Yes he does, according to his partner Kim Eng.
It’s such a curious question isn’t it: “Are spiritual people, truly enlightened people, vegetarians?” And the answer is clearly “not necessarily.”
If you look at the great spiritual masters, there’s no common theme with regards to meat eating. Buddha wasn’t rigid about it and said it was okay if you were offered it, the Dalai Lama follows this path and is vegetarian at home but will eat meat if away.
Jesus fed the 5000 fish and loaves which he magically produced. Jesus said “What goes into someone’s mouth does not defile them, but what comes out of their mouth, that is what defiles them.” Matthew 15:11. And “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear.” Luke 12:22
And enlightened master Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, of “I AM THAT” fame, had no issue with meat eating or even smoking. Here’s an excerpt from I AM THAT…
Q: My body influences me deeply. In more than one way my body is my destiny. My character, my moods, the nature of my reactions, my desires and fears — inborn or acquired — they are all based on the body. A little alcohol, some drug or other and all changes. Until the drug wears off I become another man.
M: All this happens because you think yourself to be the body. realise your real self and even drugs will have no power over you.
Q: You smoke?
M: My body kept a few habits which may as well continue till it dies. There is no harm in them.
Q: You eat meat?
M: I was born among meat-eating people and my children are eating meat. I eat very little — and make no fuss.
Q: Meat-eating implies killing.
M: Obviously. I make no claims of consistency. You think absolute consistency is possible; prove it by example. Don’t preach what you do not practise.
Similarly, here’s what Ramana Maharshi had to say on the subject:
M: Habit is only adjustment to the environment. It is the mind that matters. The fact is that the mind has been trained to think certain foods tasty and good. The food material is to be had both in vegetarian and non-vegetarian diet equally well. But the mind desires such food as it is accustomed to and considers tasty.
D: Are there restrictions for the realised man in a similar manner?
M: No. He is steady and not influenced by the food he takes.
Eckhart Tolle sees life as one dynamic whole; an inter-connectedness, an inter-action, oneness. Life eats life, everywhere…
I saw on TV the other day, whales hunting. They pincered a shoal of fish and then came from underneath to catch thousands in one mouthful. Does that make a whale evil?
Having had my head into nutrition for over 20 years, I’m uncomfortable from a health point of view with pure vegetarianism (and the dairy industry is crueler than the meat industry so I’m told by vegans).
Interestingly, I’ve seen Eckhart Tolle dodge this question many times in seminars and TV interviews. He just advises to…
Be present with whatever your food choices are and then the right food choice will happen for you… it needs to come from within rather than as something from without.
This view is perfectly echoed by non-physical beings Abraham, channeled by Esther Hicks…
Imagine if you could let being aligned be your first priority — a lot of vegans would be inspired to a lot of eating that their veganism would not allow, but the source within them would call them toward.
— Abraham-Hicks
Yet another echo of the same perspective from Adyashanti:
Safransky: Could killing animals to eat them come from wholeness?
Adyashanti: Sure. Life is killing. If we eat a vegetable, we’ve killed it. If we eat an animal, we’ve killed it. To be a living organism is to kill. There is no life without death. When we die, we’re going to be nutrients for something else.
I don’t see life as “anything goes,” but I have seen wholeness move through different people in different ways. That’s why I’m always talking about action that comes from wholeness, not from division, nor rejection, nor grasping, nor pushing away. What motivates us when we’re not pushing or grasping, not relying on conditioned concepts of right and wrong, good and bad? Is there something else that can move us? And what is that? Action that is an expression of a clear and undivided state of consciousness is what the Buddha meant by “right action.” To exercise right action we must be functioning from a place outside of all egoic self-interest. We must be awake within the dream and be able to express that perspective.
The take-home message…
…from these spiritual masters is clear: Be whole, then see what you do.
People’s pre-judgement on the basis of this issue would be detrimental to their own enlightenment. Because if you saw as Eckhart does, life as oneness, then you would probably also not be overly concerned about any particular FORM, as all the forms are continuously morphing and changing. In fact, there is only life and it is ONE life, there is no death anywhere to be seen! And… life eats life, everywhere. My cat isn’t evil for eating mice.
