering over the meat issue myself

peace
 
Generally speaking...

since most of the beings which post here are not monastics, the Vinya rules are not really applicable.

that being said, i would say that ones decision to be vegetarian or not should flow from the realizations of their own practice.

in other words, i think it is up to each individual predicated upon their capacity for such things.

metta,

~v
 
I tried to be a veggie for a while, I think it is the right thing to do. I lasted for 6 months but in the end my health was suffering and I was getting all grumpy.

I think that my diet at the time was simply not varied enough to cut out meat completely.

I hope one day I will be able to do it, but at the moment I find that it is not helpful for me.

Peace
ATF
 
Namaste Awaiting,

thank you for the post.

oh, indeed... going the vegetarian route can be difficult... especially if you aren't taking a multivitamin. you can get just about all you need from plants, but you would need to take a B12 supplement... of course, that is presuming that the rest of your diet is pretty diversified.

in my own case, when i first became vegetarian, i was really a pastatarian :) i wasn't all that keen on most vegetables prior to becoming a veggie... put on a few pounds too many (ok, so..perhaps many pounds too many..) and realized that i had to really change my diet once more..

now, i've got a nice mix of things... and, to be frank with you, there are some really excellent companies out there making great vegetarian food. one of the best is, of all things, a British company! yes, indeed, good British food that isn't Indian! ;)

Quorn is the name of the company and if you can find their products in your area, you won't actually believe it.

the first time i tried it, i had to go to the trash bin and check the box again to ensure that it really was a vegetarian meal!

my boss at work is a vegetarian, but only for enviornmental and economic reasons... he figures that a cow takes an acre of land to feed and only provides a few beings sustenance, whereas an acre of crops can feed a great many more beings.

have a good weekend!

metta,

~v
 
Hi Vaj,

Yes, I know about quorn and that was indeed the mainstay of my veggie diet. In fact, Quorn was first discovered in my home town of Middlesbrough at the ICI chemical plant.

BUT BEWARE

Too much quorn actually causes anal leakage!

Just thought I better warn you.

Peace
ATF
 
Awaiting_the_fifth said:
Hi Vaj,

Yes, I know about quorn and that was indeed the mainstay of my veggie diet. In fact, Quorn was first discovered in my home town of Middlesbrough at the ICI chemical plant.

BUT BEWARE

Too much quorn actually causes anal leakage!

Just thought I better warn you.

Peace
ATF
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\


interesting..

do they use Alestra (sp?) or the like?

metta,

~v
 
Not sure of the precise science to be honest.

My brother was telling me about it a while ago. He's a microbiologist and he works a lot with the kind of fermentation processes that produce the quorn mycoprotein. Apparently, a side effect of the procedure on this particular organism is the release of a chemical not unlike olestra.

Be advised, this is second hand information translated by someone (me) who's knowledge of biology is shockingly lacking. Don't start up a class action over my words or anything. K?

Peace
ATF
 
Wouldn't the primary concern be about suffering and working to minimize it?

If so, it seems to me that the more complex the organism, the greater the myriad of ways it can suffer. The most simple life forms can suffer physical pain. The more intelligent animals can suffer from fright, depression, and other basic maladies. Humans can suffer from existential crisis, as well as the lower forms of suffering.

The wider the varieties of ways a being can suffer, the more effort we must expend to avoid causing that suffering.

In the case of an animal, I think it is a misperception of true reality to think that the animal "does not wish to die". We may see the animal run from us, recoil at pain, etc. But none of this is a "wish not to die". Rather, the animal runs because of a simple reflex of fear at its immediate impressions. I recoils from the immediate physical pain. But neither of these two behaviors are made after having reached any conclusions about death. They are instinctive behaviors resulting from the fact that all lifeforms that did not carry these instinctive proclivities died off long ago.

A Human on the other hand, has the capacity to understand what death means, to imagine himself in that state, and to prefer not to be in it. Furthermore, a human can make plans for the far future, and experience distress at the knowledge that they will not be fulfilled. In an even more subtle way, a human can experience distress suffering knowing that he lives in a world where the rights of humans not to be murdered or eaten was not respected.

In the animal, of course, both the fright involved in the fleeing and the pain involved in the injuries are suffering, and should be minimized. But none of the forms of suffering associated with an actual wish to continue living actually exist in the animal. They don't comprehend their own death or make plans for the far future. Nor are they distressed by living in a world where their kind is eaten.

So, if an animal were to live in good conditions and not feel afraid, and if it were to be killed in the most painless manner possible, then I can see no reason why there would be anything wrong with this. The animal will simply cease unified experience in the manner it had before.

In this way, they avoid a natural death that might have occured in the wild, which is not controlled to minimize pain. In addition, their material goes back into the cycle of life, a Natural and good purpose.

Right now, I think our main problem is that animals ARE often raised in cruel conditions and killed in ways that cause them suffering. This is a far greater type of bad karma for us than the simple fact of eating the animals.
 
Being vegetarian isn't really that hard, you know. I heard that eating meat is detrimental to spiritual development, well I didn't hear it but Yogi Sivananda wrote about it on his site. Of course, I'm sure many people will deem that ridiculous to justify eating meat or just because they think it's ridiculous in general.

Personally, as long as the animal doesn't suffer too much, I'm fine with people eating meat. Lamentably that is not the case right now in many facilities, but then, there's nothing I can do about it.

Also, I don't think a bodhisattva would incarnate as an animal to be eaten because that would not be conducive to enlightenment, just sustenance, which you can easily get by gnawing your arm off.
 
Where I live being a veggie is easy. A virus kills. A whale kills. I'm killing just by breathing. By virtue of living, all sentient creatures are killing.

Snoopy.
 
Snoopy said:
Where I live being a veggie is easy. A virus kills. A whale kills. I'm killing just by breathing. By virtue of living, all sentient creatures are killing.

Snoopy.
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Namatse snoopy.

what sentient beings are you killing with your respiration?

metta,

~v
 
Airborne stuff: bacteria, viruses, fungi...They may not be sentient but I'm definitely killing them (unless they kill me!)

Am I right in thinking some Buddhist monks wear masks to trap them, rather than swallow them?
 
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