Enlightened Vegetarianism (and more)

[Wezil]

Originally posted by GePap
...I am not to vain as to think our setience makes us anymore than what we are, large,,, relatively hairless apes.

[Wernazuma III]

Re: "Meat"

Originally posted by Blake
I could slit the throat of an animal - or a human for that matter, hey, even a human child, and chop them up. That wouldn't bother me in the least, if it were the right thing to do. Watch it, do it, both fine.

The thing is, it's almost never the right thing to do...

one of the nice thing about Buddhism is you can ALWAYS find creepy stories, because Buddhists aren't shy when it comes to difficult questions.

You must of course choose with much care - for example having concluded that either one must die so two can live, otherwise all three will die, it is a difficult thing to decide which should die.

You, not I.

Maybe they chose the child because they knew the child was a picky eater and would refuse to eat her parents, meaning that instead of one dying, two would die - the sacrificed parent and the child. Leaving a very lonely parent...

And maybe it's because the child isn't involved in the decision taking process.

The moral of the story of course is;

Stop taking whatever you take.

don't be picky about what you eat.
But do think about where it's coming from...

Duh, mine comes from the supermarket shelf and has a large red -50% print on it.

[DaShi]

Sorry Blake, you lost me at: "I could slit the throat of an animal - or a human for that matter, hey, even a human child, and chop them up."

[DirtyMartini]

Originally posted by DaShi
Sorry Blake, you lost me at: "I could slit the throat of an animal - or a human for that matter, hey, even a human child, and chop them up."

seriously. That's weird.

You may like to think you could calmly and emotionlessly slit the throat of a child, provided it was "the right thing to do", but I'd be willing to bet that you couldn't. You'd feel unrelenting remorse, if you could even go through with it in the first place. Unlike, say, an animal eating its young.

[Asher]

You speak of "the right thing to do". The "right thing to do" is to eat meat. Proteins and all that jazz. It's how our bodies are made. Accept it, move on, do the right thing -- eat meat.

Vegetarians, especially the more pompous "lacto-vegetarian" variety anger me greatly. Especially when they have leather purses or shoes. Holy ****, the rage I feel for these people.

Eat meat, people. It's how it's meant to be! It's the RIGHT THING.

[Flubber]

In one recent meal I ate

lamb
duck
boar
char
trout
shrinp
lobster

I feel I honored those animals by enjoying them so thoroughly

[Wezil]

I ate dried snake once. It tasted like salty beef jerky.

[Blake]

Originally posted by DirtyMartini
seriously. That's weird.

You may like to think you could calmly and emotionlessly slit the throat of a child, provided it was "the right thing to do", but I'd be willing to bet that you couldn't. You'd feel unrelenting remorse, if you could even go through with it in the first place. Unlike, say, an animal eating its young.

You really have no idea of the power of The Way. I can say that with confidence, because I had no idea of the power of The Way, before I experienced it for myself.

To give you a hint, Buddhist Monks are known to occasionally set themselves on fire and self-immolate to death, without batting an eyelid.

That is the power of The Way.

It's difficult to explain the power, but it's basically having an "empty mind", in a normal mind things fester, things like hate and guilt and remorse. You learn to have a pure mind, and those things wont fester.

Bear in mind, that this power only comes from universal compassion, it's um - not like a mind trick where you just will the negative emotion away. It's filling yourself with nothing but good motivation (towards others and yourself), and as long as you continue to do good things with good motivation that state of mind (of bliss and joy) endures.

Technically, people could be made torture proof by learning buddhist meditation. The problem? In order to do this they have come to understand what a pure mind is, and why it's desirable to have one (this is kind of obvious when you "See" it for the first time), they will no longer be motivated to do the harmful things for which they'd get tortured. So you could make a terrorist torture-proof, but in doing so he'd free his mind of all that resentment which makes him a terrorist, and he'd unstrap his bombs and refuse to obey commands to do harm, even at credible threat of death.

Once someone has purified their mind, the only person who can hurt them is themselves. If they did something they knew to be bad - for the wrong reasons - it would hurt them immensely. All things such a person do, are things which are better to do than not do (by their own judgment, which has been honed by much deliberate practise).

I could certainly not go up to some innocent child and slit their throat for no reason, or anything short of the best reason imaginable. However, my body and hands are perfectly capable of making the required motions.
It would not be EASY to decide to do that, the circumstances would have to be extreme, perhaps so extreme that some rapid reflection on the ethics for the situation are required (ie there would be no-one else to look for reassurance from).

I certainly hope that I never get the oppurtunity to test this theory that I would not be perturbed . But I have killed and butchered animals in the past and was not perturbed then - I know what it is to not be perturbed. Furthermore my mind is a lot stronger now, many things in the world which used to bother me no longer do.

My progress along The Way is good enough that I no longer experience fear. There is nothing in the world I fear, I don't fear failure, I don't fear success, I don't fear death, I don't fear non-existence, I don't fear eternity. Do you know what it's like to be completely fearless?