What do you think? Do you think vegetarians are more spiritual? Please let us know by leaving a comment below.
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im sorry but most of eckharts work seems to be rehashed krishnamurti teachings..very well done mind you.. he is very smart and targets his market well. he certainly does not say anyhting controversial.. unlike K.. who told it like it was.
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The thought that sticks out in my mind more than anything else is that we are one life. We all rely on one another for our existence and even the tiniest of amoebas eats all sorts of other little amoebas. Kale is just as alive to me as a rhinoceros and in my opinion, nothing is more “sentient” than anything else. What is sentience? Being alive an knowing that you are alive? A tree knows it’s alive and a tree knows it’s loved and needed. We all feel.
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It’s great to get your perspective on it Dez, it’s really wonderful to know you have been through these battles and thoughts. I will ponder your ideas on sentience, and maybe I’ll have to go kill a pig and make sausages like you did :-) For me, it’s the LIFE we subject animals to that is my greatest concern. These CAFOs have got to go. OH and a wonderful thing… the bit in Food Inc, with Joel Salatin where he stands in front of the field with that herd in the long grass. It seemed so natural and good. I think they need to be shot on the spot though and not sent to abattoirs?
And in “paradise,” I think many animals we use for food etc, could be free roaming, living completely natural lives. When life is ABUNDANT, the taking of life doesn’t seem so bad. In the Serengeti, the herds of wildebeest are millions, in the old America, millions of buffalo were in a herd.
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Mmm I totally feel you that the life of the animal is what matters. It is important that the animals live as natural a life as possible. This year I’d like to learn about hunting and trapping animals so they are living a natural life in their own paradise until their end. Every life comes to a close and shifts into something new, but it’s the life that matters. The animals I eat come from farmers that raise them nearby, grassfed and eating little to no grains at all. They are living close to a natural life, but they are still moved somewhere else for slaughter so they can legally be sold to consumers.. I don’t like that. I prefer the animal to be killed in it’s natural habitat and not be put through such stress before it’s final breath.
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We are so on the same page it’s scary. Yes I think a huntsman’s kill. “Eating grass, eating grass, eating grass, what’s that noi… heaven.”
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Plants do not have nervous systems – big difference.
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If that’s the case please watch footage on youtube of vegetables being cut up and then slaughter house footage. If theirs no emotion when seeing the slaughter house footage then id recommend seeing a psychiatrist. Do you not understand what a central nervous system is? The brain is magnificent and without it we don’t experience. This has been proven in countless studies on humans that are brain dead. Hence the term a vegetable. If you don’t get that i hope one day you do and understand that the life of a cow is much more important than the life of a carrot. Wish you peace.
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I believe that humans have a higher consciousness than animals and therefore if animals kill to live we should not follow their path. Also animals only kill when they are hungry but humans kill for gluttony. Not all vegetarians are spiritual people, but I think all people that are on the spiritual path should be vegetarians/vegans. And don’t care what Tolle decides for himself, but to me I have no respect for his meat eating habit. I mean common in this day and age when we have such amazing vegetarian choices for food why inflict pain and cruelty on other sentient beings? It is just unnecessary.
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Well the reason would be for health Mark. Vegetarianism is doable for some people health-wise, but the dairy industry is crueler even than the meat industry. So the question is whether veganism is healthy for humans long-term. There are many problems with vegan diets, many “red flags.” I wish it were simple but the truth is that many people run into serious health problems on a vegan diet. The main point in this article is that enlightenment does not necessarily mean a person then chooses vegetarianism.
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What problems do they run into? I have heard of none (that aren’t eother fabrications or complete and utter lies) Yet I can list endless number that stem from a standard diet. Cancer, diabetes, heart disease, to name the most obvious.
