Thought for food

[Guest guest]

Hi all!

 

Another annual is the subject of vegetarianism. What I write here has been

written often enoough by me, but I can´t help responding every time the subject

comes up. Being a vegetarian is very good, if kept within limits. My daughter´s

partner is a vegan - won´t eat honey! - and I am honestly worried about her

premature but threatening widowhood. The boy is a vegan, not out of love for

animals but an aversion against assimilating animal products....

 

Conceding that killing of animals is cruel, I am shocked by the attitude of

vegetarians: their feeling of superiority, holiness etc. and the naive belief

that they are practising ahimsa! At the very low level, they often use or wear

leather - gloves, jackets, watchstraps, and even gurus sit on deer-skins etc. If

anyone believes that hides can be gathered from naturally demised carcasses, the

person has NO knowledge of Nature. There are more chances of winning the lotto

than of encountering a deer that died of old age, whose hide is still useable.

Is killing for vanity better than killing for food?

 

No animal gets to "old age" - so that the life expectancy of most animals is

unknown; the life possibility in zoos etc. is recorded, but there too

uncertainty exists: some critters die earlier in captivity than in freedom!

Elephants are exceptions and do reach "senility", but at that stage they are

usually given the merciful end: the leader of the herd kills them with its

tusks, for it is a burden for the herd, but cannot be abandoned to starve!

 

Practically every animal is born to be killed and eaten. Even lions, tigers,

hyenas etc. are killed and eaten by others when they get older and weak - or

more usually, get wounded and cannot defend themselves. In the semi-domesticated

forests of Europe and the States one does not see it, but in the Nature

Reservations of Africa one is confronted with facts. When zebras, gnus or

antelopes give birth, it is seasonal and the kids are all born within a few

hours - hours of carnage. There is no lack of midwives: the moment the baby´s

head comes out of the vagina there are hundreds of hyenas, jackals and leopards

waiting to pull it out and devour it. The mother is on the run, running zig-zag,

kicking with her hooves, while the baby crawls out. About 10% of the newborn

kids survive. The lucky ones still have a hard time, the mother is in terrible

stress. .... But those mothers, the majority, whose babes have been eaten up,

stand with resignation, tears in their eyes, dejected, apathetic.

 

The cruel slaughter houses are humane in comparison: the cruelty lies in the

method of rearing the animals, free living as compared with tiny stalls.

 

Coming back to vegetables. Not long ago I saw a poster on a wall, which said,

"Have you heard the scream of a butterfly?"

 

No, i have not, but I know it screams if one pulls off its wings.

 

Early in the 1900s J.C.Bose presented a number of recordings of "pain" reactions

- the primitive electro-encephalograms and cardiograms - at the Royal Academy of

Sciences in London. A learned member objected saying, "Mr. Bose, we know all

this. They are the pain or stimulus reactions of muscles in animals and humans.

Why bore us with this?" The sensation came when Bose answered, "Sir, these are

the reactions of plants and crystals!" He got the nobel prize! In his wonderful

lecture after that Bose propagated the theory that man, animals, plants,

microbes, minerals, molecules and atoms were all part of one familly, each of

which played its part in its own basic frequency or carrier-wave.

 

So Bose established that plants feel pain. Later on Baxter, the inventor of the

lie-detector, showed that plants communicate,feel emotions like joy, sorrow and

fear. Since plants are "dumb" electrodes were put in at various pülaces and an

instrument recorded reactions as positive or negative on a scale. Deflections of

a needle decided and by suitable connection positive was made to register

positive feelings. Various tests were made:

 

- a person watered flowering plants regularly and spoke loving words to the

plants. Later on wnenever this person entered the room, to give water or not,

the reaction was positive.

- a person regularly plucked a leaf or flower from the plants. Later on the

entry of the person immediately showed negative - fear?

 

- same with vegetable plants. whoever plucked the vegetables set off a negative

reaction.

 

- when the "cook" entered the room, the reaction was heftily negative.

 

- another person who only thought of cooking prawns alive set of very hefty

negative reaction.

 

- playing melodious music gave a positive deflection, violent pop negative.

