[Buddha-l] Re: "Nature" and eating meat

[Laura Castell]

At 06:55 PM 23/10/2005 -0600, you wrote:
>I'm likely to get in trouble for this, but people often excuse things
>because they are "natural". Why is it more natural for a mountain lion
>or a coyote to kill for food than it is for a human. Humans spent a few
>million years evolving as hunters, as the long history of artifacts of
>weapons, scrapers, etc. attest.
Hi Jim,
I know that the comment of 'it is natural' is a controversial one, but I 
think you took my meaning too far back in history. I do not think that 
eating meat for survival is wrong. In the days when humans were evolving 
and struggling at a similar level to that of their environment, I think 
they did an excellent and admirable job, and I think it was at that time a 
'natural' thing to do.  It still is in many places.  The problem is that 
for most (not all) of the world it has become not a matter of survival and 
of fighting for it, but instead an excess. The worst of it is that it has 
serious consequences, for the environment, for the animals involved and for 
us. That's where the problem lies.

>Perhaps virtue lies in the strength to overcome "nature". But, then, why 
>would that be true?
Trying to overcome nature ...... why would there be virtue in that? it 
implies a competition, seeing nature and us as different things.  Isn't 
this  precisely the attitude you should try to avoid?

Saludos, Laura