You take this meat eating. Many people have to kill the animals because of your non-vegetarianism. You are responsible for the death of those animals. They are killed because you eat them. This is a sin. What a sin to kill innocent animals and eat them.
I just could not stand the idea of eating meat - I really do think that it has made me calmer. . . . People's general awareness is getting much better, even down to buying a pint of milk: the fact that the calves are actually killed so that the milk doesn't go to them but to us cannot really be right, and if you have seen a cow in a state of extreme distress because it cannot understand why its calf isn't by, it can make you think a lot.
The hardest part of returning to a truly healthy environment may be changing the current totally unsustainable heavy-meat-eating culture of increasing numbers of people around the world. But we must try. We must make a start, one by one.
Meat eating and a compassionate religion do not go hand in hand.
Hindus and Westerners alike see in the meat-eating taboos of India a triumph of morals over appetite. This is a dangerous misrepresentation of cultural processes. Hindu vegetarianism was a victory not of spirit over matter but of reproductive over productive forces.
The United Nations four or five years ago put out a study that said the meat industry, meat-eating, growing meat for food is the No. 1 killer of our planet - not No. 2 or No. 3: No 1. You know what’s No. 2? Transportation. Everyone thinks that No. 1 is transportation, and goes out and buys a hybrid car. Screw the hybrid cars. Don’t eat hamburgers.
Food conditions the nature of the mind. Mind guides the thinking. Thinking results in action. Actions lead to commensurate or matching results and effects. This chain of action between the food we eat and the results of our actions highlights the fact that meat eating leads to beastly actions and the concomitant evil effects.
It is true that every being is enjoying life or suffering as a direct result of his or her own past actions. The animals in the factory farms may have been meat-eating human beings in a previous birth; we don't know, and it is not our place to judge.
But. . . meat eating in any form, in any manner, and in any place is unconditionally and once and for all prohibited. . . Meat eating I have not permitted to anyone, I do not permit, I will not permit.
To avoid causing terror to living beings, let the disciple refrain from eating meat. . . the food of the wise is that which is consumed by the sadhus [holymen]; it does not consist of meat. . . There may be some foolish people in the future who will say that I permitted meat-eating and that I partook of meat myself, but. . . meat-eating I have not permitted to anyone, I do not permit, I will not permit meat-eating in any form, in any manner and in any place; it is unconditionally prohibited for all.
Some meat eaters defend meat eating by pointing out that it is natural: in the wild, animals eat one another. The animals that end up on our breakfast, lunch, and dinner plates, however, aren't those who normally eat other animals. The animals we exploit for food are not the lions and tigers and bears of the world. For the most part, we eat the gentle vegan animals. However, on today's farms, we actually force them to become meat eaters by making them eat feed containing the rendered remains of other animals, which they would never eat in the wild.
Not eating meat is a decision, eating meat is an instinct.
Not that I'm against meat eating. But I think we're eating too much.
Meat-eating is condemned by the Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, and Sravakas; if one devours meat out of shamelessness he will always be devoid of sense.
The American fast food diet and the meat eating habits of the wealthy around the world support a world food system that diverts food resources from the hungry. A diet higher in whole grains and legumes and lower in beef and other meat is not just healthier for ourselves but also contributes to changing the world system that feeds some people and leaves others hungry.
Human overconsumption is a greater problem than human population growth, and meat eating is a big part of that problem.
In a meat-eating world, wearing leather for shoes and clothes and even handbags, the discussion of fur is childish.
We live in a culture that has institutionalized the oppression of animals on at least two levels: in formal structures such as slaughterhouses, meat markets, zoos, laboratories, and circuses, and through our language. That we refer to meat eating rather than to corpse eating is a central example of how our language transmits the dominant culture's approval of this activity.
