Quest Magazine

Printed in the Winter 2013 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Smoley, Richard. "From the Editor's Desk" Quest  101. 1 (Winter 2013): pg. 2.

Abundant food is one of the great blessings of our era. Unfortunately, the very quantity and variety of the food that's available to us create problems for our inner lives.

A hundred years ago foreigners regularly commented about the puritanism that Americans displayed about sex. Much has changed since then. We have become remarkably frank about sex. You can stand in the supermarket checkout line and see the blurbs on covers for women's magazines about having incredible orgasms and discovering the hottest sex secrets men don't want you to know. On the other hand, over the last generation it seems that a great deal of the discomfort towards sex that Americans once felt has been displaced onto food. Today food in practically all its forms induces a tremendous amount of anxiety. Advertisers even play to this occasionally. A few years ago a brand of especially rich ice cream used the slogan "Enjoy the guilt."

 Granted, there are reasons for this anxiety. Obesity rates are high and continue to soar higher. And many of our biggest health problems—diabetes, heart disease, and some forms of cancer—are caused by bad dietary habits. But it seems that everywhere you turn, there seems to be some reason for not feeling right about the foods you eat. This is true even of things that are usually considered beneficial. Fruits and vegetables cause fear because of the pesticide residues they may have in them. Rice, I learn from a recent issue of Consumer Reports, has been found to contain high quantities of arsenic. Even wheat, the most universal of foodstuffs, has come under suspicion, as increasing numbers of health problems have been traced to gluten.

Much of this apprehension is well-grounded, but soon a subtle dynamic comes into play. We feel guilty about eating something; this guilt makes us feel bad; and the bad feeling is itself a kind of punishment. Thus having paid the price for our behavior by beating ourselves up internally, we feel free to repeat the behavior. I suspect that many types of eating disorder have their root in this cycle.

The point is that guilt is not a solution for our food-borne anxieties; it is in large part the cause of them. While there is certainly every reason to consider one's dietary choices soberly and consciously, it's also wise to be realistic with yourself about what you are and aren't going to eat and make peace with yourself accordingly.

 What, then, about those who have made conscious and spiritually informed choices about their diet? Such people include Theosophists who practice vegetarianism. I would imagine that people in this category (and I am not among them) feel considerably less guilt and anxiety about food than most people. And certainly the decision to avoid meat is often inspired by the highest and most praiseworthy ideals, as Will Tuttle's article in this issue shows. But problems intrude here as well.

From an inner point of view, if you're following a diet that you consider to be superior to those of ordinary people, it can pose a subtle but powerful spiritual temptation. That temptation is known as pride. A number of the vegetarian Theosophists that I know occasionally give off a certain "stink of holiness" about their dietary practice, no matter how elevated its goals may be in and of themselves. While this attitude is sometimes unpleasant for others to be around, its greatest difficulty may be for those who practice it. It's a very short step from saying "Vegetarianism makes me a better person" to saying "Vegetarianism makes me a better person than people who eat meat." This kind of self-superiority can pose severe obstacles on the spiritual path.

 From an external point of view, the problem is similar. Some may find it tempting to sermonize about their practice. Not long ago, a seasoned observer of the Chicago spiritual scene said to me, "Whenever I go to the Theosophical Society, somebody gives me a lecture on vegetarianism." (Admittedly, this is probably less true today than it was years back.) For the most part, this simply doesn't work. As a rule people don't like preaching and won't be convinced by it. Preaching to the converted is so popular because it is the only kind that works; otherwise the hearer either stops paying attention or becomes even more firmly rooted in his resistance. I suspect that many people have been turned off to the Theosophical Society over the years not because of vegetarianism, but because of smugness about vegetarianism.

 What's the solution? Personally, I don't care for salesmanship. I believe it is possible to live and embody one's values without turning them into a commodity to be marketed. It makes me think of the Sufi order known as the "way of blame"—a group whose members make every effort to appear irreligious and nonobservant even though they are in fact highly devout. Should you become a secret vegetarian? Probably not. But there are times when it's valuable to know when to remain silent.

Richard Smoley

Printed in the Winter 2013 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Gillis, Anne Sermons. "Demonizing Food" Quest  101. 1 (Winter 2013): pg. 28-31.

By Anne Sermons Gillis

One of the less-examined areas of addiction is food addiction. It is estimated that eight million Americans have an eating disorder–seven million women and one million men. Celebrities with eating disorders include Elton John, Princess Diana, Nicole Richie, Jane Fonda, Joan Rivers, Britney Spears, and Lynn Redgrave. Eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of any mental illness.

In addition to eating disorders, we have disordered eating. We use food to cover up emotions and to dull emotional pain. Some authorities believe that over 65 percent of women and 45 percent of men have disordered eating patterns. These statistics point to a startling truth: our relationship with food is sick.

Over the past sixty years, the American diet has dramatically shifted. People moved away from nature and turned to the high-tech world. Technology spawned agribusiness, replaced family farms, and touched and changed all areas of human consumption. We exchanged Grandma's homegrown, love-filled butterbeans for a convenient microwavable pouch. Demeter and Ceres no longer bless our crops; instead, the Goddess is a steel-winged, poison-spraying angel who targets unwanted weeds and insects. This activity supposedly ensures a plentiful harvest.

Some people believe poor health is a direct result of pesticides, herbicides, and processed foods. After all, most processed foods contain sugar, white flour, unhealthy fats, or salt. Maybe this is not the whole truth. Maybe it is not changes in our food production or eating fast food that makes us unhealthy. Consider this thought. We allowed our food to be mass-produced, poisoned, and lose quality because we were already sick. Unhealthy food and food production are not the source of the problem. The sickness of our souls is reflected in the sickness of our foods. Sick people grow and eat sick food. People in harmony with themselves grow, buy, and eat nourishing food.

There's more to our food dilemma. There are so many opposing theories about foods that it is hard for to discern the healthy from the harmful. Probiotics are beneficial, but the yogurt I thought was a superfood turns out to be a mucus-forming, acid-based product. Countries whose people eat a diet high in dairy- and animal-based products have the highest rates of osteoporosis. What am I to believe? The whole-wheat organic bread I've been making for forty years has gluten. Turns out a lot of folks can't tolerate gluten.

Given the conflicting data, we turn food into demons. The problem with demonizing food is that our demons end up chasing us like the hounds of heaven. The age-old story is told in Genesis: when Adam and Eve were instructed to leave the apples alone, apples became the most desirable fruit in the garden. They could have eaten anything else, but what did they go for? They made a beeline for the apple tree. Adam and Eve revealed the forbidden fruit syndrome: what you can't have is what you will want the most.

