liminal_luke

Yes, I´m biased. But that´s not why I´m not considering the possible validity of your list. I´m not considering the possible validity of your list because I´m not equipped to do so. Neither of us has the kind of expertise necessary to evaluate the accuracy of that kind of list. Very few people do. But that´s what it takes. Otherwise, bullet lists of figures and facts are worse than useless -- worse than useless because they mislead people into thinking they know something when they don´t. I can do my own websearch and come up with information that points me to exactly the opposite conclusion. That agriculture, ie plants, are responsible for so much more environmental destruction than animals. That, in fact, agriculture is responsible for the death of more sentient creatures than animal husbandry. It´s not so simple as you suggest. I could put up some of those links. (Or you could read The Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith.) I will if you´d like me too, but frankly it wouldn´t do any good. Because neither of us have the expertise required to separate statistical truth from statistical lies. What´s the point? What I personally find more useful is personal anecdote. I´m not convinced you´re able to plumb the ethical, environmental, and medical complexities of how people ought to feed themselves around the world -- but you´re the world´s foremost authority on Dustybeijing. Your personal experience doesn´t necessarily to generalize to the larger population but it´s true for you and worthy of note. Has your health improved since becoming vegetarian? Do you feel lighter, more inclined towards spiritual practice? Do you smile at the grocery store, proud of making changes that bring your eating more in-line with your personal values? If so, I´d be interested to know. That would be so much more useful for everybody than posting dueling lists of questionable facts proving nothing at all. Just my opinion. Liminal

What´s the saying? Listen to your heart, but check your movie rental history.

I once referred a vegetarian friend (yes, I do have them) to a vegetarian acupuncturist/naturopath. In spite of his own long-standing practice of avoiding meat for ethical reasons, he urged her to incorporate animal protein in her diet for health reasons. Then again, my acupuncturist was an unusually flexible guy. I haven´t found many vegetarians who feel that meat-free is the right way for them, while acknowledging that many people do better health-wise with some high-quality animal fare. If you are such a vegetarian, I salute you. For me, the problem with the list of facts presented by Dustybeijing -- what turns me off from even considering their potential validity -- is that I believe they come from impossibily biased sources. Not that you, DB, are necessarily biased -- you´re just passing them on. I´m just so positive that the original makers of such lists would never even consider any science that didn´t accord with their view. To get an accurate picture, I´d have to do so much more than read that list and take it at face-value. I´d have to do in-depth analysis on both sides. I´d have to become an expert. It would take months of painstaking work and scientific research skills that, frankly, I don´t presently possess and wouldn´t be easily come by. To do anything less is to end up parroting a biased position, and what´s the sense of that?

The problem with so much of the information presented in favor of vegetarianism or meating eat is that almost nobody starts with an open mind and simply investigates the facts. It´s all backwards. Vegetarians start out convinced that not eating meat is the way to go and then, having already locked onto that postion, look for all the evidence in support of their view. Ditto for many meat eaters. Few people from either camp will allow reality to interfere with their decision.

In general, Marblehead, we have different tastes when it comes to these things. I´m with you here though: if there is one thing I can´t stand in a sexual partner it´s gospel singing.

Ever wonder about the popularity of erotic vampire stories? For me blood sucking is a metaphor for the kind of sex people look for when they feel cut off from their own essential wholeness; sex can be an attempt to complete oneself through erotically importing inner qualities perceived (mistakenly) as missing in oneself. Part of erotic maturity is finding those qualities in ourselves so that we can couple sexually with another without needing to steal any of their spiritual essence and vitality.

Thanks Bodhidhara. Glad to hear the post made sense to you. I believed in what I said but didn´t feel quite right about the post so I deleted it. If you got something out of it that´s the main thing. Liminal

...

I like this, Orion. Sometimes love is having enough sensitivity to treat somebody how they would like to be treated, even if that´s different from how we wish people are with us.

I don´t understand any of that VonKrankenhaus. My only point was that there are a lot of ways people have sex that don´t result in babies.

You´ve got a point, but only if you consider sex to be unprotected heterosexual intercourse. Bill Clinton´s opinions notwithstanding, that´s hardly the only way to do it.

The golden rule seems to take it for granted that we would treat ourselves better than we´d treat others. In my experience, that´s just not true. Many people, even those who aren´t really masochists in the usual sense, treat themselves with less compassion than they treat others.

That´s for sure. Plenty of sexual confusion all round. Among the young and the old, the married and the single, the straight and the gay and the somewhere in-between. Anybody who is sexually confused can consider themselves in very good company.

I get what you´re saying Bodhidharma, and respect your values around not having sex outside of a committed relationship. Many of my friends are in long-term relationships and are either not having sex at all, or not having sex as much as they´d like. Often not as much as they used to have back when they were free-wheeling singles hooking up with handsome strangers on the disco floor.

Most of my friends complain about precisely the opposite situation: that they don´t have the option of sex because they´re in a relationship.