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We must be very careful about cause and effect. The industrialization of food is hugely detrimental to health but the problems aren’t caused by eating animal foods as I understand it. The leading edge thinkers point to seed oils high in omega 6, refined flour, soy, excess salt and sugar. And of course, CAFOs and their associated practices cause many issues, including a reduction in omega 3, the over use of antibiotics and other drugs, etc. And lets not forget the billions of pounds of chemical poisons sprayed onto food. Cause and effect is hard to nail down because of the immense number of interacting factors. But we simply need to look at nature as a guiding principle and then review research in that light to bring us as close as possible to what is optimal for humans.
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Hi, What are the health problems with being vegan again? Maybe we can start with one.
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Well, that would take a bigger answer than could possibly be fitted into a blog comment. It’s a huge subject. I will say though that I have been researching health and happiness for over 2 decades, and I’ve come across many accounts from ex-vegans describing health melt-downs. The causes of these meltdowns are many and synergistic. If you’re interested, http://www.beyondveg.com/ goes into a lot of detail with all the issues, and I like the book “The Vegetarian Myth” by Lierre Keith, an ex-vegan herself, who eloquently presents an alternative viewpoint to the vegan party line.
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Michael – stop worrying about your health – worry about the animals you are so keen on eating – only then will you find peace.
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I don’t worry about either, but I do ponder all matters relating to how we live. The subject of animals is extremely complex. Take a look at “The Vegetarian Myth” by Lierre Keith for a broad overview of the issues. Lierre was a vegan for 20 years.
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You are totally right Mark, Eckhart Tolle is wrong on this one. In eating meat he is inflicting un-necessary cruelty and that can not be right in my eyes. It demonstrates a lack of compassion and a strong attachment to a desire to eat animal flesh. Eckhart Tolle can be brilliant, but he seems to have a blind spot here for some reason.
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I was vegetarian for decades, got very ill and then got well again by going towards a high fat, low carb paleo diet (after trying veganism and raw foodism and getting worse). There is nothing wrong with meat for health. Grains are far more of a problem, and if you have no tendency towards autoimmune you may never notice this, except for your expanding waistline, which you will just blame on the natural process of ageing, which it is not. If you do get autoimmune you will maybe be forced, like I was, to look again at your fixed views about vegetarianism and how it’s healthy and better for animals. I abhor animal cruelty as much as any vegetarian, which is why I only eat wild caught fish and grass fed animals. I will not eat factory farmed animals or their dairy products. Also, there are more species harmed and made extinct by the swathes of land stolen for grain and soy production than there would be if the fields were left as grazing and the happy animals who grazed there were killed humanely and eaten. So, as an ex vegetarian, I have to 100% agree with Michael. Also, I have been meditating since the 70s and can say that a high fat low carb diet, which includes moderate protein, creates a far more settled atmosphere in the body for deep experience than did the grain and sugar based diet I was on for so many years. I even wrote a book in the 90s extolling the benefits of vegetarianism, but I have to say I was wrong, and now have a website giving out far better info. There are many cultures who have a long history of “enlightened” masters who are not vegetarian. Vegetarianism in spirituality is a silly old meme stemming from Hinduism, and look at India now – the autoimmune capital of the world! If you’re not ill yet from a grain-based vegetarian diet, it’s just luck or a strong digestion – it’s not because of it.
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Thanks for your story Phil, it’s one I’ve been hearing over and over, about health failures on vegetarian and vegan diets. I even read about one guy who couldn’t make progress with his spiritual practice until he started eating meat again.
“… a high fat low carb diet, which includes moderate protein, creates a far more settled atmosphere in the body for deep experience than did the grain and sugar based diet…”
Yes, I watched a video presentation by Nora Gedgaudas on Vimeo, who suffered 35 years of depression and healed on a high percentage fat “primal diet.” She has a book, Primal Body, Primal Mind, and she says the most damaged and hard to treat people she sees in her practice are vegetarians and vegans. She says that a high fat diet is very stabilizing for the mind.
I’ve read two great books recently that echo your story, The Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith and The Meat Fix by British guy John Nicholson.
I’ve noticed as well, that many of the raw food movement leaders are now adding in raw animal foods, like yogurt. Many are open about the failures of raw food veganism.