Can you see why diets that cut out certain foods eventually fail? I have a friend who tries every new diet on the planet. When she gets ready to go on a diet, she starts eating more junk food—and greater quantities of food. It only takes the anticipation of a diet to spark her bingeing behavior. My friend knows she won't be allowed to eat certain foods, so the forbidden foods became even more appealing. Then she diets to lose the weight gained as a result of going on the diet in the first place.

Grandmother Rosa is a South American–born indigenous elder. Her liveliness captured the spiritually hungry at a medicine gathering in the '90s. Grandmother's spirit told her to stop making food her enemy. "Love all the food you eat," she was told. It didn't matter whether she ate bean sprouts or chocolate; she was to respect and love it all. Her change in attitude created amazing results. Not only did Grandmother Rosa lose weight, she lost the desire for many foods that didn't support her physical health. There is a big difference between sacrificing and losing desire. When we approach food from a point of sacrifice, we thwart our ability to achieve our goals.

I suggest an alternative to dieting and to believing in food magic. Love all the food you eat. Bless your food before you eat. In addition, spend time each day discovering who you are through prayer, contemplation, spiritual reading, and by being still and listening to inner wisdom.

Quantum physics delivered us from victimhood; it reveals that energy affects energy. Our thoughts are energy. Our food is energy. When done in openness, authenticity, and humility, prayer is a higher form of energy that affects our lives both physically and emotionally. Bring Spirit into your relationship with food. Don't pray like a beggar. "Please, please, help me, help me, help me." Don't whine. Bless your food. Bless your relationship to food. Let your trips to the grocery store be spiritual pilgrimages rather than burdensome everyday tasks. When eating out, be a radiant, joy-filled consumer rather than a holy terror to your server.

The following prayer is from my book Offbeat Prayers for the Modern Mystic. I took the prayer that my father and grandfather said and created a contemporary version. Use this prayer or find another creative and expressive form that will allow you to reestablish a wholesome attitude toward your food and your life.

New Grace 

Not only are we grateful for this food, but we are grateful to the essence that gave it form. We give thanks to that life force within the food that brings us vitality. May this food become a celebration of the immortality of life itself. May we be ever grateful for all of life's creations.

Bless this food to the nourishment of our bodies.
Bless these bodies to the service of our spirits. Amen. 

Recently, when checking out at the grocery, I had one of those quirky inspirations. I made a smiley face out of the fruits and vegetables I placed on the conveyor belt. I told the checkout woman, "Look, I made a present for you." She was delighted and shared her enthusiasm with fellow onlookers. I began to make a practice of honoring my food as I purchased it. Yesterday I made another face. I used broccoli as the hair and cucumbers as the horns. The checkout lady asked if she could disturb it to ring me up! Sometimes I just line up the groceries so they look orderly and bless the food as I place it on the conveyor belt. The first time I did this I was particularly prayerful. The man standing behind me said, "I like the way you place your groceries; you have a special way." It never occurred to me that someone would notice what I was doing.

The quality of our restaurants and grocery stores reflects the spiritual qualities of our lives. In the early '70s, I cultured my yogurt or went to the health food store on Thursdays. Dannon yogurt was delivered only one day a week, and if I didn't get there in time, I wouldn't be able to get any yogurt that week. About twenty years ago, a grocery store opened in my neighborhood. I walked the aisles looking at fresh whole-wheat breads without preservatives. Fresh herbs nestled beside organic fruits and vegetables. In fact, the vegetables and fruits made up the largest section of the store. This scene would be the norm in the west, but this store was in Memphis, Tennessee—home of Billy Bob and barbecue. I cried in gratitude. I cried because we are blessed by so many choices, because we are changing as a culture. I cried with compassion for those who cry lack in the midst of such great abundance, and I rejoiced for all that I had. I cried for those who will never see such opulence. I remembered the raging results of hunger and the look of sheer desperation in the faces of children in India, Brazil, and other Third World countries. The grocery stores of today can become our new temples when we allow the sacredness of life into our relationship with food.

It's tempting to want to straighten out our lives by embracing certain foods. Many believe food magic will fix everything, but a change in diet alone is never sufficient to heal the body. Our diets and eating habits cannot be corrected from the outside in—they must change from the inside out. As we begin to love ourselves, to appreciate our uniqueness, and to accept our dharmic place in the universe, our food regains its sacred place.

When our days and lives are consumed by planning what to eat, shopping for food, food preparation, deciding on a restaurant, eating, or cleaning up after we eat, it is important to be in harmony with food. Food is not the demon. The real demons are inside us. Our demons are the rejected and unloved parts of our Self. As soon as we can become the powerful works of spiritual art that we actually are, the demons in our foods disappear. We no longer need to project our inner fragilities onto our outer worlds. Eat well and prosper.

Anne Sermons Gillis is a member of the Houston Lodge. She is a minister, speaker, author, and life coach. She is the Ambassador of Joy and the founder of the EZosophy Philosophy.

Printed in the Winter 2013 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Tuttle, Will. "We Are What We Practice" Quest  101. 1 (Winter 2013): pg. 22-27.

By Will Tuttle 

One of the central things to understand on the spiritual path is the necessity of practice. In order to grow spiritually, psychologically, and ethically, we are called to practice meditation and other forms of cultivating mental stability and clarity, as well as behavior that is in alignment with the truth that we are all interconnected. Thus the practice of ahimsa, or nonviolence (or put in positive terms, compassion, mercy, and lovingkindness) has been a central tenet of spiritual teachings through the ages.

And yet we're all born into a culture that teaches us to practice the opposite of this when it comes to animals we use for food, products, entertainment, and other purposes. I remember being a six- or seven-year-old child back in the 1950s in a family eating the typically high amounts of meat, dairy products, and eggs. I asked my mother if what we ate was the same as what everyone else ate. She said, "Yes, it's the same as what everyone eats." She came back a few minutes later, though, and said, "Well, there are vegetarians," and she said it in a way that I knew these "vegetarians" must live on a distant planet. She said she didn't know any personally, and that I'd probably never meet one.

I also remember that, when I was about thirteen years old, for a couple of years I attended a summer camp in Vermont that was affiliated with an idyllic dairy farm nestled in the Green Mountains. Nothing bad could ever happen here! However, I remember learning how to catch a chicken, put her down on a board with two nails in it, and, holding her with one hand, cut off her head with an axe with the other hand. It didn't bother me at all to do this, because by then I'd gone through thirteen years of daily practice in reducing beings to things at virtually every meal. I knew that chickens and other "food animals" do not have a soul, that God has given them to us to eat, that they taste good, and that if we don't eat them, we'll die within twenty-four hours of a protein deficiency.

