The Vedic Viewpoint and Other Spiritual Perspectives

Last week we talked about health reasons and farming that support why we should all be vegetarian. Now we will talk about environmental reasons. 

In the book The Higher Taste by the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust,  it states, “The U.S. agricultural Research Service says that the heavily contaminated runoff and sewage from America’s thousands of slaughterhouses and feedlots are a major source of pollution of the nation’s rivers and streams.” 

The fresh water resources of the planet are becoming polluted and depleted, and the meat industry is extremely wasteful.  In their book Population, Resources and Environment, Paul and Anne Ehrlich found that to grow one pound of wheat requires only 60 pounds of water, whereas production of a pound of meat requires anywhere from 2,500 to 6,000 pounds of water.  The New York Post uncovered a shocking misuse of our water supply.  It reported a large chicken slaughtering plant in America was found to be using 100 million gallons of water daily!  This same volume would supply a city of 25,000 people.  So let us get real about our environmental problem and be a part of helping all by becoming a vegetarian.

Now lets us look at so many famous and intellectual people of our past and present who are vegetarians.

Each year, about 134 million mammals and 3 billion birds are killed for food in America.  But few people make any conscious connection between this slaughter and meat products that appear on their tables.  “Commercial slaughterhouses are like visions of hell,” says Peter Berwash, champion tennis player, as he explains his experience in a Slaughterhouse. “Screaming animals are stunned by hammer blows, electric shock, or concussions guns.  They are then hoisted into the air by their feet and moved through the factories of death on mechanized conveyor systems.  Generally they are still alive, while the worker mercilessly slits the throat and slices their flesh off, as gallons of blood runs off the poor animal. He says “I’m no shrinking violet.  I played hockey until half of my teeth were knocked down my throat.  And I’m extremely competitive on a tennis court ... But that experience at the slaughterhouse overwhelmed me.  When I walked out of there, I knew I would never again harm an animal!  I knew all the physiological, economic and ecological arguments supporting vegetarianism, but it was firsthand experience of man’s cruelty to animals that laid the real groundwork for my commitment to vegetarianism.”

Pythagoras, famous for his contributions to geometry and mathematics, said, “Oh, my fellow men, do not defile your bodies with sinful foods.  We have corn; we have apples bending down the branches with their weight, and grapes swelling on the vines. There are sweet-flavored herbs, and vegetables which can be cooked and softened over the fire, nor are you denied milk or thyme-scented honey.  The earth affords a lavish supply of riches, of innocent foods, and offers you banquets that involve no bloodshed or slaughter; only beasts satisfy their hunger with flesh, and not even all of those, because horses, cattle and sheep live on grass.”  Pythagoras ate bread and honey in the morning and raw vegetables at night.  He would pay fishermen to throw their fish back into the sea.

The great Renaissance painter, inventor, sculptor and poet Leonardo da Vinci epitomized the ethical approach to vegetarianism. He wrote, “He who does not value life does not deserve it.”  He considered the bodies of meat-eaters to be “burial places,” graveyards for the animals they eat.  His notebooks are full of passages that show his compassion for living creatures.  He lamented. “Endless numbers of these animals shall have their little children from them, ripped open and barbarously slaughtered.”

The author Leo Tolstoy became a vegetarian in 1885.  Giving up the sport of hunting, he advocated “vegetarian pacifism” and was against killing even ants.  He felt there was a natural progression of violence that led inevitably to war in human society.  In his essay The First Step, Tolstoy wrote that flesh-eating is  “simply immoral, as it involves the performance of an act which is contrary to moral feeling- killing. “By killing," Tolstoy believed. “Man suppresses in himself, unnecessarily, the highest spiritual capacity-that of sympathy and pity towards living creatures like himself- and by violating his own feelings becomes cruel.”

Composer Richard Wagner believed that all life was sacred.  He saw that vegetarianism was “nature’s diet,” which could save humans from violent tendencies and help to return to the “long lost Paradise.”

French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau an advocate of natural order observed that meat eating animals are generally more cruel and violent than herbivores.  He therefore reasoned that a vegetarian diet would produce a more compassionate person. He even advised that butchers not be allowed to testify in court or sit on juries.