OK, I think I know what I need to do now: get to a place of peace and acceptance. Stop ranting and feeling like a victim, and find the love. Gilles Marin, who teaches a form of Taoist bodywork called Chi Nei Tsang, talks about something he calls "peace touch." Peace touch is a way of touching that doesn´t ask anything of the person being touched: it´s just one person being present with another person. No agenda. No hope that the client will change in any way. Just presence. The paradox of peace touch, of course, is that it´s profoundly healing. When you stop asking someone to change, they feel supported and change happens spontaneously and easily. Peace touch creates the conditions necessary for transformation. It occurs to me that what my partner needs from me is the attitude expressed in peace touch. To get to that place I need to first find my own peace. This isn´t easy, but it´s something I know how to do. I have the tools. Thanks guys. Liminal

So many wonderful responses, and I´m finding them very helpful this morning. I like what you had to say, Steve, about the line between acceptance and giving up. I need to get to that place your post suggests to me, a place of warm acceptance that nevertheless has no giving up in it. I´ll mention a particular area we´ve been struggling with: sleep. It´s gotten so much better -- and continues to get better -- but I find myself very frustrated just the same. For a year and a half or so, he literally slept like a vampire: staying up all night playing video games and going to bed at 3am, not getting out of bed again until 6pm. He rarely ventured outside when the sun was out. It drove me crazy, and I complained, but I didn´t feel like I had the right to set his sleeping schedule for him. Maybe I should have, I don´t know. He was in therapy but didn´t want to see a psychiatrist. Being somewhat opposed to psychoactive drugs myself, I respected his wishes. Finally, things fell apart to the point where I said either he went to a psychiatrist or I was gone, and so he did. And the drugs helped -- a lot. Left to his own devices, he goes to bed now around midnight and gets up around two in the afternoon the next day, a big improvement. It´s not that he´s so physically sick that he really needs the sleep; I´d feel different about it if that was the case. It´s just that he has paranoid delusions about being kidnapped and killed, and it´s easier to numb himself out in bed then get up and face the day. He tells me that he wishes I could have his disease for just one day so I would know what it feels like to feel like you are going to be tortured and killed every day. So things are better but not good. I want him to get up to 9am and have a productive morning. It would be different if sleeping actually made him happy but it doesn´t. He feels like a prisoner in the bedroom because he can´t get out. His mind is all clouded from the oversleeping. The few times he has gotten up at nine, he´s had a better day. I can tell him he has to get up and he will, but that´s hard on both of us. For my part, I don´t really want to constantly monitor him and order him around. And if I tell him what to do he resents it, like anyone would. But if I don´t tell him what to do he´ll sleep and sleep. Errrr! If you think I´m coming from a place of frustration and pain, you´re right. My own mental health is suffering. Thanks for reading. Responses and suggestions welcome though I mostly just wrote to have somewhere to say this, get it off my chest. Gratitude for the wisdom of the Daobums community. Liminal

The video made me laugh. Yes, I think it´s definitely time for a new approach -- or at least a new perspective -- because what we were doing wasn´t working.

Thanks Brian -- good advice. I think mental health problems are particularly tricky that way because it´s "all in their head." But like his psychiatrist says, he has a "real" problem, every bit as physical as someone with heart disease or diabetes. It´s just that it´s a problem with his brain chemistry. I want him to just get over it, or see things logically... but of course it´s not so easy.

It´s probably a good thing I´ve never smoked because I´m all about the cheap bonding. I´d revel in the us-against-the-man commaraderie of all the bad boys and girls huddled outside in the cold because tobacco is not permitted inside. I´d bum cigarrettes off cute guys and go around giving everybody lights. I´d feel smugly superior to all those self-righteous nonsmokers who don´t know how to have fun.

Hi Jox, You mentioned Wu Ji gong. Do you mean the primordial qigong form taught by Michael Winn, among others? The one he also calls Tai Chi for enlightenment? If so, I´d love to hear more about your experiences with it. It´s something I keep coming back to but have yet to do long-term. Liminal

Unlike so many others, I´ve never had a prolonged vegetarian stint, but can nevertheless think of one possible benefit: the good that accrues whenever we decide, of our own free will, to limit ourselves in some way and then find the discipline to follow through. Catholic or no, I think there´s wisdom in the idea of "giving something up for lent." The vogue these days seems to be celebrating endless choice. I´m not sure that´s the path to happiness or even pleasure. Unlimited anything -- food, money, sex -- often creates more problems than it solves.

Yes, I have. One with delicious vegetarian food by the way, though I did sneak away from the center several weeks in, hiking to a small town a few miles away to indulge in a pepperoni pizza. What can I say: I´m a lousy Buddhist. Like most vipassana retreats, this one was mostly silent. The only talking allowed was during brief exchanges related to morning chores, questions during nightly dharma talks, and at one meeting devoted to discussing how to deal compassionately yet hygenically with the kitchen cockroach problem. I´ll always remember the comments of one retreatant who offered to put out poison with love in her heart.

Some say vegetarianism gives a person a peaceful nature. If only this were true! Discussions about the pros and cons of eating meat make for some of the most hostile, foaming-at-the-mouth, emotionally-turbulent rants to be found on Taobums. Vegetarianism might have all sorts of benefits, I only wish people could talk about it without implying that those who choose differently are morally or spiritually inferior. Please let me eat my meat in peace.

To me there´s a huge difference between "putting a dog down" and most assisted suicide: the person in question has (presumably) made it known that that´s what they want. I think part of what´s hard about deciding to euthanize a beloved pet is making the decision. It´s so easy to second guess yourself. In the case of a human being, you´re not making the decision but rather simply respecting the wishes of your loved one.