The Horror of Taking Lives and Eating Meat

[林愛偉]

[Cameron]

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...

 

Alright man.

 

Please list some good, solid alternatives to meat to help GROUND OUT.

 

All this "do gooder, my karma is better than your karma" stuff aside..some practical food that can ground me out as well as some delicious salami slices.

 

Your pal,

 

Cameron

[林愛偉]

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...

 

Alright man.

 

Please list some good, solid alternatives to meat to help GROUND OUT.

 

All this "do gooder, my karma is better than your karma" stuff aside..some practical food that can ground me out as well as some delicious salami slices.

 

Your pal,

 

Cameron

 

 

hehehe

 

One can eat fungus like wood ear (black leafy like stuff) for proteins, tofu, lots of crunchy greens, peanuts, rice. Grounding is of mind my brother. From eating veggies one's energy will reach very high, but if you have a stable mind, its no problem in "grounding".

Being ungrounded and things getting dangerous from eating veggies is only a falsity. There are cultivators that are magnificent at what they do, and do not touch meat.

Their "grounding" methods is keeping the mind free from indulging in flippant behavior, not indulging in visuals, sounds too much, as well as changing their behavior and views of "life".

 

After a certain level of cultivation, one's energy, on veggie foods, will be fine, no problems. Like I said, "grounding" is of mind.

If eating meat was so necessary to keep one here in body, the Buddha and all his followers would be chowing down on rack of lamb, and what not, and the teachings of cause and effect would be false. --- Also the Daoist Immortals and various Celestial Light Beings would be advocating eating meat... it just doesn't happen.

 

One will not go crazy...lol Maybe I'm crazy, but I only eat veggies as well.

 

So basically, "grounding" is dependent on the mind cultivating, not what they eat. Keep to wholesome views, and still mind and heart, and there will be no problem at all.

 

Peace and Blessings,

Lin

Edited November 9, 2007 by 林愛偉

[qijack]

There is a good discussion about eating meat going on at David Verdesi's foundation forum atm

 

http://foundation73.proboards55.com/index....read=1194477565

[林愛偉]

There is a good discussion about eating meat going on at David Verdesi's foundation forum atm

 

http://foundation73.proboards55.com/index....read=1194477565

 

 

Cultivating anything requires a healthy body. One can eat anything they want and attain powers to a certain degree. But there are some things that just don't mix. And gaining powers doesn't end one's affinities with those they have conditions with.

 

I went days without eating anything...body was full, alive, vibrant, and not one ounce of fatigue, plus I only slept for 2-3 hrs a night, up and about the rest of the time cultivating, working, and keeping active.

Deficiency are for those who just don't cultivate... also those who do not understand how to eat. Other than that, if one just eat rice greul all day long, but cultivates wholesome practices, they will have no health problems whatsoever.

 

The human body has physical traits, but people think it is from human nature. It is not, it is simply from the mind...the conditions in mind manifest in physical shape..thus sharp teeth, and whatnot. Many people only see the surface, and choose not to go deeper, and or think there is nothing more to it.

 

To know the causes and conditions of things, meditate with the humble intention of awakening to the teachings of cause and effect. As time goes on, things begin to unfold.

 

 

Peace and Blessings,

Lin

Edited November 9, 2007 by 林愛偉

[Cameron]

Sifu Lin I respect your views but if Sifu Max AND David Shen both advocate meat eating I have to stick with that for now.

 

Will see how things develop in a couple years.

[林愛偉]

Sifu Lin I respect your views but if Sifu Max AND David Shen both advocate meat eating I have to stick with that for now.

 

Will see how things develop in a couple years.

 

 

Peace and Blessings Cameron. Stick to what you feel is right in your mind. Let no views from others cause confusion, or even doubt to something you truly feel is good for you. There will always be a time when things change, even for the firmest of cultivators. You won't be alone during that time. Things always get hairy when we think we got it.