Later in the summer, I witnessed and participated in shooting a dairy cow in the head with a gun at point-blank range and cutting her up and eating her because she was worn out and her production had declined. Though she was just a five-year-old youngster who would naturally live to be about twenty-five, she had been forced, as all dairy cows are, to endure several years of impregnation by sperm gun on a "rape rack" while still lactating from the previous pregnancy, her babies repeatedly stolen at birth, which, as any woman can imagine, destroys the health and spirit of any female mammal. It was shocking to see the huge volume of blood expelled from her body by her still-beating heart after her head was sliced off by the dairy farmer, after which he matter-of-factly explained the necessity of that. Otherwise, he said, "the flesh would be blood-drenched, soggy, and useless." The following year, I saw a dairy cow we were leading to slaughter with a heavy metal chain attached to a pickup truck actually break the chain in her desperation not to be killed. Though I participated in all this, I never doubted that we were doing the right thing, and that these animals were given to us by God to provide us with milk, meat, and money.

In the early '70s, I went away to Colby College in Maine and heard that there were some vegetarians on campus, though I never met one of them. After graduating from Colby, I decided to embark on a spiritual pilgrimage and walk west with my brother, hopefully to California. After about a month, it was early October. We'd gotten as far as Buffalo, and we decided to head south to keep ahead of the cold weather. By the end of the year, we had walked all the way to Tennessee, meditating, studying, and attempting to practice the teachings of Ramana Maharshi, whose advice to spiritual seekers was continually to ask as deeply as possible "Who am I?"

I found that walking and asking this question thousands of times a day over the weeks and months began to break up a lot of my assumptions about the nature of reality. I began questioning the rightness of eating the flesh of animals for food, especially after an incident where I caught a couple of fish in a stream and had to violently smash them on the ground in order to kill them so I could eat them. It turned out to be the last time I ever fished.

We arrived at The Farm in Summertown, Tennessee, in December 1975. It was the largest hippie commune in the world at that point, with over 900 people. Everyone ate what we would today call a vegan diet, with no meat, dairy products, or eggs, but because no one had heard of the word "vegan" back them, they called themselves vegetarians. They were clearly thriving, and definitely not dying of a protein deficiency! There were about 200 kids also, many of them vegan from birth, and they were doing well, growing up healthy and strong, without the usual childhood ailments that plague most kids.

I asked them why they were committed to this practice, and they said it was for two reasons. One was that feeding most of our grain and legumes to animals for meat, milk, and eggs is wasteful, and directly causes higher grain prices and shortages, leading to the relentless starvation of millions of our fellow human beings. The second reason was more visceral. They described the utter hells that we force upon millions of pigs, cows, chickens, and turkeys, where they are confined in huge, stinking, ammonia-drenched warehouses or barns where they never see the light of day; where they are routinely castrated, debeaked, and otherwise mutilated without anesthesia, and forced to bear young who are always stolen from them; where they are drugged relentlessly and then trucked to a painful, terrifying slaughter—completely enslaved and degraded commodities in an industrial killing machine. That was it. I have never eaten meat or fish since that day in 1975.

What made this transition so effortless was, I think, the fact that every day, for all three meals, we were eating meals of vegetables, fruits, grains, and legumes together with people in a community that had an overarching spiritual purpose and that practiced living the ancient teaching of ahimsa. I have come to realize the enormous power of community: it's obvious that the only reason any one of us in our culture today eats the flesh of animals, or their secretions such as milk and eggs, is the direct influence of the community we are born and raised in. We are products of our culture. We eat meat and dairy products simply because we are following orders—orders that have been injected into us from infancy through the potent practice of daily meals. Anthropologists understand that meals are the most significant rituals in any culture and are the primary way that the culture's norms and values are passed on from generation to generation. What I experienced at The Farm was an alternative community that lived by a different set of values and practices, and that allowed me to question the desensitizing program mandated by my culture and to begin to change it. For this I am eternally grateful.

In a few years, I ended up in the San Francisco Bay area, and in 1980 I learned more about the unavoidable cruelty on dairy and egg production operations. I made the somewhat less public and more introspective transition from vegetarian to vegan. I stopped buying and wearing leather, wool, silk, and other animal products, and began boycotting animal entertainment, research, and products as much as possible. A few years later, in 1984, I shaved my head and went to South Korea to live as a Zen monk in a monastery called Songgwang Sa, following the traditional meditation practice schedule that began at three every morning and went until nine at night. I realized when I got there that this Zen monastery practiced vegan living—no meat, fish, dairy, eggs, wool, silk, or leather, or even killing of insects—and that this had been the established practice for about 650 years, since its founding back in the 1300s. So I realized that veganism is not a new hippie idea, but is rather a modern iteration of the ancient spiritual teaching of ahimsa.

Through the months of seemingly endless silent meditation, I felt I was gradually extricating my consciousness from the brambles of three decades of conditioning by my culture, and was beginning to realize directly that what I am, and what we all are, is a manifestation of eternal consciousness, of the nature of wisdom, compassion, freedom, and awareness. When I returned to North America, I felt I had vegan roots that went deeply into my heart. I saw that veganism is not anything to be proud of, or even ultimately to practice. It is simply the natural result of seeing that is no longer confined to the prison of culturally imposed indoctrination, and is the result of being able to make a journey home, to our hearts, where we naturally look with eyes that see beings when we see beings rather than seeing mere commodities. It was obvious that meat is no more food than is the arm or leg of a neighbor, and dairy products no more our food than the mammary secretions of our pet dog nursing her puppies. I realized that there is no effort involved in being a vegan, and that it is not a choice we make, but is the result of a realization.

I could see clearly how culturally driven it all is. I have met people who would say that they could never give up eating beef or chicken or fish. However, if I asked them if it would be difficult for them to give up eating dog or cat, they looked at me as if I were irrational and said they would never want to eat the flesh of these animals. And yet in Korea, I had visited the meat markets in Seoul and seen the cages with dogs and cats for sale for slaughter, and had met men who had said they would not want to give up eating dog stew but had no desire for beef.