One interesting thing about being fearless, is that once you've achieved the insight which leads to fearlessness, it's no longer possible for anyone to make you do anything you don't want to.
So if you don't want to do bad things, you need never do bad things again. And if you do, you have only yourself to blame. Many people like to do bad things (things which they truthfully know are bad), but blame it on others, "I had no choice". Those who have liberated themselves from fear, always have a choice. Thus they CAN keep their mind free of bad things - they can simply never do bad things!
The thought of blaming someone else does not enter the pure mind. Decisions are made free of this concept; "I'm entirely responsible for all that I do".
That is a large part of the empowerment, I suppose that when you truly feel responsible for all you do, you truly feel like a responsible person.

[Blake]

Originally posted by Cort Haus

they put animals on an entirely different level to humans

This in particular was the principle that I changed my mind about. Lowering humans to the level of animals was, I decided, degrading to humans. Once the animals could sit round a dining table discussing ethics, perhaps it would be time to re-evaluate.

Now as I said, the entirely different level is giving animals ZERO value.

"Wow I can cognate so fancy! My life is worth infinitely times as much as an animal life!"

I DO tend to put a value on animal life.

Take lions vs men.

A man could conclude "I am better than a lion". This is probably not unfair.
The man comes across a lion and thinks "I am better than the lion, I shall kill it".
And he repeats that logic for every lion he comes across.

He can kill 10 lions, 100 lions, 1000 lions, killing them all for whatever reason he kills lions (pelts maybe, or for some chinese medicine). He can do this because he is better than a lion.

We accept, that maybe he is better than a lion. But the question is, is he better than 10 lions? 100 lions? 1000 lions? Does his life actually have a lion value, a point where it'd be completely fair for a lion to eat him and any right minded person would say "Well, that's a shame, but he had it coming". Is there such a point?

Personally I tend to say that a human is worth about four lions. If I was cornered by four lions and had a gun, I'd hope that I'd let them eat me.

Making a value judgment on another life is always a difficult thing. Sometimes it needs to be done. Like if there are two people who are starving to death, and one of them needs to be cannibalized (yum yum), a value judgment needs to be made. They need to agree whose life is worth more. It might be easy, like one person has a broken leg and the other is still able-bodied. Or it might come down to a coin flip.

The average person in their life eats about 200 animals (cow/sheep sized).


You can also use a similar example. Replace the Man, with a "Man with a Gun". Replace the Lions, with "Men without guns". How many men without guns, is a man with a gun worth?

[Bkeela]

The only good reasons to give up meat are to avoid saturated fat and help the environment. To do it to reduce suffering is just a self-righteous wank.

[Blake]

Originally posted by Asher
You speak of "the right thing to do". The "right thing to do" is to eat meat. Proteins and all that jazz. It's how our bodies are made. Accept it, move on, do the right thing -- eat meat.

So Asher, where do animals get their protein from? What is the source of all protein?

Vegetarians, especially the more pompous "lacto-vegetarian" variety anger me greatly. Especially when they have leather purses or shoes. Holy ****, the rage I feel for these people.

The only ones I may feel like feeling rage towards, are those fishy-vegetarians. The ones who can say happily something like "I'm a vegetarian who also eats fish". I'm ALLOWED to not like delusion .

However the lacto's either fail at compassion or are delusional. They don't know that milking cows are separated from their calves and the male calves killed because they're worthless. They don't know that the cows suffer from diseases and/or are pumped full of antibiotics to reduce udder disease from the unhygienic and overcrowded conditions in milking sheds. They don't know that the intense fertilizer and irrigation regimes decimate river and sea life by creating algae blooms which kill fish.
Or they know these things; but don't care.

Anyone can be forgiven for delusion of course, as long as it's not of the denial variety.

[Blake]

Originally posted by Japher
:rolleyes"

Thinking you are taking the moral high horse because you don't eat meat IS acting like a snob. You have pretty much told all meat eaters that they are morally inept of they eat meat. I don't belittle you because you CHOSE to not eat meat.

Get something straight here, you can belittle me all you want.

If you FEEL morally inept because you think I'm berating you for eating meat, then that's your problem.

You wont make me feel morally inept by berating me for not eating meat.

If you're saying "Just coincidently, that actually makes people feel morally inept", then thank you for your perception, but I was actually already aware of that, believe it or not.
Compassion pretty much mandates stomping all over egos, the ego results in destructive behavior, both towards the self and others.

[Asher]

How deep a hole can one arrogant ***** dig?

Eat more meat. It'll help.

I've never seen someone think they're so smart without anything of substance to back it up since a certain filosofy professor posted more, and a kid from Argentina lectured us on politics.

[Blake]

Originally posted by Blake
So Asher, where do animals get their protein from? What is the source of all protein?

Originally posted by Asher
How deep a hole can one arrogant ***** dig?

Eat more meat. It'll help.

I've never seen someone think they're so smart without anything of substance to back it up since a certain filosofy professor posted more, and a kid from Argentina lectured us on politics.

[Asher]

You think you're being clever, but you're ignoring the fact that the best sources of protein for man comes from meat.

Can eat beans and soy more, I guess, but those lack other nutrients from meat too.

No matter how much you want to squirm around, nature has dictated humans eat meat. It's how our bodies are wired.

I work with two vegetarians, and they're sick about 10 times more than anyone else on the team. When they get a cold, it lasts for weeks instead of days. When they get the flu (and they get it a lot), they get it for a week and not a day or two. If I recall correctly, you were hospitalized not too long ago for something as well. What was that?