[Buddha-l] Re: on eating meat

[Richard P. Hayes]

On Tue, 2005-10-18 at 16:15 -0700, Michael Paris wrote:

> Whilst mall-walking today, I noted another fast-food establishment
> (Cajun something-or-other) that now has vegetarian offerings. 

Damn, Michael, you made me drool on my mouse pad.

> Oddly, after I started practicing meditation (finally got a Vipassana
> teacher - hard to find around here), I lost my taste for red meat. I
> used to love a lean, juicy sirloin. Not anymore. 

That was also my experience. One thing led to another and before long I
was a vegan. Following a vegan diet had a very bad effect on me. The
rigors of following the diet made me fanatical (by which I mean even
more fanatical than I usually am). The day I found myself chiding a
gentle vegetarian student and accusing him of murder for putting a dab
of milk in his tea was the day I knew it was probably time to go back to
eating live chickens, just until I could handle a vegetarian diet
without harboring murderous resentment of those who had made other
choices than I.  

> Chicken and fish, on occasion, are palatable, but my wife fixes soy and
> tofu dishes that are just delightful. (She has cholesterol problems, so
> the diet change is good for both of us.)

A couple of years ago I discovered that my triglyceride and HDL levels
were way out of whack. Both are symptoms of getting too little exercise,
but both can be exacerbated by eating too much carbohydrate. I also had
high uric acid levels, probably from eating too many legumes. I resumed
an exercise program and that helped quite a bit, but the HDL was still
too low and the triglyceride levels still too high. A doctor quietly
suggested that eating fish once a week and a small amount of chicken
once a month might help. I hesitated and then remembered that the Buddha
recommended eating meat or meat broth when one is ill, so I abused that
piece of advice and ate some fish for the first time in about twenty
years. After a few months of doing that, I found my blood chemistry
approved again. Damn!

So this left me having to figure out whether my health is worth more
than the health of the fish whose death seems to promote my well-being.
Clearly to me, the answer is no, but I can see how one might offer a
different answer. Even though I have thought this through to my own
satisfaction, my behaviour has not caught up to my thinking. (I'm an
intellectual, not a practitioner.) 

This discussion on buddha-l has helped quite a bit, and I'm pretty
confident it will launch me back into vegetarianism. Maybe even
veganism. (And if I EVER catch any buddha-l subscribers tasting honey or
wearing wool stockings, rest assured you'll never be allowed to post
again!)

-- 
Richard