 

- a murder had been committed in a room. Suspects were asked to enter the room,

one by one. One person activated a high negative response in the plants that

were in that room. Further intensified investigation proved that he was the

murderer.

 

- the presence of loving people showed positive deflections.

 

 

A vegetable plant produces vegetables to propagate - but also to feed, JUST AS

GNUS AND ANTELOPES AND TURTLES PRODUCE YOUNG TO FEED OTHER SPECIES! The plant

forgives us .... and we should be thankful.

 

By the natural process the plant builds up a layer between itself and its

"fruit" to separate it and sheds it without any pain. But in "plucking" we

amputate, before this layer is created. Imagine a mother delivering a child: the

baby is born and a while later the placenta is "shed". Plucking a vegetable or

fruit is like grabbing the baby and RIPPING OFF the placenta - a process that

will cause pain both to the mother and the child!

 

Plants have many segments of life. Take peas. The pod is segment one and the

individual peas are the other segments. Pluck the pod and you have hurt the

plant and the pod. The pod is still living : test this by leaving it in the air

and seeing it age! Each pea in the pod is attached to the pod by its umbelical

chord! pluck the pea and you cause pain to the pod and the pea! If the pea pod

has 10 peas, you have caused pain thus:

- once to plant and once to pod ... = 2

- once to pea and once to pea ..... = 20

Total 22 times. BUT YOU HAVE NOT HEARD THE SCREAMS!!!

 

But each pea still lives. It screams when it is put into the boiling water, or

crunched raw between your teeth!

 

So the total is 22 + 10 = 32 times for one pod of pea!

 

Eat a bowlful of peas and think of the screams of pain!

 

Do you realize how much Janardhana has done for us? How much pain he has to

suffer to nourish us? When Jesus said, "This is my body that you are eating",

this is what he meant!

 

Dear Vegetarians, eat your cabbage with humility, every leaf of the cabbage you

cut suffers pain. Don´t judge over your carnivorous compatriots: if you go

through the mathematics of it, they may cause less pain, for they kill once, and

the other cells die. Vegetable cells also die, but the vegetable dies many

deaths: various parts of a vegetable are nascent and can grow ito new plants,

whereas animal parts cannot be reproductive. You can plant any part of ginger

and a new plant will grow out of it!

 

Teilhard de Chardin, the catholic jesuit anthropologist once celebrated a mass

in a desert and began saying, " Father in heaven, i thank you for giving me this

life ang having MANIFESTED yourself in so many forms for my joy: as fruits and

animals to norish me, as trees and flowers to please my eyes and nose, as birds

and sounds to fill my ears with joy and wonder!...."

 

By all means choose your food as satwic as possible, but please spare others

your arrogance regarding the eating of meat. 50 years ago you would have hardly

been able to be vegetarianm in the west. I. a vegetarian by upbringing, had to

force myself to eat meat when I was about 18 years old, to be able to survive in

my profession. It took a whole year before I succeeded in swallowing one tiny

piece of meat! I settled down in germany 36 years go and if I had lived by

vaishnavite standards á la Srila P every meal would have been a pain in the

neck. Go tell the eskimos to be vegetarian! My nephew in Maine tried to help

me once: "fry Tofu with butter...." Sure I could, if I could afford to import

tofu from Boston or Beijing! And is there enough tofu - or soy beans - in the

world for all?

 

I eat an ounce of meat on many days of the week, sometimes two. but i do not

kill flies etc., which abound here. I catch them and throw them out of the

window. My record is over 159 flies on one hard day!

 

In my native tamil there is a saying, "To kill is a sin, but not if you kill to

eat or defend yourself!"

 

The worst sin is the "I am holier than thou" attitude!

 

regards

Mani

 

PS: Monks of the Ramakrishna order have a rather simple rule: red meat is

rajasic and therefore best avoided. White meat - poultry and fish - rather

tamasic, but in small quantities and with VIVEKA acceptable. But milk products

are also under this category, including the ghee - clarified butter - so

important in sacrifices!

 

True buddhist monks beg at three houses only and eat whatever is given!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

++++++++++++++++++++++