| Dr. Jai Maharaj 2004-10-20, 11:12 am |
| A case for satvic food
The Hindu
How can food have any relevance to a person's ultimate
goal?
According to scriptures, eating is akin to conducting a
homa, and technically we are observing vaishvanaar yagya
when we are consuming a meal. It is in the pit of the
stomach that hunger, a sensation akin to fire, is
produced. This can be quenched only when we partake of
food. However, the nature of the ingredients of the food
is important and careful adherence to vegetarian meal is
more in consonance with a seeker's spiritual journey. In
the Ramaayan, sage Vishwamitra sought from Dasharath the
assistance of Raam and Lakshman to protect a yagya from
the evil forces which were showering entrails into the
sacrificial fire. Similarly, we are guilty of indulging
in meaty food in our daily diet which is but a reflection
of the evil forces in our spiritual life, said Shri
Vidyasagar Madhva Teertha in his address at the Indian
Vegetarian Congress.
One should resist the temptation of eating meat,
polluting the system in the name of nutrition. Don't the
Ved sanction animal sacrifice, some ask. Saint
Madhwacharya argues against superficial study of
scriptures and prescribes analysis by exclusive
application of "maha vyaakarn," the superior grammar. It
will then be found that the cow that is to be sacrificed
is nothing more than a composition of flour and ghee
(clarified butter). Detailed analyses are found in the
works of the exponents of the Madhwa school of thought,
such as Shri Vijendra Teertha and Shri Narayana
Panditacharya.
Some argue that whatever is offered to God should be
consumed by the seekers. Since the Ved sanction animal
sacrifice, consumption of animal flesh is considered a
just course of action by some. A few others compromise
when caught in a dilemma over meat -- while adopting
animal sacrifice at yagyas, they are strict vegetarians
in their food habits. However, Shri Madhwacharya argues
that there cannot be two sets of rules for yagyas. The
sacrificial fires at the visible homakund and the
invisible fire pit (the stomach) are in principle the
same. The Ved are for the uplift of people and as such
they will not advocate anything retrograde in a person's
quest for liberation. To the evolved, there is no
dichotomy.
Over eons, violent modes of worship have been replaced
with more satvic methods. The scriptures have to be read
and interpreted carefully in both letter and spirit, and
harmful practices should be given up.
More at:
http://www.hindu.com
WHY HINDUS DON'T EAT MEAT
Besides being an expression of compassion
for animals, vegetarianism is followed for
ecological and health rationales
REASONS
In the past fifty years, millions of meat-eaters --
Hindus and non-Hindus -- have made the personal decision
to stop eating the flesh of other creatures. There are
five major motivations for such a decision:
1. The Dharmic Law Reason
Ahinsa, the law of noninjury, is the Hindu's first
duty in fulfilling religious obligations to God and God's
creation as defined by Vedic scripture.
2. The Karmic Consequences Reason
All of our actions, including our choice of food,
have Karmic consequences. By involving oneself in the
cycle of inflicting injury, pain and death, even
indirectly by eating other creatures, one must in the
future experience in equal measure the suffering caused.
3. The Spiritual Reason
Food is the source of the body's chemistry, and what
we ingest affects our consciousnes, emotions and
experiential patterns. If one wants to live in higher
consciousness, in peace and happiness and love for all
creatures, then he cannot eat meat, fish, shellfish, fowl
or eggs. By ingesting the grosser chemistries of animal
foods, one introduces into the body and mind anger,
jealousy, anxiety, suspicion and a terrible fear of
death, all of which are locked into the the flesh of the
butchered creatures. For these reasons, vegetarians live
in higher consciousness and meat-eaters abide in lower
consciousness.
4. The Health Reason
Medical studies prove that a vegetarian diet is
easier to digest, provides a wider ranger of nutrients
and imposes fewer burdens and impurities on the body.
Vegetarians are less susceptible to all the major
diseases that afflict contemporary humanity, and thus
live longer, healthier, more productive lives. They have
fewer physical complaints, less frequent visits to the
doctor, fewer dental problems and smaller medical bills.
Their immune system is stronger, their bodies are purer,
more refined and skin more beautiful.
5. The Ecological Reason
Planet Earth is suffereing. In large measure, the
escalating loss of species, destruction of ancient
rainforests to create pasture lands for live stock, loss
of topsoils and the consequent increase of water
impurities and air pollution have all been traced to the
single fact of meat in the human diet. No decision that
we can make as individuals or as a race can have such a
dramatic effect on the improvement of our planetary
ecology as the decision not to eat meat.
HISTORY
The book FOOD FOR THE SPIRIT, VEGETARIANISM AND THE WORLD
RELIGIONS, observes, "Despite popular knowledge of meat-
eating's adverse effects, the nonvegetarian diet became
increasingly widespread among the Hindus after the two
major invasions by foreign powers, first the Muslims and
later the British. With them came the desire to be
'civilized,' to eat as did the Saheeb. Those atually
trained in Vedic knowledge, however, never adopted a
meat-oriented diet, and the pious Hindu still observes
vegetarian principles as a matter of religious duty.