For the next fifteen years or so, I immersed myself in studying everything I could find about our culture, animals, food, and the spiritual teachings, myths, history, and anthropology of the relationship between spiritual intuition, morality, and our treatment of nonhuman animals. During this time I received a Ph.D. in the philosophy of education from the University of California, Berkeley, and subsequently taught college and university courses in mythology, humanities, literature, and comparative religion. Through meditation, study, and discussions in academia, I began to slowly realize that our culturally imposed food practices are far more powerful in negatively conditioning us and causing the terrible suffering we experience than anyone apparently realized. I had read the books and articles that established clearly that eating foods sourced from animals is deleterious to our health, that it's destroying our earth's ecosystems, and that it causes enormous cruelty toward the imprisoned animals whose flesh and secretions we are taught to eat. As important as these issues are, I began to realize that they are but the tip of an iceberg. I began to realize that there are many other ramifications of our routine mistreatment of animals for food, and I yearned to read a book that discussed and illuminated these other dimensions: the spiritual, cultural, sociological, anthropological, and historical aspects and effects of our culture's daily meals. After searching and waiting for several years for this book to appear, I realized that I'd have to write it myself. So I spent the next five years writing, and the result was The World Peace Diet. I'm glad to say that there were apparently others waiting for this book too, because it's been translated now into eight languages and became an Amazon number one best-seller in 2010.

In a nutshell, the message is that all of us have born into a culture with a taboo that is hidden in plain sight on our plates. In just the United States alone, we are killing, by conservative estimate, about 75 million animals every day for food. This enormous killing machine reaches its toxic tentacles into every nook and cranny of our ecological world, our shared cultural world, and our personal physical and psychological worlds. I have come to believe that at every level, it is the primary devastating force, bringing environmental catastrophe, hunger, war, disease, despair, inequality, exploitation, and spiritual disconnectedness.

For example, from an ecological perspective, animal agriculture is by far the most devastating force on our planet, requiring enormous monocropped fields of genetically engineered corn, soybeans, alfalfa, and other feedstock that consume and waste most of our fresh water reserves. This causes massive air and water pollution as well as oceanic dead zones from hypoxia, as cows, pigs, chickens, and factory-farmed fish inefficiently convert the lipids, carbohydrates, and amino acids in plants to toxic saturated fat, cholesterol, acidifying animal protein, and mountains of poisonous manure, as well as huge quantities of methane and nitrous oxide that are a major force behind global climate breakdown and global warming. Similarly, I discovered that the chief motivation for cutting and burning the Amazonian rainforest at the current rate of about one acre per second is to grow soybeans to feed livestock, and that the oceans are being overfished to the point that extinction and near-extinction of many fish populations are imminent. The demand for fish is nearly limitless because fishmeal is used to fatten cows, pigs, chickens, and factory-farmed fish, and to make cows and hens give more milk and eggs. It's estimated that 200,000 species are going extinct every year, causing the loss of genetic diversity in the largest mass die-off in 65 million years, and it is our acculturated desire to eat meat, fish, and dairy products that directly causes this tragic devastation.

Currently we're growing enough food to feed between twelve and fifteen billion people (and we only have seven billion of us), but because we're feeding most of the grain and legumes we grow to imprisoned animals for meat and dairy products, about one billion of our brothers and sisters suffer and die from chronic malnutrition. The gross inequity of this—a billion people living in industrialized countries have economies that bid up the price of grain to feed livestock, putting foodstuffs beyond the reach of starving people—is one of the underlying causes of war and conflict on our earth today. In addition, the armies of unfortunate workers paid to mutilate, confine, and kill these animals have the highest rates of worker-related injuries, as well as of drug addiction, alcoholism, suicide, and spousal and child abuse. They suffer from what psychologists now call "perpetrator-induced traumatic stress disorder." Their trauma causes them to inflict trauma on others, and this harms all of us because we're all interconnected. For Theosophists, dedicated to furthering the universal brotherhood of humanity, these are obviously important concerns.

Looking more deeply, I realized that from the psychological and spiritual perspective, our violence toward animals inevitably boomerangs as well. I believe one of the great adventures of our time in terms of spiritual, intellectual, and emotional growth is making the journey to understand the ramifications of our meals. What is the mentality required of a culture that routinely kills and eats 75 million animals daily? It is precisely the mentality that devastates the landscapes we inhabit, ecologically, culturally, psychologically, and spiritually. We are all forced from our earliest days to participate in daily rituals in which beings are reduced to things—pieces of meat. This mentality of reductionism, commodification, exclusion, privilege, elitism, and exploitation, routinely driven into us in the most relentless ways, creates an inner environment of disconnectedness, insecurity, and competitiveness that lead to complacency, gullibility, and the planetary disasters we are creating. This is our essential wound: not just witnessing adults eating the flesh of tortured animals, but being forced to participate in this behavior ourselves. This forcefully suppresses our inner feminine intuitive wisdom, which I refer to in The World Peace Diet as Sophia (from the Greek for "wisdom"). With Sophia repressed as we are forced to eat the flesh and secretions of enslaved, terrified animals, we become disconnected from our intuition and our inherent freedom. In fact, according to sociologists, there is more human slavery today, in both absolute and proportionate terms, than there was in the nineteenth century before human slavery was supposedly abolished.

This is our culture's essential dilemma. We eat animal foods only because every institution in our culture has indoctrinated us from birth to do so, and our complacency, gullibility, and distractedness are increased by corporate messages and governmental policies that constantly infantilize us. One primary characteristic of emotional maturity is the ability to delay gratification, but we are bombarded with messages to buy now, have now, and pay later. The media serve us a continuous stream of images treating us all like children who want only to be entertained and distracted with sports, celebrity scuttlebutt, sex scandals, and fragmented news bites, and the government increasingly controls us "for our security" as if we're frightened, helpless children, while increasingly attacking our sovereignty. Underlying all this is a massive dairy industry that keeps us still sucking at the breast we never got, drinking milk like infants who can't bear to grow up, eating cheese, cream, and butter from abused mothers whose babies are stolen from them and whose milk and lives and purposes are stolen from them. As we drink the milk of these sexually abused mothers, we remain gullible infants, believing the false and disempowering official stories concocted by the parental authorities.

