"Teaching a child not to step on a caterpillar is as valuable
to the child as it is to the caterpillar."

We make many choices in our lives without ever questioning "why?" Choices like what religion we believe in, what our values are, what we eat... Perhaps we simply continue to live in the way we were raised; perhaps we automatically adopt our parents' choices. Or, perhaps we rebel against how we were raised: our parents made one choice, so we will make the opposite. In either case, we rarely take the time to truly see why we are living the way we do.

In this article, I want to take the opportunity to see why we – as Hindus – live as vegetarians. I want to talk about the deep meanings behind this choice we make each time we put food in our bodies. Some of the meanings and reasons are the same today as when our scriptures were written thousands of years ago. However, many of the reasons are directly related to the world we live in now. While vegetarianism has always been a correct "moral" and "spiritual" choice, today it is more than that. Today, it is an imperative choice for anyone who is concerned about the welfare of Mother Earth and all the people who live here. Today, it is not only a religious decision. Rather, it is the only way we can hope to eliminate hunger, thirst, rainforest destruction and the loss of precious resources. It is, in short, the most important thing that each man, woman and child can do every day to demonstrate care for the earth and care for humanity.

First I will address the spiritual and moral reasons, because as we enter the third millennium, it is our spirituality and our morality that will save us. Next, I will discuss the critical ecological reasons why we must all stop eating meat. Lastly, I will discuss what are now commonly known health reasons to adopt a vegetarian diet.

Spiritual/Religious Aspects of Vegetarianism

In Sanskrit, it says "Deho devalayoh proktah" This means that our body is the temple of God. Don' t make it a tomb. When someone asked George Bernhard Shaw why he didn' t eat meat, he poignantly replied, "I don' t want my body to be a graveyard."

God has given us a wonderful body in which to live. It is truly miraculous when we stop to think about all the things our bodies can do. We commit a sin against humanity and a sin against our creator if we use our bodies in ways that harm others. Eating meat is one of the most common ways we commit this sin.

Every religion has a commandment regarding "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," yet, I don' t believe that any religion distinguishes humans from animals in the "others." We are not simply told, "Do unto humans..." The words are clear, "Do unto others."

From this, we must assume that God means all others, all our brothers and sisters who live on Mother Earth.

Additionally, most religions have a commandment against killing. Yet, again, we rewrite God' s words. He says "Thou shalt not kill" and we decide He must have only meant humans. How can we call ourselves religious or spiritual beings if we can' t even follow God' s most direct commandments, if we change His words to suit our lifestyles?

Violence in Life as in Death

One of the guiding principles of a moral life is ahimsaa, or non-violence. It is by adhering to this most basic of truths that Gandhiji brought not only independence, but the true light of freedom to India. It is obvious that to kill an animal is violent. Yet, perhaps more violent than their day of death are the numerous days of their lives. The animals raised for consumption are a distinctly different species from the animals raised as pets, or raised for their byproducts (e.g. milk from a cow). Veal is a poignant, yet compelling example. This meat is considered a rare delicacy by people across the world. "Tender veal cutlets" are frequently the most expensive item on a menu. Yet, when we look at the way in which these animals become so tender, we realize that the true price of this dish is far more than what the restaurant charges.

Veal is the meat from baby cows who are separated from their mothers immediately at birth. Cows, as milk-giving/breast-feeding mammals, have very strong maternal instincts. It is not a simple coincidence that Hindus worship the cow as mother. A mother cow will keep her calf next to her long after he is born, looking after him, protect- ing him, teaching him to fend for himself. But, these baby cows are wrested from their new mothers. I have heard from people who have visited these slaughterhouses that – contrary to what people will tell you –: the mother and baby cows cry in agony for hours after being separated.

But, it is essential that the babies do not develop any muscle. And if they stand near their mothers, their legs will develop muscle. And muscle is hard; fat is soft and juicy. Fat is tender. The difficulty is that if one uses one' s limbs at all, one develops muscle. So, the only way to prevent muscle is to prevent use of the limbs. So, these newborn baby cows, screaming for the warmth of their mothers' breasts, are buried in the sand or locked into restraining boxes. Their entire bodies –: up to the neck –: are buried. If you have ever tried to move a foot or a hand that is buried in the sand, you will know that it is impossible. Especially if you are a baby with no muscle. They are fed copious amounts of food directly into their mouths, more than babies should theoretically eat, so they will become fat quickly. However, they are never removed from the confines of the sand or the restraining box. And this lasts not one day, not one week, but many months, until they are killed and sold as "tender veal cutlets." So, what is the real price of this dish?

Now, let' s look at chickens. Many people (especially in the West) say they are a vegetarian, but they still eat chicken. The life of a chicken is only scarcely better than the life of the baby cows. They are put in crates, which are piled high on top of each other, thereby making the most use of the space in the "henhouse." In this way, not only are they denied space to move, let alone roam around, but when one chicken excretes, it falls through the crates onto the chickens below. The crates are never cleaned and the chickens never see the sunlight; the light from the artificial bulbs is enough to keep them functioning.