 

If I can be of any help... I'm here my brother.

 

Peace and Blessings,

Lin

Edited November 9, 2007 by 林愛偉

[sunshine]

Allow me to chime in. I have a sincere wish to the best of my possibilities give what I have learned about what my teacher said in order not to let certain things stick in people's mind he has clarified elsewhere.

 

He does not simply advocate eating meat. What he said was that it depends on the person... and many seem not yet to be ready to stop eating meat. This is not saying "you shall eat meat"...

 

The cruelty of eating meat really is something I am struggling with sometimes... and the idea put forth in the story sure is a shocking one if it were true. I don't claim any knowledge on this...

 

I personally feel that if we start on this path we are not right away able to stop certain things. And I very much hope that some things just develop naturally and we can then let go of them easily...

 

 

Harry

[林愛偉]

Allow me to chime in. I have a sincere wish to the best of my possibilities give what I have learned about what my teacher said in order not to let certain things stick in people's mind he has clarified elsewhere.

 

He does not simply advocate eating meat. What he said was that it depends on the person... and many seem not yet to be ready to stop eating meat. This is not saying "you shall eat meat"...

 

The cruelty of eating meat really is something I am struggling with sometimes... and the idea put forth in the story sure is a shocking one if it were true. I don't claim any knowledge on this...

 

I personally feel that if we start on this path we are not right away able to stop certain things. And I very much hope that some things just develop naturally and we can then let go of them easily...

 

 

Harry

 

 

There are causes and conditions for everything. Take time to make changes if they cannot be done right away. That is no problem. Even the Buddha during his discourses knew that people would have a hard time dropping meat. He realized a method inwhich to lighten the load of "evil' Karma by giving some pointers so to say;

 

If one is going to eat meat, let them not hear the animal they will eat, screaming. They should not know the animal prior to eating it, and have not seen them being killed, nor hearing them. The animal shouldn't be of their own household as well.

 

If not following these guidelines, one will be deeper in the cycle of paying back the deeds. That doesn't mean to not make the effort to change, it just means that those whose body is with conditions that it depends on meat due to karma, and the person doesnot know or even cannot cultivate the way to drop that karma, change, it, eat meat, but do so without the heavier of the two types of karma of eating it.. haha

 

So it was; If you do not hear the animal, have any relations with that animal; it being your household animal, having seen it before it was killed, fed it, gave it water, taken care of it, its alright to eat it...but this is only if one cannot do without it. Their karma is thus heavy at this point.

 

Karma is even much more intricate than this, but this example is a hint into how deep things run.

I hope this helps.

 

Peace and Blessings,

Lin

[Cameron]

Exactly Sunshine,

 

My sense is these things should be the NATURAL by product of your cultivation and not some forced rule of conduct.

 

Now..some people take this to the extreme saying.."Oh..in that case if I just want to kill someone I don't like or rape some hot chick it's ok?".

 

My guess is if you really wanted to do those things in your heart you would not be cultivating in the first place.

 

I am open to going veggie in the future if it is balanced. But as far as I can tell now..If Mantra has been doing the practice I am doing for 6 years and eats meat..I am in no hurry..and will only do it when the time is right and not because some self righteous Buddhist(Don't mean you Lin) says to.

[joeblast]

If your source of protein is mainly meat and you decide to go vegetarian, you just have to make sure you do it gradually - the enzymes your body uses to break down animal proteins are slightly different, so a 'cold turkey' switch from animal proteins to plant proteins will make you sick. Seen it happen to a friend or two before!

[林愛偉]

Exactly Sunshine,

 

My sense is these things should be the NATURAL by product of your cultivation and not some forced rule of conduct.

 

Now..some people take this to the extreme saying.."Oh..in that case if I just want to kill someone I don't like or rape some hot chick it's ok?".

 

My guess is if you really wanted to do those things in your heart you would not be cultivating in the first place.

