Wherein I wane philosophical.
Ahimsa is the principle of non-harming. You go through life and try not to hurt things. I first learned about it when studying Buddhism and I was immediately attracted to it.
Much of Buddhism eluded me, striking me as illogical, especially the teaching of karma and the deterministic thrust of the rest of it. I read a book by Walpola Rahula, a Buddhist teacher, in which he asked "How can will alone be free?" Indeed, it can't, not in Buddhism where everything is conditioned by something else. Karma is the law of cause and effect. If all is conditioned, then there are no causes, only effects. In Buddhism, essentially, life, the universe, and everything is an endless stream of dominoes falling over.
Anyway, I loved the teaching of ahimsa and immediately put it into practice. I stopped killing bugs, everything. Hedonism must be tempered with ahimsa for it to make sense philosophically.
Vegetarianism/veganism doesn't go hand-in-hand with the non-harming principle of ahimsa as some might contend. Vegetarianism is not a requirement in Buddhism, although the Mahayanists tend to be. The Buddha himself wasn't a vegetarian and died from eating contaminated pork.
To eat, we must kill. This fascinates me for some reason. We feed on death and our diet consists entirely of corpses. Vegetarians murder innocent bean plants for their protein. It is mere opinion that says a cow's life is more valuable than a pomegranate's. Possessing the ability to walk around and say "Moo" does not make you a better person.
I am vegetarian for a number of reasons, none of which is ahimsa. First of all, it is virtually impossible to buy healthy meat in the United States today. It has all been modified and chemicalized. Sources of natural, un-fucked-with meat are few and far between and very expensive when you can find them. I would also like to tread more lightly on this planet and believe I do so buy not supporting the meat factories, which swallow up land and pollute the hell out of it. Vegetarianism is also easy for me. Even when I ate meat, I thought most of it was gross. The idea of a steak made my skin crawl and chicken on the bone made me nauseous just thinking about it. I did like hamburgers, though, and kinda miss them.
Eating meat isn't necessary, nor is not eating it.
re: bolded fragment
1. You can't 'murder' a plant.
2. Plants can't be 'innocent' or 'guilty'. That is an opinion.
3. That a cow's life is more valuable may be an opinion, but there is a significant difference between killing a sentient animal with a nervous system and killing a plant.
4. A cow is not a person.
Otherwise, a nice piece. I like the reflection that we somehow feed on death, life and death so bound together in such crucial aspect of our existence. Good luck to you with staying a vegetarian.
1. Yes you can.
2. All plants are innocent.
3. No there isn't. I call nervous system elitism! Privilege! Privilege!
4. Busted.
5. College students should not be allowed to use Tumblr till after their sophomore year.
:)