Chickens – like humans – have natural territory and space needs. Yet, these are unmet in chicken "farms." Rather, these animals are packed together as closely as possible, such that frequently they can not even move. To have a true understanding of these conditions, picture yourself in an elevator which is so crowded that you can not even turn around, let alone move. Picture as well, that all the people in the elevator are confused and scared. They do not realize there is no way out. So they cry and bite and kick, in a true frenzy, attempting to free themselves from this claustrophobic terror. Next, imagine that the elevator is tilted, on a slant, so that everyone falls to one side, and it is nearly impossible to move back "up." In this elevator, the ceiling is so low that your head is pushed down to your shoulders in order to stand. There is no way to straighten your neck. And you are all barefoot on a wire floor that pokes and cuts your feet — ever so sensitive for you are probably only a few months old. Finally, imagine that this terror does not end when someone comes to open the door at the "lobby" floor. Rather, it is your life. Every minute of every day, until you are fried up and served for dinner, with a side of mashed potatoes.

It would be one thing if we were stranded in the jungle, starving to death, and we needed the food to survive. But, we live in a world where we can get all our calories, all our vitamins and minerals in other, tastier, less expensive and less violent ways. Hence, to continue to kill the animals is simply to fulfill our desires, our pleasures. There is no need or utility in it. It is simply selfish gratification at the incredible pain of another.

Integrity and Honesty

How many of us consider ourselves honest people? How many of us can say that we do not tell lies? We would very much like to believe that we are righteous, honest people and that we are passing these values on to our children. Well, if we eat meat, we can not say that we do not tell lies. In fact, our life is a lie. Here is why: if we wanted to be honest and still eat meat, we would have to go outside, chase down a live cow, and bite right into it. Or we would have to go to one of those chicken "farms," take the animal while it was still alive, tear its head off, pull out its feathers and eat it raw. Of course, we do not do that. Instead, we order a hamburger. We can not even call it what it is, let alone kill it ourselves. So, we call it beef, instead of cow. We call it pork instead of pig. We call it poultry instead of chicken. And we eat it packaged in neat, nice ways that allow us to forget what we are eating. How many people stop and think that the thing between the tomato and the bread on a hamburger used to be a living, breathing creature? That it was someone' s child? How many of us would eat our cats or dogs between a piece of tomato and a slice of bread? We wouldn' t. And that is why it is a lie. We can not even admit to ourselves what we are doing. How then, can we consider ourselves honest people if we are lying every time we eat? And these are not lies that only cause misunderstanding; these are not "little whitelies." These are lies that are killing our planet, our animals and ourselves.

The Taste of Fear

Then, there is a biological fact that quickly becomes a moral and spiritual issue. When animals (humans included) are threatened, we secrete large amounts of hormones. These numerous hormones are frequently referred to as adrenaline. Their purpose is to prepare our body to fight, to save our lives. Have you ever noticed that when you get scared, a lot of things happen inside you? Your heart beats fast, your digestion stops, your palms sweat and your physical impulses become very good and sharp. These are the result of the hormones. And they prepare us to either fight or run away. Thus, they are sometimes called the "fight or flight" hormones.

When an animal is about to be killed, its body is flooded with these stress hormones which remain in the animals' tissues. So, when we eat those tissues, we are ingesting those hormones (which are the same as our own bodies make). Thus, our own bodies become flooded with these "fight or flight" chemicals, making us even more prone to simple survival instincts.

Our world is becoming more violent each day. More and more people are simply out to get ahead, to protect themselves, even at the sake of others. These are the same characteristics that adrenaline and the other stress hormones prepare our bodies for. Hence, is it not possible that the increase in these characteristics world wide is directly a result of our increase in meat consumption, and the subsequent ingestion of stress hormones? I think it is.

So, if we truly want to reduce the violence, the hate in this world, perhaps we should stop flooding our bodies with hormones that create stress and the readiness to fight, to save our own lives at the sake of another' s. Perhaps, if we treat our body as a temple it will behave and think like a temple. When we treat it like a battleground, how can we wonder that it acts like a battleground?

Vegetarianism and Ecology

Aside from all the compelling moral and spiritual reasons, one can now say that vegetarianism is the only responsible choice in terms of waste and ecology. The natural resources of our planet are diminishing at terrifying rates. More than a third of the world goes to bed hungry each night. And we wonder what we can do. Being a vegetarian addresses almost each and the animals, and then every ecological issue.

For example, you say you are concerned about world hunger? Let me give you some facts.

• It takes 16 pounds of wheat to produce one pound of meat. This wheat is fed to the cows who are later killed to make beef. However, it takes only 1 pound of wheat to produce one pound of bread. So, if we used our wheat to produce bread rather than feed it to cows in order to make hamburgers, we could feed 16 times as many people.