I've come to believe that until we question the false official stories we've internalized, especially those normalizing eating animal foods, our quests for ethical maturity, social justice, and spiritual evolution will remain merely ironic. There is no scientific validation for the theory that eating products made from cows' milk is good for our bones or gives us usable calcium, for example. In fact studies uniformly show the opposite: without exception, countries with high rates of dairy consumption have the highest rates of osteoporosis. We are bombarded with fallacious official stores telling us that we need to eat dairy products for calcium, fish flesh and oil for omega-3 fats, and animal foods for protein. These nutrients, like all the nutrients we need (amino acids, fats, carbohydrates, fiber, vitamins, minerals, and micronutrients), originate with plants, and we can skip the animal in the middle and get them directly from the plants. The only two possible exceptions are vitamin D, which is supplied by sunlight, and vitamin B-12, which is manufactured by bacteria and is in soil and water and easily supplemented. As Theosophical teachings imply, when we eat foods sourced from animals, besides the physical toxins (pesticide, hormone, drug, heavy metal, hydrocarbon, radioactive, and other residues) that concentrate in animal flesh, eggs, and dairy products, there are metaphysical toxins as well: we are eating terror, despair, anxiety, boredom, depression, and rage. Spiritual teachings have long emphasized the importance of prana (vital force) and the reality of the vibrations of food. For inner peace and deep meditation, as well as living our lives according to our values, our food choices are vitally important.

As we sow, we reap. As long as we robotically participate in enslaving and terrorizing nonhuman animals, stealing their purposes for our own ends, we will find ourselves enslaved and terrorized and our purposes stolen from us by others for their own ends. As we awaken from the imposed trance of violence and say yes to kindness, respect, compassion, freedom, health, sustainability, mindfulness, justice, and peace in our behavior toward others, then will we be worthy of living in a world that mirrors this.

As Jiddu Krishnamurti always emphasized, our world is a mirror. Our relentless violence toward animals (and other humans) boomerangs ineluctably, and each and every one of us can be part of the solution. We can help each other remove the toxic program that has been injected into us by our dysfunctional culture. We can learn to switch to a healthy, organic, whole-foods, plant-based diet that uses a much smaller quantity of our resources and opens our hearts to the interconnectedness of all living beings and the amazing beauty of life on our precious earth. And we can dedicate ourselves to spreading this message of radical inclusion and compassion, and assist others in removing the food program from their body-mind as well. There is no more noble and vital activity than this, it seems to me. Ultimately, it is the path to freedom, joy, abundance, and peace. What we want for ourselves we are called to give to others. Animals are not mere props in the human drama; their suffering is as significant to them as ours is to us, as we know intuitively.

As Theosophists, I feel we are called to study and live the ancient wisdom teachings, and we have today an unprecedented opportunity to transform both our culture and ourselves. Recognizing, living, and sharing the truth that we can all thrive on plant-based diets, we can launch a new human awareness rooted in compassion, health, inclusiveness, and freedom. We are all inherently wise, compassionate, powerful, and creative, but we've had the faculties of our hearts and minds slammed so hard by the violent culture of our upbringing that we have become tools in the hands of violence. Let's wake up, question the official stories, practice the unyielding truth of our interconnectedness, and usher in a world of greater freedom and peace for all.

Dr. Will Tuttle, pianist, composer, and educator, is author of the acclaimed best-seller The World Peace Diet. A recipient of the prestigious Courage of Conscience Award, and vegan since 1980, he is a Dharma Master in the Zen tradition, and has created eight CD albums of uplifting original piano music. A self-paced online study of food issues is now available from his Web site, as is training to facilitate World Peace Diet study groups: www.worldpeacemastery.com.

Printed in the Winter 2013 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Cianciosi, John. "Was the Buddha a Vegetarian?" Quest  101. 1 (Winter 2013): pg. 15 - 21.

By John Cianciosi 

Once when I gave a talk on Buddhism and vegetarianism, there were some very strong reactions from some members of the audience. People who have strong reactions to talks are people who have very strong feelings about the topic, which means they have very strong views about the topic. This is a great danger, because as soon as we develop very strong, fixed views about anything, it tends to make us rather rigid. We develop a closed mind, which makes us overreact to anything that is said. If it's not in agreement with us, it must be against us. That's all we see—black and white—and that is a great shame. The Buddha warned against attachment to views and opinions as one of the fundamental causes of suffering.

We see this over and over again in every aspect of life. Most of the conflicts that we are involved in during our lives arise out of disagreement with regard to certain views about things. These conflicts are due to attachment to our views and our perceptions.

Of course, we need views; we cannot live without them. A view is the way we see something, the way we understand something, our preference with regard to the variety of choices available in regard to things. This is quite natural. As long as we think, perceive, or have been conditioned in a certain way, we will have views, and on some topics these may be very strong and fixed.

Vegetarianism is one such topic. It is not my intention to give you the final word on Buddhism and vegetarianism. That is neither my intention nor the Buddhist way. My understanding comes from my experience, from my perspective, from my contemplation. You may agree or you may not; it doesn't matter as long as you reflect clearly on the matter and come to your own conclusions. I take a neutral position because I do not feel that this particular topic can be seen simply in terms of black and white. I take the Buddhist position as I understand it. 

Scriptural Basis 

Let's begin with a fundamental question: Is it a prerequisite for a Buddhist to be a vegetarian according to the teachings of the Buddha? I would have to say, no, according to the Buddhist scriptures it is not a prerequisite for a person to be a vegetarian in order to be a Buddhist.

People say, "Well how do you know what the Buddha taught, anyway?" It's true. I don't know from personal experience; if I was there, I don't remember it. So we have to rely on scriptures that have been handed down through the centuries. Whether we can trust these scriptures depends on whether we accept them as accurate recordings of the Buddha's teaching or not. In the Theravada tradition we have what we call the Pali Canon, the Buddhist scriptures. There are many volumes: the Vinaya Pitaka, the discipline for monks and nuns; the Suttanta Pitaka, which contains the discourses or teachings given by the Buddha; and finally the Abhidhamma Pitaka, which is the system of philosophy and psychology developed from the basic texts. Most scholars agree that the Abhidhamma Pitaka, the "higher teaching," was developed by teachers of later periods from the basic texts of the Suttas (discourses) as a system of analysis for easier explanation and for use in debate.

So there are three collections of scriptures. My research is limited to the Vinaya and the Suttas, the books of discipline and the books of discourses. From my studies I have great confidence that what is presented in these scriptures accurately represents what the Buddha taught. However, I do not claim that every word in these scriptures is exactly the word of the Buddha. There have been some changes, some additions, and some alterations through the ages, but the essence is there. In essence the texts are a very true and accurate record of what the Buddha taught.

My basis for this reasoning is simply the fact that the people who passed on these teachings and checked them were disciples—monks and nuns who had tremendous respect for the Buddha, just as monks today have, and I don't think that many monks would dare to intentionally change the teachings of the Buddha. Very few monks would be prepared to do that. Any alterations that have taken place were simply an expedient means for making recitation more convenient. There may have been accidental alterations, but I do not think that the texts were corrupted intentionally, certainly not in any serious or major way.