 

I am open to going veggie in the future if it is balanced. But as far as I can tell now..If Mantra has been doing the practice I am doing for 6 years and eats meat..I am in no hurry..and will only do it when the time is right and not because some self righteous Buddhist(Don't mean you Lin) says to.

 

 

There are fanatics in everything out there on this planet. People follow rules without considering their own problems, conditions, even reason. This is blind, and by no means was it the way the Buddha, or any other Buddha for that matter, taught things to be. They all taught, and do, investigation. When conditions are proper, work with them, when they are not proper, plant the causes for them to be proper.

 

And yes moving from meat protein to plant protein can be a bit troublesome too fast. During my teens when I switched, I would find problems with enzymes frequently until I amped up cultivation and ate meat once every two wks for a few months before I could drop it without hurting my body.

I wasn't raised veggie eater, but wanted to be. My friends used to hold me down and stuff hamburgers in my mouth in my early teens when I decided to just eat salads when we all went to mcdonalds. hahaha

 

Peace,

Lin

[sunshine]

So it was; If you do not hear the animal, have any relations with that animal; it being your household animal, having seen it before it was killed, fed it, gave it water, taken care of it, its alright to eat it...but this is only if one cannot do without it. Their karma is thus heavy at this point.

 

This is very interesting, Lin.

 

And I always thought the way some indigenous cultures approached it (talking to the animal and thanking it for giving its life for the lives of the wife and children) was a much better way than eating packaged meat you don't know of where it came from...

 

thankx for sharing

 

 

Harry

[林愛偉]

This is very interesting, Lin.

 

And I always thought the way some indigenous cultures approached it (talking to the animal and thanking it for giving its life for the lives of the wife and children) was a much better way than eating packaged meat you don't know of where it came from...

 

thankx for sharing

 

 

Harry

 

 

I also knew of some cultures who would hunt and or talkk with their animals as well. They may not be aware of cause and effect, but they try to make things happy until they eat it. hahaha It still causes them to have a strong affinity with the animal. But in the next life they may not remember the heart to heart conversation...anything is possible...depends on the conditions.. hahaha

 

Nowadays I wouldn't touch meat...with all the chemicals and things in them. Even vegetables are being genetically modified to contain fish, animal and other living being body parts. Ridiculous. Its like someone out there realizes that being a vegetarian can actually make one a bit wiser and spiritually high, and so they try to mess with the food to keep people in one place.

 

Not Fun.

 

Peace and Blessings,

Lin

[doc benway]

For the sake of discussion:

If consciousness and life are one, non-dualistic, the eternal Dao, what is the difference if I eat vegetable, fruit, nuts, fungus, fish, fowl, animal, or, for that matter, human? Where is the distinction, is the distinction not illusory?

[Taomeow]

Tao designed us as a hunter-gatherer, chewer-swallower, digester-eliminator species.

 

Domestic animals and cultivated plants is a lifestyle of a parasitic species.

 

What's wrong with us is not that we eat meat (since we are fully equipped to hunt for it and digest it, similarly to animals like rats and baboons and plants like the Venus fly trap or Carnivora, and quite unlike a cow, rabbit, or a rose bush). What's really wrong is that we live the lifestyle of a parasitic species vis a vis both animals and plants, which is an evolutionary dead end for all involved parties.

 

A species that is not naturally parasitic that adopts a parasitic lifestyle can only deplete all resources it uses to extinction, because to be an efficient parasite that doesn't ultimately demolish its environment, you have to have been designed as such by tao, like intestinal flukes, mistletoe, or tree fungi. Our parasitic lifestyle is a creation of the human mind, not the mind of tao. Whatever we do in order to tweak this way and that way with ways to perpetuate this deadly evolutionary mistake we've made is bound to fail in the long run, and vegetarianism is not the answer by any stretch of imagination -- we can't parasitize successfully on plant foods anymore than on animal foods. As self-appointed parasites, we plant for monocultures, supporting only plants we want to eat and killing all the rest; this kills animals that are supposed to feed off those plants of no interest to us that we've killed, and then animals who'd feed off the plant-eating ones; the cycle of murder is getting wider and wider in overlapping concentric circles spreading from each corn field to the irreversible extinction of 150 species of plants and animals daily. If a vegetarian advocate will step forward and explain to me how this is harmless compared to eating an individual animal (the way our ancestors did for nearly a million years) without eliminating from existence another 150 species in the process, I'm all ears.

