“If a group of beings from another planet were to land on Earth – beings who considered themselves as superior to you as you feel yourself to be to other animals – would you concede them the rights over you that you assume over other animals?”
– George Bernard Shaw
To my mind, the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being.
– Mahatma Gandhi
Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances of survival for life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.
– Albert Einstein
I got married to a vegetarian “by choice” girl. I have always been opposed to people who call them vegetarian by choice. The whole idea of not trying non vegetarian and claiming vegetarian by choice seems absurd to me. I am a whole hearted supporter of experimenting with everything – have experimented things beyond what my culture and religion allows me to. So I could never ever take stand on this by choice philosophy. However, there is a much deeper thought which I understood later after doing some more reading and thinking.
My logic for having non vegetarian was very clear. The chicken has already died and me or someone is definitely going to eat it. I consider food as the biggest luxury of life (publicly) and there is no harm enjoying the luxury if I like it and not doing harm myself. Soon I got motivated to read books (thanks to Pratyush for giving a lifetime gift in form of a perfect first book Jaya Mahabharata) and presented myself with writings of Shunryu Suzuki, Ram Dass and others. The idea of oneness started residing in me which triggered a start of change in my life. In no time I was thinking about purpose of life where I understood purpose is life. Its an experience for a much bigger thing.
One can not call oneself visionary (and I struggle to be one too!) unless one can shift reference frame in time, space and minds. I tried that and got really really disturbed. The golden rule is
“If you don’t want to suffer because you are not as smart or strong, you also shouldn’t harm anything just because you are superior. With great powers, comes great responsibilities. We got to ensure other species living not support and feast over their killings.”
If your country goes to a weaker country and kill people there to take all the wealth, return back and share the win with you, supporting them is immoral even though the harm is already done.
Treat others as you would like to be treated, this rule does not apply to just human but all the species.
The time will come when men like me will look upon the slaughter of animals as we now look upon the slaughter of men.
—Leonardo daVinci