Hindu Feast of the East.. response of Catholic Priest

[Guest guest]

Italian priest about Mother Nature:

Someone slashed my tire this morning.. but he did me a favor..

I had an hour to sit in the car before

the tire store opened.. and so dipped

into a book in the car by Fr. Mario Mazzoleni,

published by Leela Press of Faber Virginia, USA

about his encounter with the East. When he

decided to visit an ashram, "I tested myself

before going and decided in one moment to stop

eating meat." He went on to say that this

decision helped greatly with a kidney problem

he had been having. "I knew from my studies in

parapsychology that the violence and death stress

connected with the slaughter of animals are not

mere hypotheses, but verifiable facts that

have a precise influence on the life of anyone

implicated by them. In sum, by eating the animal

one assimilates

her history, her

fears, her stresses, her rebellion against death,

her desires

and passions."

 

 

from Rome to Puttaparthi:

 

Fr Mario Mazzoleni on the ethics of diet .. part II

 

(after 3 years as a strict vegetarian, Fr. Mario Mazzoleni

speaks of a desire for meat.)

 

I would be a hypocrite if I led the reader to believe that I was

strong enough to be perfectly faithful to my Lenten resolution.

There

was a time when I started to meditate with the Transcendental

Meditation technique. The TM instructors assured me that being a

vegetarian was a stress I still needed to overcome, and that's why

the

problem of eating meat kept surfacing in my mind. I hadn't yet

completely

resolved my desire for meat - they told me- and so the repressed

desire was floating to the surface. It is a fact that the minute

I would sit down to meditate, the most succulent meals would pass

in

front of my mind, full of fragrant roasted chickens and various

sausages. What to do? If I was going to ruin all my meditations

for a roast chicken, it would be better to eliminate the problem

by facing it head on. And so after 3 years of strict vegetarianism,

I

decided to get rid of the desire once and for all by satiating

myself

with a meat dinner. After all, I told myself to quiet my sense

of guilt, "It isn't a crime to eat meat, and I can't say that

because

I'm vegetarian I'm better than many people who are carnivorous."

 

It was almost a traumatic experience. I remembered an analogous

experience of Gandhi's that he recounted in his autobiography.

Convinced by a friend that India could be liberated only by the

grit

of someone who ate meat, he hid himself on a river bank to consume

some barbecued baby goat meat, and the next night he could

feel bleating in his chest. Instead of enjoying the coveted snack

in peace, the minute this little faithbreaker set his teeth into

the cruel repast* (* a reference to Dante's Inferno.. in which

meat is described as a cruel repast in XXXIII.1)

he was himself bitten by remorse and anxiety. I kept seeing the

animal alive in front of me, and this inhibited the desire that was

so

enticing when it was simply mental.

 

I immediately noticed some other effects, physical as well as

psychic.

My intestines held that food much longer than they kept vegetables,

and my sense of smell, made sensitive by several years of

vegetarianism,

was able to detect the odor of the cooked animal on my skin. It was

a disagreeable sensation. As for my psyche, I noticed that my

mind, which during my 3 year "Lent" was no longer seriously

agitated by unwanted thoughts, suffered a set back from that

carne-vale (meat festival); polluting throughts started to enter

again in triumph. It was a lesson. As always it is experience more

than words that has the greater power of persuasion.

The decision to adopt a vegetarian diet was motivated also by a

religious

factor. I knew that I was going to a sacred place.

 

quoted from Don Mario Mazzoleni's book, published by Leela Press

of Faber, Virginia USA

 

 

 

(the book is translated from the Italian by

a Notre Dame professor)(there is also

an interesting book by Jewish psychiatrist

Sam Sandweiss)

(the tire store owner told me he used to hunt

but now he films.. others told me his films

are sought after for their beauty)

--- End forwarded message ---