Why did you choose to be vegetarian

[Jan]

 

Let's hear from the members: What is your reason to be vegetarian?

 

[mickey morgan]

For completely, and always compassionate reasons. Though I don't buy meat (I do eat eggs), I am often offered gourmet cooked meat (by my dear mother who lives below me, and is a Julia Childs groupie). I feel it is respectful always to receive and use (or pass on) what a kind universe has offered me. I always thank the animal I am eating for giving its life for my nourishment, and request of a kind universe that he/she be reborn as a human being . . . with less suffering. Sometimes a little meat gives me a strength much needed on fibromyalgic/debilitating fatigue days.

Great question. Great research on the different approaches to rawism. My mind gobbles it up. And, I realize that I might be considered a person leaning towards raw vegetarianism already. Thanks for the thought provocation, Jan.

peace,

mickey morgan (mickeypamo)

[Béatrice LATEUR LACROIX]

When I was 2O, I spent one year in differnts countries in Africa.

In a village, I asked to a women "Why don't you eat the soja you have?"

She answered me "Because we send it in France (where soja is eaten by cows) to maintain the dwell." .

When I came back to France, I dedided to become vegetarian and every day I remember it's a miracle to have water on the tap at home.*I lso take a great care of the quantity of water I use.

Love and Peace for all Beings.

[Jan]

according to PETA raising animals for food is grossly inefficient, because while animals eat large quantities of grain, soybeans, oats, and corn, they only produce comparatively small amounts of meat, dairy products, or eggs in return. This is why more than 70 percent of the grain and cereals that we grow in this country are fed to farmed animals.

It takes up to 16 pounds of grain to produce just 1 pound of meat

It takes more than 11 times as much fossil fuel to make one calorie from animal protein as it does to make one calorie from plant protein.
It takes more than 2,400 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of meat, while growing 1 pound of wheat only requires 25 gallons. You save more water by not eating a pound of meat than you do by not showering for six months! A totally vegan diet requires only 300 gallons of water per day, while a typical meat-eating diet requires more than 4,000 gallons of water per day.

If we simply ate soy and other plant foods ourselves instead of feeding them to farmed animals, we would not need to raise nearly as many crops, and we could eliminate the need to decimate the rain forest.

[Béatrice LATEUR LACROIX]

 for theses precise informations.

Love and Peace for you and all Beings.

[Stephen Quinto]

Oh how simple it is to Love.... and oh how easy it was to kill, to participate in the barbarity. Until finally I walked away from it. And Peace seeped into the spaces that had, until then, been filled with savagery, though one would not know..... Now they were emptied, purified, and were open to Spirit to take place.

I didn't know.... no one ever 'knows' what they don't know .... It's such a puzzle; we are confused. It was always thought a 'blessed ritual' to be at the table, surrounded by 'loving' approval, 'savoury' smells, delicious tastes to put in one's mouth; the glow of candlelight, smiles of approval, musical voices, a chorus of merry, familiar voices. 

And a world full of 'wondrous' choices tendered to you from every possible place, the concoction of a cabal in which you must be a member ...or pariah! So until the veil is lifted who can ever know?

Yet there was always a nagging suspicion all was not right in Heaven ....or in Hell.Who would ever have related the panoply of cause and effects. Really it was beyond imagination.

Each of us come to learn Truth by our own special path; the toll is a Karmic one, hidden from the face of the materium. Only initiates will hear, or see. That is how it was meant to be....

For me, the number of false starts is a story in itself; it came and went any number of times. Until, once, when I just let go ....and fasted, my weakened spirit alone with me, perhaps close to dying....  On the seventh day, a consciousness arose within me ....and I saw the light. It was there all the time ....but you'd never have known it. The onsets of epiphanies are so subtle.

I walked into the kitchen; sustained more by inclining into the light than from any residual strength. Ruth was there already; she'd been there for some years [now she was having lunch]. I just hadn't seen it, couldn't recognize it. Then all at once it became so obvious. I hardly spoke, but I did. it came as simple as this: "I'll have what you're having...." She had been raw vegan for several years now; and vegetarian for ten years before that. I had only given up animal meat, but had continued with violence against fish until this episode.

I just didn't see it ....until now. It was spirit I was eating, violently torn from its place in the sacred scheme of things. And I was blindly playing out the ritual, nimbly acting out what ....the role of the damned!

It's long over, now, the whole of the struggle. It will never again return, because once you 'know'....

So, from finally a place of Peace, let the Spirit speak, let my humble prayer for one ....be a prayer for all.

[mickey morgan]

Beautifully authentic words

[Jan]

Same day in 2007 I was getting ready to prepare a family dinner. I unpacked organic chicken from its plastic wrap. Somewhere between the plastic and the slimy chicken skin there was a micro awakening. “ I'm not going to eat that”. In that short moment I've seen many reasons why I shouldn't. I knew all of them before, but in this moment they all came to me and I made my decision.

I didn't eat meat ever since. Shortly after that I became a Buddhist. I call my self “the Internet Buddhist”. I read, and listen to, dharma material I find on internet. My favourite teacher is Lama Marut. I learned more in those five years since 2007, than in the whole life before. All thanks to a chicken, who gave it's life to help me.

[mickey morgan]

Wonderfully auspicious, Jan! As a nearly-13-year Tibetan Buddhist practitioner (Gelugpa) who's rather laid out for awhile, I've found some wonderful short teachings and then several Guided Meditations that have put me to sleep easily. Go to Reginald Ray's Dharma Ocean Fdtn., under "Teachings", then "Audio". His voice and timing are perfect and he is completely uncontrived. Maybe you already have surfed in his direction?

peace,

mickey (lobsang pamo) morgan

[Jan]

Thanks, found the link. I will listen tonight.

[Ramesh M. Shani]

In a yoga program known as Siddha Samadhi Yoga of 13 days, on the 4th day was a talk on food in which they explained how anatomically we humans are vegetarian animals, for example, our jaws made to chew, our large intestines, not having large canines to tear meat, etc., when compared to carnivorous animals. Examples of grass/vegetarian animals, like horse, elephant, sheep, cow, etc were exhorted.  From the 5th day I became vegetarian! I did not have to mentally work on the switch over. I thus came to believe that we can change only after the seed of karma is burnt out.

[Stephen Quinto]

Karma is ever-present, inevitable .....and so rewarding ....for the just!  I tried to convince my sons that the measure of a man ....is not how well he looks after himself; but how he takes care of everything and everyone else. Namaste.

[Béatrice LATEUR LACROIX]

Thanks for you wise and inspiring comment, Stephen and for sharing your point of vue.

Love and Peace for all Beings.