The Yoga of Eating: Transcending Diets and Dogma to Nourish the Natural Self by Charles Eisenstein

Author:Charles Eisenstein [Eisenstein, Charles]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2009-02-21T13:09:00+00:00

Chapter 15

Meat and the Life of the Flesh

To eat meat is to enact a profound transfer of energy and information, in which an animal loses its life to sustain the life of another. All eating is sacred, for it converts one part of nature into another, and because animals are (generally) more conscious than plants,' more highly organized, and a more highly evolved expression of the unfolding universal pattern, eating them has important spiritual implications.

Animal foods are the greatest expression of Mother Earth's loving nurturance. Like any good mother, Mother Earth will give everything she can to her children; she will give even of her own flesh and blood. And if it is demanded of her, she will give far past her capacity to sustain. There is a time in life, and in a soul's development, to be nurtured, to take from the mother. But a normal child will eventually mature and begin demanding less, begin giving back to his mother. Collectively, we are like spoiled, petulant, selfish children, taking and taking, demanding and demanding, wanting and grabbing, even as our mother lies dying from all we have taken. Of this frenzy of despoliation and plunder, the meat industry is one small but important aspect.

The meat industry as it stands today is one of the most prominent examples of collective human cruelty and callousness. I would like to emphasize, however, that I do not believe that meat farmers, or even meat company executives, are more evil, cruel, or immoral than other human beings. Their actions are strongly determined by economic forces and quite universal human mechanisms of rationalization. Most believe they have little choice but to farm the way they do, and most are barely making a living as it is. To a very great degree, people live the lives that are given them. To do otherwise is heroic, and while we might strive to inspire and support heroism in others, we cannot demand it or condemn its absence.

As I wrote earlier, by eating the products of our meat industry you are saying yes to Hell. The criticisms of the meat industry are probably familiar to many of you readers, but I'll review some of them anyway before moving on to some of the deeper principles regarding the eating of meat.

Meat animals are raised in horrific conditions of suffering, often confined to spaces so small they cannot turn around, crowded together amidst unimaginable filth. They are fed or injected growth hormones to bring them to market more quickly, and antibiotics to keep them alive. Their short and miserable lives start when they are prematurely torn away from their mothers, and end in slaughterhouses so hellish that even the workers suffer the highest accident rate of any industry. Feeding meat animals requires a huge input of grain and other plant protein which could feed far greater numbers of human beings than the meat does. Meat agribusiness consumes vast amounts of fossil fuel, which pollutes the air, and more importantly, consumes vast amounts of precious fresh water.

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