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Religion and Vegetarianism
Vegetarianism: A Means to a Higher End
>From the book "The Hare Krishna Book of Vegetarian Cooking"
By Adiraja Dasa
(c) 1989 The Bhaktivedanta Book Trust International
Used with permission
Religion
All major religious scriptures enjoin man to live without killing
unnecessarily. The Old Testament instructs, "Thou shalt not kill." (Exodus
20:13) This is traditionally misintrepreted as referring only to murder. But
the original Hebrew is lo tirtzach, which clearly translates "Thou shalt not
kill." Dr. Reuben Alcalay's Complete Hebrew/English Dictionary says that
the word tirtzach, especially in classical Hebrew usage, refers to "any kind
of killing," and not necessarily the murder of a human being.
Although the Old Testament contains some prescriptions for meat-eating,
it is clear that the ideal situation is vegetarianism, In Genesis (1:29) we find
God Himself proclaiming, "Behold, I have given you every herb-bearing
tree, in which the fruit of the tree yielding seed, it unto you shall be for
meat." And in later books of the Bible, major phophets condemn
meat-eating.
For many Christians, major stumbling blocks are the belief that Christ ate
meat and the many references to meat in the New Testament. But close
study of the original Greek manuscripts shows that the vast majority of
the words translated as "meat" and "trophe, brome," and other words that
simply mean "food" or "eating" in the broadest sense. For example, in the
Gospel of St. Luke (8:55) we read that Jesus raised a woman from the dead
and "commanded to give her meat." The original Greek word translated as
"meat" is "phago," which means only "to eat." The Greek word for meat is
kreas ("flesh"), and it is never used in connection with Christ. Nowhere in
the New Testament is there any direct reference to Jesus eating meat. This
is in line with Isaiah's famous prophecy about Jesus's appearance, "Behold,
a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call him name Immanuel.
Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil and
choose the good."
In Thus Spoke Mohammed (the translation of the Hadith by Dr. M.Hafiz
Syed), the disciples of the prophet Mohammed ask him, "Verily are there
rewards for our doing good to quadrupeds, and giving them water to
drink?" Mohammed answers, "There are rewards for benefiting every
animal."
Lord Buddha is known particularly for His preaching against animal killing.
He established ahimsa (nonviolence) and vegetarianism as fundamental
steps on the path of self-awareness and spoke the following two maxims,
"Do not butcher the ox that plows thy fields," and "Do not indulge a
voracity that involves the slaughter of animals."
The Vedic scriptures of India, which predate Buddhism, also stress
nonviolence as the ethical foundation of vegetarianism. "Meat can never be
obtained without injury to living creatures," states the ,manu-samhita, the
ancient Indian code of law, "Let one therefore shun the use of meat." In
another section, the Manu-samhita warns "Having well considered the
disgusting origin of flesh and the cruelty of fettering and slaying of
corporeal beings, let one entirely abstain form eating flesh." In the
Mahabharata (the epic poem which contains 100,000 verses and is said toe
be the longest poem in the world), there are many injunctions against
killing animals. Some examples: "He who desires to increase the flesh of
his own body by eating the flesh of other creatures lives in misery in
whatever species he may take his birth."; "Who can be more cruel and
selfish than he who augments his flesh by eating the flesh of innocent
animals?"; and "Those who desire to possess good memory, beauty, long
life with perfect health, and physical, moral and spiritual strength, should
abstain form animal food."
All living entities possess a soul. In the Bhagavad-gita, Krishna describes
the soul as the source of consciousness and the active principle that
activates the body of every living being. According to the Vedas, a soul in a
form lower than human automatically evolves to the next higher species,
ultimately arriving at the human form. Only in the human form of life can
the soul turn its consciousness towards God and at the time of death be
transferred back to the spiritual world. In both the social order and the
universal order, a human being must obey laws.
In his Srimad-Bhagavatam purports, Srila Prabhupada says, "All living
entities have to fulfill a certain duration for being encaged in a particular
type of material body. They have to finish the duration allotted in a
particular body before being promoted or evolved to another body. Killing
an animal or any other living simply places an impediment in the way of
his completing his term of imprisonment in a certain body. One should
therefore not kill bodies for one's sense gratificaiton, for this will implicate
one in sinful activity." In short, kiling an animal interrupts its progressive
evolution through the species, and the killer will invariably suffer the
reaction for this sinful behavior.
In the Bhagavad-gita (5.18) Krisha explains that spiritual perfection begins
when one can see the equality of all living beings, "The humble sage, by
virtue of true knowledge, sees with equal vision a learned and gentle
brahmana (a priest), a cow, an elephant, a dog, and a dog-eater (outcaste)."
Krishna also instructs us to adopt the principles of spiritual vegetarianism
when He states, "Offer Me with love and devotion a fruit, a flower, a leaf,
or water, and I will accept it."