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You are welcome Michael. I guess you found my blog post too on whether we are veggie on my site… Living in an area where lots of TM meditators live, I wrote that so I can stop arguing with them individually when they ask how I’ve transformed my body and health and then say, “Eew, I couldn’t eat meeeeeeeat!” :) Yes, I have seen Lierre Keith, and laughed out loud many times while reading The Meat Fix. Essential reading for any vegetarian! :)
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I’m actually promoting The Vegetarian Myth as essential reading for veg*ns. It’s the best grounding of all the issues I’ve seen so far. Really, the answer isn’t veg*nism, it’s permaculture, getting back on the land, healing the land and ourselves, creating abundant life. Nature is the answer to everything. These are funny times, I think the signs are there that we are heading for some massive shifts. Yeah I saw your blog, I like :-)
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Very well put
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Meister Eckhart says that it matters not so much what we do but who we are.
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Interesting Rolly, and Jesus said that we shouldn’t worry about what we eat or wear, and that it’s not what goes into our mouth, but what comes out of it (what we say) that matters.
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Jesus did not live in todays world of factory farming and I am sure he would have condemned it if he did. When you eat meat you contribute to extreme animal suffering. There is a wide range of vegan foods. I am sorry, but even from a Christian point of view the ideal diet was vegan – meat was only allowed after the fall. Doesn’t this tell you something. If it doesn’t google ‘Christian vegans’ and look at the reasons they give for there food choice.
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Inacreditável vc defender o consumo de carne sabendo do sofrimento que é infligido a esses animais. Eu fico triste de ver alguém defender isso. Não tem explicação, vc tenta achar argumentos contra a filosofia vegana, isso só serve para tentar livrar sua consciência da culpa de contribuir com a morte de animai inocentes. :(
Translation: Unbelievable you defend the consumption of meat knowing the suffering that is inflicted on these animals. I’m sad to see someone defending that. It has no explanation, you try to find arguments against vegan philosophy, this only serves to try to rid your conscience of the guilt of contributing to the death of innocent animals. :(
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Meister Eckhart is wrong. It also matters who the sentient beings you eat are. Animals are not ‘objects’ or ‘food’ they have their own life force that you deprive them of when you eat them. You are exerting power over them. See the life of Sri Ramana, Gandi and many others. Alice Walker said ‘animals exist for their own reasons, they were not made for us anymore than blacks were made for white or women for men.’
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…And who we are is what we do…You might be familiar with the caption, “You are what you eat.” …If you haven’t already watched the documentary “Earthlings” right to the end, please educate yourself – no one could question a vegan’s motives after this gut-wrenching footage exposing the 21st century’s holocaust of violence towards animals. The natural world operates on a vastly different basis re meat consumption. Humans aren’t carnivores – we don’t need meat (or dairy) for our survival, let alone for our health! How much more empirical evidence does the world require to understand the correlation between meat and dairy products and cancer, stroke, heart-attacks, etc? Human animals constructed 60cm – 2 meter sow stalls – not non-human animals, and for what purpose do these mass-scale factory farms exist? Yep, profit does make the world go round, and human greed and selfishness will ultimately stop it from going around. Can our enjoyment of animal flesh possibly justify the horrors inflicted on other sentient animals? Therein lies the spiritual choice vegans make to abstain from cruelty, in the name of compassion. The health benefits of a vegan diet surely go without saying.
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Earthlings leaves one with a distorted picture. Yes, these things clearly happen but if you take only cruelty and show 90 minutes of it, who could fail not to be disgusted and sickened? I think almost everyone would agree that cruelty and CAFOs should stop. The issue is health and nature. Veganism came last in an study of mortality against vegetarian and meat-eaters. And that is something when you consider that vegans are likely to be more health conscious in terms of alcohol, smoking, exercise etc.
All the evidence for veganism I have seen does NOT prove causation of meat/dairy > disease. Please show me evidence of causation. Correlation is NOT evidence, because the number of interacting factors is immense. For example, the net acid/alkali effect of the diet is one factor. A net alkaline diet is known to be good for health. Now if in China you correlate meat (acid-forming) against disease rates it may show a correlation. That proves nothing in a grain based (acid) diet. One would EXPECT it. That proves absolutely nothing.
