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.. stuff deleted ..
> .. stuff deleted ..
>
> There is a gradation of jiva's or souls. Killing a higher life form
> causes more suffering than killing a lower life form. For example
> the lives of bacteria lost during breathing or consuming curd is not
> the same as the life of a cow. Such a gradation could be
>
> Matter < Cellular life < plants < small animals < animals < cow < man
.. stuff deleted ..
> To quote the Buddha, who himself on occasion ate meat, "if eating
> grass were to provide religious merit, deer would reach heaven before
> man."
This is yet another example of using a quote for the wrong reason
which is sometimes seen in srh/srv. The quote is meant for
vegetarians not to become proud of themselves and start condemning
non-vegetarianism. It cannot be for justifying non-vegetarianism
because buddha himself advocated ahimsa.
That is a matter of debate. The fact remains that Buddha was a
non-vegetarian by the definition of vegetarians today. He was
indifferent to meat or vegetables but vegetarians have a strong
aversion towards meat.
.. stuff deleted ..
To answer your question directly, Merit and sin is not only
associated with action but also the knowledge, attitude and
sincerity that is behind the action. Therefore lower level things
do not attain merit/sin because they do things mechanically, but man
does because he can discriminate between right and wrong and is thus
responsible for his actions.
Unh, unh, unh! If lower-level things operate mechanically and do not
incur either merit or sin, then how do they advance in your system to
higher levels ? (Puranically, things like this are expressed as "thus
Vishnu was frozen and could not move. ;-)).
If only man has intelligence and only he incurs sin, then only man
could evolve either into a lower or higher form! No? Of course in
your model he would just get stuck in the lower form because he won't
be able to ever incur merit ever again. Is that your model? I want
to first establish a common understanding of your theory.
The second question that arises with such models which allow
independence to the great "thinking human beings" is that why would we
have independence ? Why would God give us independence ? Does that
not make him less powerful ? Or does he want to torture us ?
> And yet Vaishnavism
> believes man to be the highest form why ? So what if he has
> intelligence, obviously you could obtain religious merit by eating
> grass!
If you eat grass not to attain religious merit, not to prove a
point, but because you genuinely cannot bear any harm caused to
living things and also if you are a devotee of the lord you will
definitely attain very great religious merit.
Let me get this straight. First you claim that you must not eat grass
to attain religious merit, but because you cannot bear any harm done
to a living thing. But if you do eat grass, and believe in the Lord
then you WILL get religious merit. Is that what you want to say ?
Thus you do not wish things to die and exhibit a great fear of things
dying. Thus please explain what harm can I cause to another thing,
should it "die"! How is dying equivalent to "harm" in your
philosophy. Should I die naturally, is that harmful to my future
karma ? Who bears the bad karma for my so called "natural" death ?
Does not your Lord cause it ?
And yet the Upanisads say that the entire Universe is food and all
entities in it are food! I wonder if that is true, what do you think
?
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