Vegetarianism as a condition
Case 1: Tara
Tara took an ethics class on Animal Liberation and was regularly exposed to literature and media portraying the cruelty at factory farms and slaughterhouses. She started to feel bad for the suffering animals. Every time she ate meat, she would feel like she was making an active decision to participate in the killing. Because the guilt was preventing her from sleeping at night, she quit meat altogether. Tara became a vegetarian.
Tara believed that animals were killed unethically to serve as human food, and she didn’t want to be linked to that in any manner. She felt that meat was the product of killing, and although she couldn’t stop animals from suffering and being killed, she could choose to take herself out of the chain of demand.
Tara came to Wat San Fran and heard the story about Prince Siddhartha saving a goose that Devadata had shot with an arrow. When she put herself in Prince Siddhartha’s shoes she thought that she also would have gone out of her way to be compassionate towards the animal. But then she realized that she wasn’t selflessly helping the animal or being vegetarian for the animal’s sake. The whole reason Tara became a vegetarian in the first place was entirely self-serving: so she could fall asleep.
Now, Tara allows herself to eat meat without feeling guilty. Because she has eliminated her condition, she and her friends are now free to eat wherever they want. No one has to feel bad about choosing a particular menu that Tara can’t choose from.
Case 2: Anna
Anna was born into a culture in which everyone was a vegetarian or vegan, and was taught it was wrong to eat meat at a young age. As she grew older, Anna went out with her meat-eating friends and ate various meat products, until meat became an addiction. Sometimes, she would sneak meat back into her home, and her father would punish her for it.
One day when Anna put shrimp in her mouth, she suddenly felt like she was eating human flesh. Although she tried to finish the meal, she ended up vomiting. Despite her efforts to eat meat, it continued to affect her in this manner, so she gave it up altogether.
Soon after practicing with Wat San Fran, Anna started to analyze the topic of meat and diet. She came to see that animals and plants are made of the four elements, and are essentially the same. Anna also realized that to eat cooked animal meat in a non-wasteful manner is an action that maximizes the animal’s life value. It continues to serve a purpose, even as it has died.
Further, Anna realized that the reason we eat meat or vegetables is for the same reason, to nourish our bodies. With a careful look at what our bodies need, we can adjust our diets to cure certain ailments. She saw that it is wiser to know the benefits of what you’re eating, than to appease your restrictive conditions. Now Anna feels open to choose the food that she will eat. She has adjusted her diet (which presently includes chicken) and subsequently cured some of her ailments.
Case 3: Alexis
As a child, Alexis and her family saw a pig jump off of a truck, get hit by a car, and run into a bush on the side of the road. They helped that pig and nursed it back to good health, and even named him. One day, Alexis’ brother fed their pig some bacon, leading her to realize where meat really came from. She didn’t want for their pig to become bacon, and wanted to do something to prove she was more sensitive than her inhumane brother. So Alexis became a vegetarian.
Alexis believed that being a vegetarian equated to being a good person. She was being compassionate to animals as well as morally superior to heartless people like her brother. In the process of contemplating her vegetarianism, Alexis asked herself if being a good person was an absolute thing or could exist at all. Could you be a good person at all times, under all circumstances? Could being a vegetarian actually cause harm or offend someone? Could vegetarianism prove to be inappropriate in certain situations and cultures, or even negatively impact someone’s health?
She also realized that her refraining from eating meat may not have a direct and certain impact on the welfare of animals, like she had previously believed. The food Alexis stopped eating was just the pre-packaged meats sold in stores. Even if she were on the farms freeing the caged chickens, what about the karma and fate of those animals? Could she stop that? Alexis couldn’t know what karma these animals, or anyone else for that matter, committed in the past to get them where they are now.
Lastly, Alexis saw that having conditions causes suffering. At some point, your conditions can come into conflict. If you choose to satisfy one, you are neglecting the other. How can you be absolutely happy? Alexis’ vegetarian condition opened the door to help her see her other conditions as well as patterns in her thought process that welcomed suffering into her life. She also realized that the link she had formed between a condition and its outcome are in fact impermanent. Now, she makes her decisions based on each situation and the current factors at hand, and she is free to eat as she chooses and deems appropriate.
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