I would LOVE to be vegan but I have tried to find real evidence that is healthy for many years. Unfortunately what I find is people whose health deteriorates in the long-term. I would love to see some real science into the causes to make veganism a real healthy option, but there are so many red flags with veganism that I doubt it would be proven healthy.
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What you do is who you are. The actions you perform make who you are. The choices you make defines your personality.
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To put the question, “Do you think vegetarians are more spiritual?” in perspective, we only have to recall that Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian. He was the sort of person who became a vegetarian, not because he loved animals, but because he hated plants. The thought of cutting up vegetables and devouring them, particularly while they were fresh and presumably still alive, gave him a fiendish satisfaction.
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lol
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“Sri Nisargadatta’s” comments and other similar perspectives are, frankly, ridiculous. Did he eat? Did he sleep? Did he evacuate when he felt the urge or would he have been OK suppressing it for eternity? Our body influences our consciousness because we all are on the bodily platform, thinking we are this body. What we eat, drink or smoke changes our mental demeanor and our overall consciousness, slowly but surely. What to speak of the karma from giving credence to/sanctioning the merciless slaughterhouse culture– from what point of view is that compassionate, compassion being a prerequisite for true spiritual engagement. While it is true that we are not the changing body, mind or even material intelligence, we cannot artificially transcend the bodily platform to self realization. We have to engage our mind, body and senses spiritually rather than ignore them and thus slowly spiritualize them. The soul is by nature active and it needs spiritual/positive activity. The bona fide Vedic (literally “of knowledge”) process was systematized in the Bhagavad Gita As It Is by AC Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, as part of the bhakti yoga philosophy as applied to our modern psychophysical natures and conditioning.
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Point being: If they have truly realized their identity as spirit soul and not the body, why do they take care of the body? And if they are truly self-controlled, why do they have to succumb to meat and intoxicants? That means lack of control, else why go out of one’s way to invest in cigarettes? There are lots of bogus gurus in the world today, and that is where our intelligence (discrimination) comes in to separate the bona fide from the quacks/mixtures.
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My discrimination tells me that Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj is the real deal, it tells me that Eckhart and Abraham are also the real deal. Have you read I AM THAT? I feel it is impossible to read that and feel unsure. Where are we “coming from” when we make our choices? From an idea of self? From an idea of compassion? From an idea of what a spiritual person does? Or from Being? Being is a state of wholeness, aligned with the whole of life… is that not the true state in which to choose?
Is the lion confused, lacking compassion? The whale? The dolphin? What about compassion for your own body, which will suffer greatly on a vegan diet?
It is clear that life is eating life everywhere without thinking about it, transforming lower forms into higher ones.
Plants eat dead animals. It’s one whole dynamic of immense complexity.
I agree that we come to spirit through the body/mind, and I hear many stories of how no progress could be made on vegan diet. The brain needs nutrition that is sub-optimal on a vegan diet. You wouldn’t even have the intelligence to ponder the question if your ancestors hadn’t eaten animal foods for the last 2 and a half million years.
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An animal’s priorities are eating, sleeping, mating, defending. We pursue music, art, science, ethics, philosophy. Animals have limited free will– they are much more bound by bodily urges than we are (clearly). Humans can control or ponder over them. Human life is mean for introspection and self control, and asking “who am I?” Why pick and choose what an animal does and adapt it to our lives selectively? My other simple, clear (rhetorical) questions remain unanswered. By the way, for every “study” you quote one can pull out hundreds saying the opposite thing. People in India, for example, have been vegetarian for centuries and have one of the lowest rates of cardiac failure and diet-based diseases (those who can afford a square meal, that is)! If one turns vegetarian and eats only corn and potatoes, well clearly there’s a problem there. What you call “Being” refers to the undivided spiritual substance called “Brahman” in yoga texts. If one is truly acting from “Being” then one feels compassion for all living entities, since we are part and parcel of the same Grand Whole, bhagavan. For example, you could step on an ant, but to kill a pig, chicken, dog or a cow would make our insides revolt, as Mr. Tolle himself puts it. Therefore, hiding behind a veil of convenience while slaugtherhouses go on with their business willy-nilly is not the best option. For example, try you-tubing a typical slaughterhouse video and research how typical it is. This post is for the benefit of the readers and not an egoic riposte, thank you for posting.
