Why The Dalai Lama is Full of It
The Dalai Lama eats meat. Why this bothers me can best be summed up by my favorite quote from Norm Phelps in his book, “The Great Compassion: Buddhism and Animal Rights“:
Thinking like a lawyer or an academic logician and claiming that it is acceptable to harm another sentient being for our own selfish benefit based on hair-splitting distinctions and nimble logic is contrary to the teaching of the Buddha.
I ate meat for 32 years. It wasn’t until then that I read enough to realize that animal flesh simple is not necessary for humans. What a relief! To know that eating meat (and obviously dairy) wasn’t necessary. I can’t tell you how good it felt to find that out.
Since we don’t need it, and there are alternatives everywhere, eating it is really only an act of preference. Okay, some people prefer it, that’s fine. They’ll come around.
The Dalai Lama eats animals. Having people kill animals for him to eat is the opposite of compassion.
read moreOmnis mundi creatura
Quoted in The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, I find this inspiring and moving. There are deep connections between the state of earth’s animals and earth’s human animals.
Omnis mundi creatura quasi liber et pictura nobis est in speculum; nostrae vitae, nostrae mortis, nostri status, nostrae sortis fidele signaculum. |
All the world's creatures, as a book and a picture, are to us as a mirror; our life, our death, our present condition, our passing are faithfully signified. |
More info by A. G. Pluskowski.
read moreWe Are Omnivores
Plants provide all of the protein we need. To state we need only animal flesh for our amino acids is akin to stating we need kiwi, and not oranges, for vitamin C.
One way people casually dismiss suggestions to drop meat from their diet is by hoisting up the fancy word omnivore. “But we’re omnivores,” they state with a hefty, steak-sauce covered dollop of pride. ”We must eat these animals. That’s what omnivores do.” It sounds very scientific, doesn’t it?
Omnivore does not mean “must eat meat” any more than it means “must eat cockroaches.” It is laughable (to us, certainly not to the cows and chickens) to suggest that omnivores, who by definition can eat nearly anything, must eat one particular thing: flesh.
Being omnivores, we’re highly adaptive. It means we can obtain nutrients from both plants and animals. It does not mean that we’re enslaved to a particular type of fruit or creature for nutrition.
Because we can does not mean we must.
Plants provide all of the protein we need. To state we need only animal flesh for our amino acids is akin to stating we need kiwi, and not oranges, for vitamin C.
Our status as omnivores, in fact, is exactly the perfect argument in favor of a plant-based diet. We have a buffet of food choices. To restrict our intake to one particular item, flesh, when more affordable, compassionate alternatives exist, is blind, wasteful and cruel. To pretend that the buffet does not even exist, that we are trapped into eating but one source of protein, is not just incorrect, it is insane.
read moreThose Who Disagree Are Moralizing
Johanna at Vegans of Color sums up her feelings on the easy attack of calling vegans preachy:
I find it frustrating that the dominant ideology – to eat meat, in this case – is not recognized as an ideology, that the status quo is unquestioned & those disagreeing with it can be accused of moralizing while those in line with it are not espousing any moral view at all.
Well said!
read moreExcept Hot Wings
True story from my past:
Coworker: “Oh, man. I just can’t eat chicken. I mean, the conditions they’re kept in… it’s just awful. Did you know most of them can’t walk? I mean, they can’t even spread their wings, for god’s sake. It’s horrible.”
Me: “I know! Isn’t it? I’m so glad I stopped eating them.”
Coworker: “Yeah. I mean… gosh, I can never eat chicken again.”
Brief pause.
Coworker: “Well, except hot wings. Mm… man, I love hot wings. Gotta have those.”
read moreSocial