This is verified in particular with regard to the Books of Discipline, which deal with the monastic discipline. Through the ages Buddhism slowly spread from the Ganges Valley throughout India, moving south to Sri Lanka, across to Burma and Thailand, then north towards Tibet and eventually China. Over the centuries it began to fragment into various schools. Some of these schools flourished in different parts of India and more distant locations, and so had very little or no contact with each other. When we compare the Books of Discipline, however, there's remarkable similarity among these different schools. They are so similar that they must have originally come from the same source.

So there is good reason for confidence in the Pali Canon and for accepting that it does represent the teachings of the Buddha. In any case, this is the evidence we have to deal with, because there is no one here who can say, "I heard the Buddha say differently." These scriptures are the most authoritative and definitive representation of the Buddha's teachings.

If we study these scriptures very carefully, we will find that nowhere is there any injunction either to lay people or to monks with regard to vegetarianism. If the Buddha had made vegetarianism a prerequisite, it would have to be somewhere in the scriptures. Quite to the contrary, one does find a number of instances where the Buddha speaks about food, especially in the rules pertaining to the monks, indicating that, during the time of the Buddha, the monks did sometimes eat meat.

If you'll bear with me, I would like to present to you some of this historical evidence. In these scriptures, particularly in the Books of Discipline, there are many references to what monks are and are not allowed to do. A lot of these rules have to do with food; there are rules about all sorts of things pertaining to food, some of them very unusual. If the monks had to be vegetarian, then these rules would seem to be completely useless or irrelevant.

For instance, there is one rule which forbids monks from eating the meat of certain types of animals, such as horse, elephant, dog, snake, tiger, leopard, and bear. There are about a dozen different types of meat specified by the Buddha that are not allowed for monks. That he made a rule that certain types of meat were not to be eaten by monks would indicate that other types of meat were allowable.

There is another rule, based on this story: a monk was ill, and as he was quite sick a devout female disciple asked him if he had ever had this illness before and what he had taken to cure it. It was some sort of stomach problem, and he said that he'd had it before, and last time he had some meat broth, which helped to relieve the symptoms. So this woman went off looking for meat to prepare a meat broth for the sick monk. However it was an uposatha (observance) day, so there was no meat available anywhere. It was a tradition in India not to slaughter animals on such days. Out of great devotion this lady decided that the monk could not be left to suffer, so she cut a piece of her own flesh and made a meat broth. She took it to the monk, offered it to him, and apparently he drank it and recovered. When the Buddha heard about this, he made a rule that monks are not allowed to eat human flesh. Thank goodness for that!

So here is another strange rule that would be completely pointless if there had been a stipulation that the monks never eat meat. There are many similar instances both in the Rules of Discipline and in the Discourses. When the Buddha heard a charge that Buddhist monks caused the killing of animals by eating meat, he stated that this was not so. He then declared three conditions under which monks were not to eat meat: if they have seen, heard, or suspect that the animal was killed specifically to feed them, then the monks should refuse to accept that food. At other times, when the monks go on alms round, they are supposed to look into their bowls and accept whatever is given with gratitude, without showing pleasure or displeasure. However, if a monk knows, has heard, or suspects that the animal has been killed specifically to feed the monks, he should refuse to receive it.

There are many more examples than I have given here, scattered throughout the scriptures, indicating that it was not a requirement that either the monks or the lay people be vegetarian.

Furthermore, we can see that throughout the history of Buddhism there has not been one Buddhist country where vegetarianism was the common practice of the Buddhist people. This would indicate that it hasn't been the practice right from the very beginning. Although some Mahayana monks, in particular the Chinese, Vietnamese, and some of the Japanese, are vegetarian, the majority of lay people are not. Historically, right up to the present day, Buddhist people in general haven't been strictly vegetarian. This would seem to support the conclusion drawn from an examination of the scriptures—that it has never been a prerequisite for people who want to be Buddhists to be vegetarian.

Of course it can be argued, and it often is argued, by vegetarian monks in particular, that the scriptures were altered. They argue that the Buddha did teach vegetarianism, but those monks who wanted to eat meat went and changed every reference to it in all the texts. But they didn't have a computer on which they could just punch in "reference to meat" and get a whole list. The scriptures were initially handed down by word of mouth, and many monks were involved. No one had them on a disk so that they could be changed in half an hour. They would have been very difficult to change, as there are many references to the subject throughout the scriptures. You could change the reference in one place, but then it would be inconsistent with other references. It is highly unlikely that the monks could have achieved consistency in changing so many references throughout the scriptures, so I think the claim of corruption of the scriptures by meat-loving monks is a bit far-fetched. I think the scriptures are accurate. I think that the Buddha did not make it a prerequisite for people, nor do I think that it was laid down as a rule of training for monks.

Another point of contention arises over the Buddha's teaching, as one of the training rules for everybody who wanted to be his disciple, that they are not to kill any living creature. The very first precept for a lay Buddhist is: Panatipata veramani sikkhapadam samadiyami. ("I undertake the training rule of not killing any living creature"). This is a training for every Buddhist monk, nun, novice, postulant, layman, and laywoman, which is absolutely fundamental to the training in harmlessness.

There appears to be an inconsistency; it doesn't seem to add up, but this is simply due to not thinking clearly about the topic. Obviously the Buddha saw a great difference in these two trainings—the training of not killing and the training regarding diet. They operate at different levels.

The Buddha was very pragmatic. He laid down rules that people had a good likelihood of keeping. For instance, he did not lay down a training rule saying that you must not overeat. The monks are supposed to be mendicants, and he laid down a lot of rules about eating for monks—they are allowed to eat only in the morning, when they eat they are not supposed to make chomping or slurping sounds, they are not supposed to drop grains of rice, they are not supposed to scrape the bowl, they are not supposed to look around—yet he didn't make one rule about overeating. You can really stuff yourself and not break a rule. You would think that the Lord Buddha would have made a rule about that. Why not, when he made all these other rules? It's up to the individual to train himself to eat in moderation. It is something you take responsibility for and train yourself toward gradually, but it is not a rule to start with.

There is a big difference between eating meat and killing animals, although it can be argued that when we eat meat we indirectly support the killing of animals. There's something to that, and I'll go into it in greater detail later on. There is a big difference between the two, however, because the killing of animals refers to intentionally depriving an animal of life or intentionally causing or directly telling somebody else to kill an animal. That is what the first precept is about—the intention to kill an animal. That is the purpose behind the action. There is intention, there is purpose, and there is the actualization of that purpose in killing.