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I wonder about the idea of revulsion at killing for food. My wife is vegetarian and always calls meat, “death.” But recently some cows attacked her and there have been a lot of cases of death by cow. Now she buys beef at every opportunity. A sudden shift in perspective.
In Texas I think it is, they have a problem with feral pigs… domesticated breeds that have escaped into the wild. They are breeding out-of-control and raid farms, destroying the crops and the livelihoods of the farmers. Now we have a different perspective, when our own lives are threatened.
If I airlifted you into a remote tribe in South America, a tribe of hunter-gatherers, and you had to survive in nature, I think your perspective about animals would rapidly shift.
Recently, wolves were reintroduced into a national park in America to keep the ecosystem balance healthy, and the herds of herbivores healthy, they were failing until the wolves were reintroduced.
We need a much wider understanding a perspective of NATURE to understand our role IN IT. At the moment, we are disconnected, seeing ourselves apart, taking and taking mainly without maintaining balance.
The discussion about meat eating is always shoehorned into ideas of factory farming and cruelty. But these are separate issues. Solutions that allow us to eat our natural diet, while greatly benefiting and creating natural ecosystems exist, right now, but they are not widespread.
I hear a much different story about the health of people in India. A very quick web search reveals “The Indian subcontinent (including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal) has among the highest rates of cardiovascular disease (CVD) globally.”
“…to kill a pig, chicken, dog or a cow would make our insides revolt, as Mr. Tolle himself puts it.” He has not said this to my knowledge, please provide your source.
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I was only referring to Mr. Tolle’s idea of our insides curling up when faced with something unnatural– I did not mean to imply that he espoused vegetarianism, which he clearly doesn’t as you mention in your article.
Again, I was referring to those able to afford a balanced vegetarian meal. How can one tell? Perhaps this is a better reference from a presentation point of view, from the American Heart Association: “Many studies have shown that vegetarians seem to have a lower risk of obesity, coronary heart disease (which causes heart attack), high blood pressure, diabetes mellitus and some forms of cancer. ” Or see, http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/255644.php. Red meat, especially, is dangerous.
One can infer a lot that is seemingly between the lines. I am in no way implying that if one’s only source of food is animals on a deserted island, then things don’t change. I am only advocating “no UNNECESSARY suffering,” which is clear as day causing havoc in animal society. Are we a part of the problem or the solution, that is the question, and to what extent. I agree we ARE extremely conditioned– the question is what raises our individual and collective spiritual consciousness, and what undermines it, and the answer can certainly depend on our time, place and circumstance to some degree. If one kills in self-defence, that is different from cold-blooded murder, just to give a general analogy. In material consciousness, we are full of different perspectives: one man’s food is another’s poision, but what is spiritually beneficial for us is a tangible experiential question with a clear answer.
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A lower risk compared to what? The standard American diet? Once wonders why the traditional Inuit diet of primarily animals kept them disease free then, and why all hunter-gatherers show the same disease resistance. If you want to know what an animal’s natural diet is, observe them in the wild. Think about NATURE as a guide, and it will clear a lot of stuff up for you.
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Hare Krishna Kunal,
Very well-articulated :). I will try to help making this life saving point:
I decided to become a vegetarian a few years ago after somebody told me that by eating meat you get really bad karma and have to reincarnate again. After reincarnation you could easily be killed by the animals you killed in this life. I also used to smoke cigarettes. I stopped smoking cigarettes. And I can say out of my own experience that the best thing in life I ever did was to stop eating meat. I haven’t been sick ever since. Stop smoking was a few years after this. And after a week I immediately experienced eternal bliss. Also I recommend reading the books of H.G. A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami as this will help you to get a better understanding about this topic.
