Why I Am A Vegetarian

"It just takes one second to decide to stop. The main reason not to eat meat and fish is to spare others' lives. This is not an extreme perspective. This is a most reasonable and compassionate point of view." -- Matthieu Ricard My first Buddhist teacher, Kangyur Rinpoche, was a very strict vegetarian. I was inspired by him and also by a deep inner reasoning that suddenly became obvious to me. I never hunted in my life, but did go fishing sometimes when I was a little boy in Brittany. When I was 13 years old, a thought bloomed in my mind: "How can I do something like that?" I realized that I was totally avoiding putting myself in the place of the other being. And when I was 20, I gave up eating meat. That was 50 years ago. The heart of the Buddhist path is compassion. That means to value others. If you value others, you value their well-being and are concerned by their suffering. We can find means to survive without causing suffering to others. In India for example, there are over 400 million vegetarian people who survive well. They are not sacrificing their health or reducing their life span. In fact, even from a selfish standpoint, it is better to be a vegetarian. Many studies have shown that red meat increases the incidence of colon cancer and other illnesses. Fruit Stall, Barcelona However, the main reason to stop eating animals is to spare others' lives. Today, 150 billion land animals and 1.5 trillion sea animals are killed for our consumption. We treat them lik...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news