If you drove your car here this evening, I'm sure that you killed something—on your windscreen there would have been a few smashed insects. When we drive from the monastery where I live in Serpentine, Australia, to Perth, which is approximately sixty kilometers, the windscreen gets covered with dead insects, especially in the mornings and evenings. I know when I get into the car and ask someone to drive me somewhere that some insects are going to die. I know that, but that is not my intention for getting into a car and being driven somewhere. I don't say, "Let's go for a spin to see how many insects we can squash." If that were my intention, then I would be intentionally killing. But we don't do that. We get into a car to go from A to B for a purpose. Perhaps some beings get killed, but it's not our intention to kill them.

That is not killing—there is death but you are not creating the karma of killing animals. This rule is the foundation of the Buddhist training in harmlessness: you refrain from intentionally killing living creatures.

When people eat meat, what is their intention? How many people eat meat with the intention to kill cows, pigs, and sheep? If their intention in eating is to kill more cows, that would be very close to killing. If you consider why people really eat meat you will see that it is for very different reasons. Why did people in more basic, rural societies, such as in northern Thailand where I lived, where most of the people were Buddhist, eat meat? They ate frogs, grasshoppers, red ants, ant larvae—all sorts of things. Why? For protein, they had to survive, they had to have food, and it's very hard to get food. What did a caveman eat? He ate whatever he could get. Because of the fundamental drive to survive, he would eat whatever he could get. That has a lot to do with what we eat—the primary instinct for survival. It depends on what is available.

Then there is the cultural influence, the way your tastes are conditioned by your upbringing. If you are accustomed to certain types of food, you find those kinds of food agreeable. That is why you buy them. That is the sort of food that you know how to cook. Why are most Australians nonvegetarian? They eat meat because that is what they are conditioned to eat. That is part of the conditioning of the Australian culture.

So when most people who are not vegetarians eat meat, it is not because they want to kill animals. It's just that that is what they have been conditioned to eat since childhood. It is part of their culture, that is what they know how to cook, and that is what they know how to eat. You might say it's ignorance. Well, most people are ignorant; most people have limited scope in their overall understanding of options and possibilities; most people live according to their conditioning. It doesn't have to be that way, but that is how it is for most people.

It is important to make this distinction: Eating meat is not the same as killing animals, because the intention is different. The Buddha laid down this rule, to refrain from intentionally killing any living creature, as the first step towards respecting life, both human and animal. It's just a start, not the end. And most people can't even do that. How many people in the world can truly refrain from killing living beings? We could get into an idealistic battle as to why everybody should be vegetarian, but you have to admit that the great majority of people on this planet cannot even keep to the level of not intentionally killing. If they could keep to that level, things would be a lot better. The Buddha had a pragmatic approach to things, so he said to at least start at this level.

Thus far I have given you reasons why Buddhism doesn't make vegetarianism compulsory. Does Buddhism then encourage the eating of meat? Nowhere in the scriptures do we read that the Buddha said, "Eat more meat, it is good for you." Nowhere does it say, "Give the man meat." There is not a single reference to giving the monks more meat. The scriptures certainly do not encourage the eating of meat; there are no references to it, no suggestion of encouragement for it. What are we to make of this? Simply that each individual must consider this matter carefully, come to his or her own conclusions, and take responsibility for them. 

Ethical Considerations 

Now we must consider whether vegetarianism is compatible with the teachings of the Buddha. I would say wholeheartedly that it is compatible. Vegetarianism is a very beneficial practice for one who is developing two qualities that every Buddhist should be trying to develop: compassion and wisdom. That is what we endeavor to cultivate through the spiritual path. Compassion means feeling with, feeling for, being sensitive to the pain of others. The natural outcome of developing such compassion is that we do not want to kill, we do not want to hurt others.

Through wisdom we begin to realize that our actions have not only direct results, but also indirect results. This is the arising of understanding. I've often referred to one of the fundamental laws of nature, called Dependent Origination or Conditioned Arising—"When this is, that comes to be." In other words, certain conditions bring about certain results. As we develop greater clarity of mind and greater awareness, we begin to see the relationship. Whatever we do has its consequences. The way we live gives rise to causes and results. We begin to see that this is a fundamental law of nature, and we become a lot more aware of how we are living and the consequences of our actions. As we become more compassionate and wise, we will start to direct our lives so that we become more harmless, or contribute less to the suffering and destruction in life.

Now let's consider this on a broader scale than just vegetarianism, because this topic is far too narrow. We cannot discuss vegetarianism as if it were an isolated thing all by itself. There's much more to it; it involves ecology, it involves every aspect of life.

Once we realize that how we live has its consequences, what effect will this have on how we live and how we regard what we are doing? Everything we do and say has its consequences, because we are part of a system. Every person sitting here is part of the system, the whole universe. There is one system and you are part of it. Everything you do has an effect on the universe.

You may think, "What can I do to affect the movement of the planets and the galaxies?" Perhaps very little, but according to the relationship of interdependence, everything you do affects everything else. If you can't see it as a whole, you can certainly see it in this room. What you do here this evening will affect everybody else. What I do is affecting you. What we do affects the outside. Everything we do has its long-range effect on everything else.

So when we eat meat, that has its consequences. What are the consequences? We are directly supporting an industry that is based on rearing animals, quite often under terrible conditions, for the sole purpose of slaughter. The meat can then be available in neatly wrapped little packages so that we can buy it and eat it. Our intention when we cook and eat meat is not to kill animals—I don't think anyone has that intention—however the fact remains that by the acts of buying, cooking, and eating, we indirectly support the killing of the animal. It's not killing, but it is supporting.

Now, with that understanding, certain individuals may decide not to support killing. They won't want to be part of it; they will want to remove themselves from it. If there is one reason a Buddhist should decide to be a vegetarian, it should be based on this perspective. There is only one good, valid reason, and that is compassion—not wanting to contribute to suffering any more than one has to.

Vegetarianism is a matter of individual choice and responsibility, not something that can be forced, but it is certainly praiseworthy and compatible with the Buddha's teaching. But does it stop there? Are you now pure? You've become vegetarian, but are you blameless? Are your hands clean?