"That vegetarianism has always been widespread in
India is clear from the earliest Vedic texts. This was
observed by the ancient traveler Megasthenes and also by
Fa-Hsien, a Chinese Buddhist monk who, in the fifth
century, traveled to India in order to obtain authentic
copies of the scriptures.
"These scriptures unambiguously support the meatless
way of life. In the MAHABHARAT, for instance, the great
warrior Bheeshm explains to Yuddhishtira, eldest of the
Paandav princes, that the meat of animals is like the
flesh of one's own son. Similarly, the MANUSMRITI
declares that one should 'refrain from eating all kinds
of meat,' for such eating involves killing and and leads
to Karmic bondage (Bandh) [5.49]. Elsewhere in the Vedic
literature, the last of the great Vedic kings, Maharaja
Parikshit, is quoted as saying that 'only the animal-
killer cannot relish the message of the Absolute Truth
[Shrimad Bhagvatam 10.1.4].'"
SCRIPTURE
He who desires to augment his own flesh by eating
the flesh of other creatures lives in misery in whatever
species he may take his birth.
MAHABHARAT 115.47
Those high-souled persons who desire beauty,
faultlessness of limbs, long life, understanding, mental
and physical strength and memory should abstain from acts
of injury. MAHABHARAT 18.115.8
The very name of cow is Aghnya ["not to be killed"],
indicating that they should never be slaughtered. Who,
then could slay them? Surely, one who kills a cow or a
bull commits a heinous crime. MAHABHARAT, SHANTIPARV
262.47
The purchaser of flesh performs Hinsa (violence) by
his wealth; he who eats flesh does so by enjoying its
taste; the killer does Hinsa by actually tying and
killing the animal. Thus, there are three forms of
killing: he who brings flesh or sends for it, he who cuts
off the limbs of an animal, and he who purchases, sells
or cooks flesh and eats it -- all of these are to be
considered meat-eaters. MAHABHARAT, ANU 115.40
He who sees that the Lord of all is ever the same
in all that is -- immortal in the field of mortality --
he sees the truth. And when a man sees that the God in
himself is the same God in all that is, he hurts not
himself by hurting others. Then he goes, indeed, to the
highest path. BHAGVAD GEETA 13.27-28
Ahinsa is the highest Dharm. Ahinsa is the best
Tapas. Ahinsa is the greatest gift. Ahinsa is the
highest self-control. Ahinsa is the highest sacrifice.
Ahinsa is the highest power. Ahinsa is the highest
friend. Ahinsa is the highest truth. Ahinsa is the
highest teaching. MAHABHARAT 18.116.37-41
What is the good way? It is the path that reflects
on how it may avoid killing any creature. TIRUKURAL 324
All that lives will press palms together in
prayerful adoration of those who refuse to slaughter and
savor meat. TIRUKURAL 260
What is virtuous conduct? It is never destroting
life, for killing leads to every other sin. TIRUKURAL
312, 321
Goodness is never one with the minds of these two:
one who wields a weapon and one who feasts on a
creature's flesh. TIRUKURAL 253
Copyright (C) 1993, Himalayan Academy, All Rights
Reserved. The information contained in this news report
may not be republished in any form without the prior
written authority of Himalayan Academy.
This is an authorized reproduction.
TRIBUTES TO HINDUISM
1. Mahatma Gandhi:
"Hinduism has made marvelous discoveries in things of
religion, of the spirit, of the soul. We have no eye for
these great and fine discoveries. We are dazzled by the
material progress that western science has made. Ancient
India has survived because Hinduism was not developed
along material but spiritual lines.
"India is to me the dearest country in the world, because
I have discovered goodness in it. It has been subject to
foreign rule, it is true. But the status of a slave is
preferable to that of a slave holder."
2. Henry David Thoreau:
"In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous
and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagavad Gita in
comparison with which our modern world and its literature
seems puny.
"What extracts from the Vedas I have read fall on me like
the light of a higher and purer luminary, which describes
a loftier course through purer stratum. It rises on me
like the full moon after the stars have come out, wading
through some far stratum in the sky."
3. Arthur Schopenhauer:
"In the whole world there is no study so beneficial and
so elevating as that of the Upanishads. It has been the
solace of my life -- it will be the solace of my death."
4. Ralph Waldo Emerson said this about the Gita:
"I owed a magnificent day to the Bhagavad Gita. It was as
if an empire spoke to us, nothing small or unworthy, but
large, serene, consistent, the voice of an old
intelligence which in another age and climate had
pondered and thus disposed of the same questions which
exercise us."
The famous poem "Brahm" is an example of his Vedanta
ecstasy.