Ys. Tristan
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It is an absurd notion to imagine one can consume the suffering inflicted on animals and profess to be in any way a truly compassionate human being. The two are utterly incompatible. If we are no different than predatory animals than why bother with enlightenment at all? And if animals eat each other why not indulge in cannabalism? It is true not all vegans are necessarily spirituality enlightened but it is certainly a fact that people who continue to defend and continue to be carnivores will always fall short on their spiritual path
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I know this comment is ironic, but Hitler was not a vegetarian! Just in case someone reads this and takes it seriously :P
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This is not true – Hitlers favourite dish was Turkey casserole. The reason why they tried to portray him as vegetarian was because they wanted more people to like so they looked at what Ghandi was doing – vegetarian – and pushed that for Hitler but it is propaganda. If you read his biographies you would see he wasn’t a vegetarian at all 😊
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Hitler was not a vegetarian, this is propaganda and was pushed to make him look more like Ghandi who was vegetarian. His biographers, who also knew him well, write about his love for sausages and game pie…
http://www.naturalnews.com/025163_Hitler_vegetarian_vegetarianism.html
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Can someone explain the Buddhist principle: DO NO HARM?
If we can live a healthy life without harming others, why wouldn’t we?
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It’s the “if we can live a healthy life” part I have a problem with…
Also, veganism does not mean no harm. Imagine 10,000 acres of rainforest cleared to grow soy, or wheat, or palm. What about the harm to yourself from an inadequate diet? I have read countless accounts of pain and suffering through a vegan diet.
Even the Dalai Lama is not vegetarian!
If we could be healthy then I would do it. Unfortunately all the evidence says no, we can’t.
I take issue with causing SUFFERING, and there are a lot of problems with our food supply which could be made wonderful by incorporating permaculture principles… sustainable eco systems.
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The rain forest is being cleared to grow gains like soy to feed ANIMALS, the demand for animal products is the main cause of the destruction of the rain forest. About half of the worlds grain is fed to animals. The average American diet takes 18x more land and 13x more water to produce than a vegan diet. Animal agriculture is the leading cause of desertification, ocean dead zones, water pollution, and habitat loss. Watch COWSPIRACY. This video is a short summary phone dot environmental impact of animal agriculture. Vegans have the lowest rate of cancer. It’s not the vegans coming down with chronic diseases.
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That as well sure. The point is that a vegan diet is not harmless. Land is cleared to grow crops, pesticides kill wildlife, even organic ones. In my view, it would be a good idea to use the natural eco-system, e.g. prairie, forest etc., to determine the type of food obtained, and these eco-systems could be largely self-maintaining and regulating. There are parts of the world where only grazing animals can provide livelihood, they are rough, rocky, bleak landscapes, but sheep and goats can thrive there. I’m not in favor of clearing natural forest, but people need an income, which I have heard could actually come from the forest. There are ways.
Not in favor of that. Joel Salatin seems to me to be a man with a clue. He has videos on YouTube if you’re interested. Cows should eat grass etc.
The industrial system of food is a mess on so many levels, you can’t compare that to how it could be.
Nutrition and lifestyle have hundreds of interacting factors, so epidemiology is well known to produce gross errors, you know, like driving a BMW is correlated to heart-disease, so if you want to prevent a heart attack, best stop driving a BMW. Vegans are MUCH more likely to be health conscious and so do other health-promoting things, and although an attempt is often made to correct for these, the whole thing is fraught with problems. In addition, even given the health conscious nature of vegans, they do not do well in all-cause mortality meta-analysis. It is never enough to say one thing is correlated with an outcome, you then have to find the cause, which given the massive number of interacting factors, is difficult. The elephant in the room is that hunter-gatherers, even the biggest flesh eater of all, the Inuit, do not suffer diseases of civilization, heart-disease, cancer, diabetes, etc. In my current opinion, vegan propaganda really is a house of cards, sounds so compelling and rational, but it really collapses on deeper investigation. If you only listen to one side of a debate, then it’s easy to buy into “the case for veganism.” Most don’t have the time or inclination to dig that deep, it’s a full time job!