Let me tell you that as long as you are alive on this planet, as long as you are a member of this system, your hands will never be clean. It doesn't matter what you eat, you are always contributing to death and destruction, regardless of what you do. You can be a vegetarian, but you still contribute to destruction just because you are part of this system. You can't escape it. You are sitting on chairs; where do they come from? The chairs are on the carpet: where does the carpet come from? The electricity? Air conditioning? The buildings, the cars, the trains, the buses, where does all that come from? It's all interrelated. We're always involved in the whole system, and as long as we live in this system we are always contributing to it. We make use of the air conditioning, we make use of the electricity, which means that we are in a way supporting the building of dams, which entails the destruction of forests. There can be no doubt about it. You are wearing clothes; you are wearing shoes. If you don't wear leather shoes, you wear plastic shoes. Who makes the plastic shoes? The chemical companies, the ones that make napalm and poisons. You are supporting them.

As I said, the training for a monk is to accept what one is given and not to ask for anything special. Most of the food we get is vegetarian, but not all. So I can be accused of contributing. I confess, my hands are not clean. Even if I am vegetarian, as I can be most of the time, my hands are still not clean. Where do you think the fruit and vegetables come from? How do those vegetable gardens get to be so free of trees and bushes? What happened to all the trees and bushes? Those huge fields of wheat and corn and the orchards—what happened to all the forests?—gone with the plowing and spraying. We have nice vegetables, but for them to be nice vegetables you've got to do something about the insects.

On an individual basis, if you really are compassionate, if you really are wise, you can do as much as you can to minimize the damage. But when you consider that there are some seven billion people on this planet, that's a lot of people to feed and clothe, so there has got to be a lot of destruction, either directly or indirectly. Life is like that.

What I am saying is not fatalistic. It is simply making us aware of reality. Within this reality we all can and should consider carefully what we are doing, how we are living, and what we are consuming. How much are we contributing to death and destruction? It's not just a matter of vegetarianism. That is praiseworthy if done properly, and, as I said, compatible with the teachings of the Buddha, but there's more to it than that—much more. 

Treading Lightly 

Even if one isn't vegetarian, there's a lot to do. Nowadays we are beginning to understand this. We cannot continue to consume more and more, demand more and more, want more and more of everything, and expect that this limited planet with its limited resources can supply it for us. One of the fundamental teachings of Buddhism is to be contented with little. It doesn't mean starving yourself, it's just a matter of being contented, of not being continually caught in the obsession to get more, which is basically the present-day consumer society syndrome, isn't it? Nearly all of us in Western society are suffering from it.

I have an American student who complains because there is such a limited range of food here in Australia. We've only got three kinds of this type of chocolate, she says, whereas in America they have twenty kinds. Twenty kinds of chocolate, 120 kinds of ice cream to choose from—a marvelous achievement for the human race, the apex of human civilization. This is consumerism, where the word is "more, more, more." It's always more, with little or no emphasis on contentment.

You can see where this is going to lead, this hungry ghost syndrome of forever wanting more, of never being satisfied. It's going to destroy the whole planet. The planet is limited, and the consequences are very far-reaching. One hungry ghost is not so bad, but when you start getting millions of them, this wanting more and more is going to consume the whole world. It already is consuming the world at an alarming rate.

The Buddha was pointing to a very fundamental principle: craving is the source of the problem and it can never be satisfied by feeding it. Contentment, being satisfied with few needs, is so important. Of course this had to be a personal judgment. The Buddha can't sit down and say, "I allot twenty grams of cheese per person per day." That's ridiculous! The Buddha was an enlightened being, and he wanted people to become enlightened, to become responsible. The Buddha doesn't take responsibility away from you; it is up to each individual. He offers guidelines that each of us must use in considering our lives, reflecting on what we are doing, the consequences thereof, and taking responsibility. How much are we willing to give up? Each person must find his or her own limit. For some people that may be one car, for others two cars; some people may only want a bicycle—that is their assessment of their need.

The more we stress compassion and understanding of the consequences of actions, the more people will be able to make the right choices, to simplify, to develop more contentment and know moderation. This is much more important than just vegetarianism. Vegetarianism is just one aspect of the whole picture. The whole is much greater because it deals with how much we consume, even of fruit and vegetables, clothing, shoes, power, air, fuel, everything—because all consumption brings about destruction.

This is the Buddhist way of life: beginning to cultivate compassion and understanding, and from there beginning to redirect our lives by making the right choices. It's up to each individual to decide how far he can go, but the direction is toward trying to tread as lightly as possible on the planet, so that our lives won't be the cause of so much destruction.

It is a personal thing. It does no good going around pointing fingers at people and demanding that they stop. The main thrust of Buddhism is always to encourage compassion and understanding. From there, everything else will come about in accordance with the individual's response and sense of personal responsibility.

You can see why I feel quite confident that the Buddha would not have made vegetarianism compulsory, because that is not the way he would approach it. His main concern would be to set a fundamental standard, but even that would be voluntary. It is then up to you whether you follow it or not. It is up to the individual, through the teaching, to become more compassionate and wise, to take responsibility for one's life. Whether you make a rule or not, what matters is whether people are going to keep it. The Buddha's approach, the main thrust of his teaching, was to try to encourage more understanding and compassion, so that the individual would make the appropriate choices—not only about vegetarianism, but about many other things.

Vegetarianism is a very noble choice, but that choice should be made from the right standpoint—out of compassion and understanding. Having made such a choice, don't pollute it with aversion for those who are not vegetarian. The goodness generated by such a choice then becomes corrupted, and in some ways you will be worse than nonvegetarians. We make our choice out of compassion. If we are in a position to explain, we explain it to others according to reason and logic, not by being critical of them for not being vegetarian.

I respect people who are vegetarian. They are acting very nobly; it is a gesture of renunciation. It is a small thing, but noble, and very much in keeping with the Buddha's teaching of compassion and understanding. But don't stop there. Even if you are not vegetarian, don't think there is nothing else you can do. There's a lot to be done in every area of life, in the way we speak, in the way we act, in everything. Be one who treads lightly, be one who doesn't add unnecessarily to the suffering of humanity and all other sentient beings on this planet. Once we have the intention to at least try, to move in the right direction, we are good disciples of the Buddha. Each person has to walk at his or her own pace.

Born in Italy and raised in Australia, John Cianciosi was a Buddhist monk for twenty-three years. In 1982, he helped found the Bodhiyana Forest Monastery in Serpentine, Western Australia, and led a community of monks and nuns. He also served as mentor for the Buddhist Society of Western Australia. This article is based on a talk he gave in Perth in 1994. John made the decision to disrobe as a monk in 1995. He is the author of The Meditative Path (Quest Books) and presently serves on the Olcott staff.