On Vegetarianism

In India, where I was born, vegetarianism is a cultural reality. I couldn't give you statistics, but a very large number of hindus (and jains and buddhists) practice vegetarianism.

The predominant reason is philosophical; essentially the karmic problem of killing sentient lives willingly. Doubtless there are people who just don't like eating meat, those who do it for apparent health reasons and  many who simply cant afford it.

Preferences and poverty aside, I'd like to take a look at the philosophical dimension of things. It is also noteworthy that in our time the ecological implications and costs of meat rearing has also become a reason for vegetarianism, particularly in the western world.

Someone I know  posed a question recently "are we dying or are we living?", well in truth aren't they both the same thing ? The life process or event is one in which death is built in. This endless recycling of beings; this creation, consumption and elimination of beings is a cycle with no beginning or end. We define the death event because of its apparent finality with regard to our waking consciousness, and our sense of loss, grief and finality in relation to everything we love.

Are we living or dying or are we a sacrificial process.? Am I aware of this sacrifice that is my life ? Can I yield to it, surrender to it as it occurs or will I ignore it and resist it especially at its most challenging, when death takes my body and my egoic consciousness. ?

The accidental as well as deliberate slaughter of organisms is inevitable and part of this process of appearances and disappearances, but death is the inevitable passage for each and everyone.

No consciousness wills its own end (typically), each one demonstrates the desire to grow, protect itself, propagate itself, resist pain and partake in pleasure.

So is it possible to live in a way free of the chronic anxiety and fear of death, to surrender to death when it is appropriate ( rather than rage against the dying of the light)? .

To focus on simply how we die is to miss the point about how we live. How we live IS how we die.

When I consider the sentient beings who sacrifice their lives for my sustenance, the elk, buffalo, pigs, chicken, fish and lamb I'm truly grateful. I'm also conscious not to eat meat from sources where that being may have been treated cruelly in life AND death. How they lived and died is crucial (not that they died)

That my buying power supports life affirming, conscious animal husbandry. That their life was honored by my appreciation and my cooking.

I believe in the dignity of all sentient beings,  so just  as I care about a human beings rights to live free of fear, cruelty and mistreatment I feel the same way about non-humans.

I hope the bacteria whom i feed with my body approve of the way I was reared.