vegetarianism and Hinduism

[Guest guest]

Sadanandaji's posting on vegetarianism is nothing but excellent. I would

request him to post the other article of his (whether it is necessary to

believe in God in order to be a Hindu) so that new entrants like me into

the list like me may also benefit.

May I also add the following two paragraphs (extracted from my book on

Essentials of Hinduism) on non-violence, which is a concomitant of the

concept of vegetarianism?

Non-violence is not a binary concept. It is a continuous spectrum, like

temperature. It is a whole spectrum of qualities. There are shades and

shades. Just as absolute Truth or Absolute Purity is an ideal, Absolute

non-violence is also an ideal. Naturally there are degrees of

non-violence. Consequently the allied concept of vegetarianism and

non-vegetarinism could vary from the extreme of cannibalism to the other

extreme of not even breathing plain unfiltered air lest one hurts the

gedrms in it!

The concept of non-violence (as Sadanandaji has beautifully brought out)

has its roots in the Hindu theory that every life is a spark of the divine

and our recognition of the divine must be so universal as to identify

ourselves with this divinity in every living being, and therefore, the

least harm that one can do to life is all that is permitted. In

consequence with this principle, Hindu rituals prescribe various

compensatory repentent rites as a daily chore, for the several explicit

and implicit killings that we cannot do without in our day-to-day lives.

It is in this context that the practice of vegetarianism varies from

region to region in the country and from one (spiritual) level of society

to another. In fact, the higher one considers oneself in the cosmic

evolution in the journey towards perfection, the nearer one would like to

be to the ideal of non-violence. Even the understanding of the concept

depends on the extent of one's conviction about the identity of all living

beings. The nearer we are to this conviction the more non-violent we are

likely to be. It is this attitude of identity that matters.

Pranams to everybody on the list.

Yours, Profvk

 

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Prof. V. Krishnamurthy

You are invited to visit my latest book entitled GEMS FROM THE OCEAN OF HINDU

THOUGHT VISION AND PRACTICE at

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Rhodes/2952/gohitvip/contents.html

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