• One acre of land can grow 20,000 pounds of potatoes. That same acre can provide less than 165 pounds of beef if it is used to grow cattle-feed.

• If Westerners reduced their intake of meat by only 10% (it means they would still eat 90% as much meat as they do now), we could feed 60,000,000 people. This is because the grain would go directly to the people who need it, instead of to the cattle.

• Approximately 90% of the grain grown in America is used to feed animals who will eventually become dinner. The statistics are essentially the same for most of Europe. By cycling our grain this way (feeding it to animals and then eating the animals) we obtain only 10% of the calories that we would have if we ate the grain directly.

And, you say you are concerned about the destruction of the rainforests and other precious land? Well,

• A great deal of the livestock are raised on forest land. It is estimated that for every hamburger, 55 square feet of rainforests are destroyed. Since 1967, one acre of American forest has been destroyed every five seconds, in order to become "grazing land" for the animals that will become dinner. If the present trend continues, the country that was seen as the "land of plenty" will be completely stripped bare of all its forests in 50 years.

And perhaps you are concerned about poverty in the world?

• A pound of protein from meat costs $15.40, but a pound of protein from wheat costs $1.50.

• So, meat costs 10 times as much for the same nutritional value.

• Could we not use that money for much better causes? Is there no more important use for that money than to kill animals?

Perhaps you are worried about our rapidly diminishing energy resources?

• The world' s petroleum resources would last only 13 years if everyone ate a meat-based diet, but they would last 260 years if everyone switched to a vegetarian diet.

So, you think we should conserve water?

• 100 times more water is needed to produce meat than grains

• 2500 gallons of water are needed for one pound of meat, but only 25 gallons of water are needed for one pound of wheat

• So, we would waste 100 times less water if we ate wheat instead of meat.

Health Issues

I am not going to use this space to tell you about all the health reasons to eat a vegetarian diet. Every medical text, every health book in every bookstore or library talks about the undeniable link between high-fat diets and heart disease or cancer. It is well known that people who eat meat based diets have anywhere from 2 to 20 times higher rates of death from heart disease and cancer than vegetarians.

In fact, Dr. Dean Ornish, M.D. a cardiac specialist in California, USA is the first allopathic doctor ever to be able to "cure" heart disease. Others have slowed the process but never before has it been truly cured. His "cure" consists of a pure vegetarian diet, yoga and meditation.

A health issue less frequently discussed is the antibiotics factor. The animals are loaded up with antibiotics in order to prevent the diseases that their poor treatment causes. The environments are so unsanitary that the animals have great risk of developing infections. So, antibiotics are fed to them in great quantity. When we eat the animals, we injest the antibiotics as well.

However, bacteria are resilient. They develop resistance/immunity to antibiotics, whether we take the medicine ourselves or simply eat the meat of an animal who has taken it. So, then when we, ourselves, are sick and actually need the antibiotics, they do not work. This is because our bodies have already developed resistances to them, through so many years of injesting them through meat.

Each year more and more antibiotics become futile and powerless; each year there are more and more resistant strains of bacterial infections. Many people believe that the reason for this is that as we consume low doses for so many years through our consumption of meat, the bacteria all have a chance to mutate and become resistant. Another issue has to do with hormones. The animals are fed large doses of hormones to make them fatter, bigger, and "juicier." There is substantial evidence that over- secretion of hormones within our own bodies leads to disease. For example, over secretion of adrenaline and the stress hormones can lead to heart disease. Over secretion of estrogen has been associated with cancer in women. Yet, when we eat the meat, it' s the same hormones.

We are not only eating meat, but we are eating hormones that our bodies don' t need and that may be putting our lives and health in jeopardy.

Conclusion

Across the industrialized world, everyone is talking about what we can do to save the planet. Ecological conservation has become a household word. There are thousands of programs dedicated to feeding the millions of starving children. Yet, while we may talk about wanting to save the planet or feed the hungry, these words are empty if our actions show blatant disregard. We may not be able to carry crates of food to the deserts of Africa. We may not be able to re-plant every tree that has been cut down in the forest. But, we can refuse to allow it to continue. We can refuse to partake of the cruelty. For, each time we eat meat, we are saying that we approve of the suffering in the world. Let us take the opposite stance. Let us – each one of us – make each meal an act of service to the world. Each time we eat grain instead of meat, let us realize that we are letting16 times as many people be fed, that we are saving precious trees in the rainforest, that we are conserving Mother Earth' s water. From now on, let our actions match our words!

A wise man once said:

"All things are connected. This we know. The earth does not belong to man; man belongs to the Earth. All things are connected, like the blood which unites one family. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself."

May we educate humanity to the interconnectedness of life, and to the importance of respecting the web of which we are all strands.