5. Wilhelm von Humboldt pronounced the Gita as:
"The most beautiful, perhaps the only true philosophical
song existing in any known tongue ... perhaps the deepest
and loftiest thing the world has to show."
6. Lord Warren Hastings, the Governor General, was very
much impressed with Hindu philosophy:
"The writers of the Indian philosophies will survive,
when the British dominion in India shall long have ceased
to exist, and when the sources which it yielded of wealth
and power are lost to remembrances."
7. Mark Twain:
"So far as I am able to judge, nothing has been left
undone, either by man or nature, to make India the most
extraordinary country that the sun visits on his rounds.
Nothing seems to have been forgotten, nothing overlooked.
"Land of religions, cradle of human race, birthplace of
human speech, grandmother of legend, great grandmother of
tradition. The land that all men desire to see and having
seen once even by a glimpse, would not give that glimpse
for the shows of the rest of the globe combined."
8. Rudyard Kipling to Fundamental Christian Missionaries:
"Now it is not good for the Christian's health to hustle
the Hindu brown for the Christian riles and the Hindu
smiles and weareth the Christian down; and the end of the
fight is a tombstone while with the name of the late
deceased and the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here who
tried to hustle the east".
9. Jules Michelet, a French historian, said:
"At its starting point in India, the birthplace of races
and religions, the womb of the world." This is what he
said of the Ramayana in 1864: "Whoever has done or willed
too much let him drink from this deep cup a long draught
of life and youth .. . Everything is narrow in the West -
- Greece is small and I stifle; Judea is dry and I pant.
Let me look toward lofty Asia, and the profound East for
a little while. There lies my great poem, as vast as the
Indian ocean, blessed, gilded with the sun, the book of
divine harmony wherein is no dissonance. A serene peace
reigns there, and in the midst of conflict an infinite
sweetness, a boundless fraternity, which spreads over all
living things, an ocean (without bottom or bound) of
love, of pity, of clemency."
10. Shri Aurobindo:
"Hinduism.....gave itself no name, because it set itself
no sectarian limits; it claimed no universal adhesion,
asserted no sole infallible dogma, set up no single
narrow path or gate of salvation; it was less a creed or
cult than a continuously enlarging tradition of the
Godward endeavor of the human spirit. An immense many-
sided and many staged provision for a spiritual self-
building and self-finding, it had some right to speak of
itself by the only name it knew, the eternal religion,
sanaatan dharm...."
11. Will Durant would like the West to learn from India,
tolerance and gentleness and love for all living things:
"Perhaps in return for conquest, arrogance and
spoliation, India will teach us the tolerance and
gentleness of the mature mind, the quiet content of the
unacquisitive soul, the calm of the understanding spirit,
and a unifying, a pacifying love for all living things."
12. Joseph Campbell:
"It is ironic that our great western civilization, which
has opened to the minds of all mankind the infinite
wonders of a universe of untold billions of galaxies
should be saddled with the tightest little cosmological
image known to mankind? The Hindus with their grandiose
Kalpas and their ideas of the divine power which is
beyond all human category (male or female). Not so alien
to the imagery of modern science that it could not have
been put to acceptable use.
"There is an important difference between the Hindu and
the Western ideas. In the Biblical tradition, God creates
man, but man cannot say that he is divine in the same
sense that the Creator is, where as in Hinduism, all
things are incarnations of that power. We are the sparks
from a single fire. And we are all fire. Hinduism
believes in the omnipresence of the Supreme God in every
individual. There is no 'fall'. Man is not cut off from
the divine. He requires only to bring the spontaneous
activity of his mind stuff to a state of stillness and he
will experience that divine principle with him."
13. Sir Monier-Williams:
The Hindus, according to him, were Spinozists more than
2,000 years before the advent of Spinoza, and Darwinians
many centuries before Darwin and Evolutionists many
centuries before the doctrine of Evolution was accepted
by scientists of the present age.
14. Carl Sagan, (the late scientist), asserts that the
dance of Nataraj signifies the cycle of evolution and
destruction of the cosmic universe (Big Bang Theory). "It
is the clearest image of the activity of God which any
art or religion can boast of."
15. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, a professor of Eastern
Religions at Oxford and later President of India:
"Hinduism is not just a faith. It is the union of reason
and intuition that cannot be defined but is only to be
experienced. Evil and error are not ultimate. There is no
Hell, for that means there is a place where God is not,
and there are sins which exceed his love."
Jai Maharaj
Born in a Hindu family in Bharat, and a vegetarian since birth
http://www.mantra.com/jai
Om Shanti
Hindu Holocaust Museum
http://www.mantra.com/holocaust
Hindu life, principles, spirituality and philosophy
http://www.hindu.org
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The truth about Islam and Muslims
http://www.flex.com/~jai/satyamevajayate
The terrorist mission of Jesus stated in the Christian bible:
"Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not so send
peace, but a sword.
"For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the
daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in
law.
"And a man's foes shall be they of his own household.
- Matthew 10:34-36.
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