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Actually, it’s not true that Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian. Do a little deeper research. I find this whole article just pure justification. I’d like to see Tolle, Nisargadatta and any other “enlightened” being take a tour through a slaughterhouse. I’d like to see them watch as a baby cow was taken away from its mother, crated up alone, and later slaughtered for veal. I’d like to see what they had to say about sows cramped up in sow crates that were so small they can’t even turn around in. How about baby chicks being put through shredders? The factory farms of today are torture chambers for animals. Any truly spiritual person, with heart chakra awakened as it should be, would never support these atrocities.
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Factory farming is a different issue. I think there are very few people who would disagree with you about animal cruelty. What DRIVES it? People choosing the lowest price in the supermarket is what drives all sorts of insanity and cruelty. It does not need to be that way. For example, Joel Salatin has some sane ideas, he had lots of videos on YouTube and is a farmer (Polyface farm). He has a website too. This is a huge subject — how we get our food, and there is so much wrong with the system as it is, as I said DRIVEN by lowest price wins. Ultimately, if you track it to the roots, it is our economic system at the very roots… every man for himself, competition not cooperation, greed and sociopathic traits rewarded, no true social security.
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Bravo Kathleen Lavelle!
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Hitler was not vegetarian. He ate sausages, meat dumplings and other similar things.
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Hitler loved his sausage. He was not a vegetarian.
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Hitler was not vegetarian. It’s a myth that people like you love to quote, but was never true. Do a Google search before quoting lies in the future.
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The meat we eat today is FACTORY FARMED. It’s is not slaughtering a cow on aunt Bessie’s farm anymore and hasn’t been for many years and we all know this. At least we should know this. Anyone who strives to live compassionately is going to have to make this choice – do I support an I industry that perpetuates horrific suffering to innocent animals? Or do I say no- I will not be a part of this grotesque industry? Anyone, from spiritual guru to gangster is going to be horrified by watching a video of what the existence of a factory farmed animal is like. And anyone who chooses to ignore these videos (as they are everywhere now) is choosing to contribute to the horrific suffering of our animal brothers and sisters. I find this denial of reality especially distasteful for spiritual leaders and others who “practice” compassion. Grass fed, pasture fed, free range, humanely raised are but a tiny fraction of the animals that we eat. The majority are subjected to torture. For those who are ignorant it’s okay, let them see a video or two, but for most of us the choice is there- do I support torture or not? And how is a pig or cow etc any different from my beloved dog and cat??
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Hi Karen, farming issues are a different subject than whether or not we should eat/need animal foods. When people choose lowest price then it drives economy of scale and abuse of people as well as animals. The roots are deep.
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How about – Eckhart Tolle pays people to torture and kill thousands of animals, therefore he isn’t ‘enlightened’, and in fact has less compassion than hundreds of millions of ‘ordinary’ people, who don’t claim to be ‘enlightened’.
Or is that too obvious for the fanboys here. The same goes for that fraud the Dalai Lama. He claims to eat meat ‘because his doctor told him to’. What incredible compassion! Or maybe he’s another blatant fraudster, who has never been witnessed doing even ONE act of compassion towards an animal – like stroking a cat. Does this fraud even know what it’s like to love and be loved?
You followers need to stop following these fraudsters and start living your own lives – find somebody to love, who can love you back, and forget all this psychobabble.
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Hitler was only an occasional vegetarian, because of excessive sweatiness and flatulence, but his primary diet included meat. Read “Hitler: Neither Vegetarian Nor Animal Lover” from the historian Rynn Berry. Or, read the biographer Robert Payne’s “The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler”, where he says that Hitler’s favorite food was the Bavarian sausage. Payne also says that Hitler’s vegetarianism a “fiction” and a “legend” invented by Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Minister of Propaganda. Moreover Albert Speer, the Minister of Armaments and War Production in Nazi Germany and the author of “Inside the Third Reich” says that Hitler liked liver, ham, and game.
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