Jean-Louis Tu <[log in to unmask]>:
>but not your "wanting your food to be offered to you with love". In what
>sense do you think that food is offered to you with love when you have
>mung beans at lunch?

Tom:
A good question. The "food offered with love" has a number of aspects:
1) It is a description of milk and dairy, as Mother cow makes milk for her
calf: she loves her calf, and the milk is an expression of her love for
her calf.  (Some won't agree, but this is right in line with vegan "values".)
Further, the cow is generous and will share her milk with us.
2) From this view, animal flesh is not offered in love, as the animal
wants to survive - i.e., avoid being eaten. Animals don't offer their flesh
to us.
3) When one gets to beans, greens, fruits, the analogy is lost, or at least
more abstract. There one can consider the religious practice of saying blessing
before eating - the idea is that the food must be consecrated before eating.
In this case, some spiritual philosophies specify that the food offered
should be vegetarian - non-veg food is not appropriate as a consecration or
love-offering. The connection here is much weaker (and somewhat indirect), of
course.

Jean-Louis Tu <[log in to unmask]>:
BTW, what are the other (good) reasons for being a vegetarian?

Tom:
One argument relies on the law of karma: if you eat a creature, then karma
requires that you be eaten in the future. (Blood for blood.)

Another argument relies on consciousness. The ultimate goal of any life is
said to be self-realization (enlightenment). In order to do that, you must
stop identifying with the physical body, and instead identify with your
spiritual inner self. Animals have strong self-identities, and when you
eat them, you are eating their "body-identification" consciousness. Plants
have less consciousness; when you eat them, their "body-identification"
consciousness is not as strong. Hence, as your goal is to overcome this
body-identification, a diet of plants is better, as it hinders you less
from your goal.

Vegetarianism is an explicit teaching of many religions - branches of Hinduism,
Buddhism, certain Christian sects, Jainism, etc.

By removing these concepts from their spiritual background, one can turn
some of the spiritual reasons into ethical reasons.

Some people advance environmental reasons for being veggie. The problem with
that line, is it must be approached with the utmost sensitivity (it usually
is not), or it turns into: "It's OK to use the earth's resources to
produce plant food for me, but not OK to use earth resources to make animal
food for you" - in other words, "I got mine, you can eat veggie or starve".
The latter remark is hardly an example of compassion...

Thanks for your comments and questions!

Regards,
Tom Billings
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