Edited November 9, 2007 by Taomeow

[宁]

Hi Taomeow,

I watched a Discovery Documentary called Alien Planet, there was a science-fiction movie about how an alien planet would look like and what kind of forms of life and intelligence would we encounter. It was made with all the technological details and machines that would imply it. The planet was called Darwin 4.

As I watched this, it suddently dawned to me: why would God conceive this concept of an ecosystem, where, practically, plants and animals hunt and eat each other in order to ballance each other out.

I cannot say that a plant is less alive and counscious than an animal, based on my experience with my garden and flowers.

But I thought then, wait, it must be that, for God, killing in order to eat, transforming and transferring of the essence of one animal to another, is not such a bad thing.

Actually is an accelerated form of evolution. When a higher form of organisation and consciousness eats a lesser one, the essence of the lesser one is fused into the higher one. And so on. And I don't think humans are the top of the food chain. Just the other day my teacher had to pluck some energetic parasite from my skull, where it stood for some days causing me a lot of misery that I didn't have the energy to transform any more...

 

So, we are food for other beings too... angels I think are the same predatorial essence, only they leave a good imprint on us. At least this is how Aivanhow taught us.

One thing I don't understand about buddhism is why don't they take Nature as it is.

There are so many fun stories about buddhists seeing only what there is...

How about it, Lin?

 

 

Little1

[nightwatchdog]

The Buddha Baker

 

Everyone is born with a certain amount of Karma. We have a body, we have at least one sense organ, we have a mind. These are our flour, our water, and our recipe. We may be born with a healthy body like Jack Lelane, or we may have a sickly body. We may have completly healthy sense organs, or we may have bad eyesight or poor hearing. We may be born with a mind that is razor sharp, like Albert Einstein's, or we may have an ill mind. Whatever the quality of our ingedients, they are all we have to work with. If we are very lucky, we can use these ingredients to bake a Buddha.

 

To bake a Buddha, we need an oven. We have the flour, and the water, and the recipe, but without an oven, it's just inert material. It isn't good to eat. It can't nourish anything. So we must find a good oven to use. Our oven is our cultivation. It too has parts that make it work.

 

We need a container of some sort: This is our Dharma, our path.

 

We need some heat: This is our method.

 

We need fire: These are our precepts.

 

The Dharma takes many forms, just as there are many kinds of oven. There are big ovens, small ovens, all kinds of colors and materials are used. Some are holes in the ground, some are big hundreds of thousands of dollars industrial affairs. Likewise there are many Dharmas, Taoist, Buddhist, Hindu, Christian, Jewish, Islamic, whatever.

 

Many of these Dharmas use different methods: prayer, mediation, reading holy words, giving and recieving talks, dipping ourselves in water, offering incense at holy shrines, helping eachother, giving alms... there are endless methods. All of them are like the heat inside our oven. It is the heat that actually "cooks" our ingredients. It cooks and tranforms our basic components into tasty Buddha-bread.

 

All Paths concentrate and cultivate methods by the keeping of precepts. This is just like an oven concentrating and amplifying the heat from a fire. Precepts are restrictions on our lifestyle that are there to create good Karma for cultivation. There are many sorts of precepts, but one precept that is universal to all Dharmas is the precept against killing. This is because killing is the most destructive action, and it is also the most difficult to give up. It is the first precept, and the last one.

 

You may get some heat for your oven by not stealing, or by not lying. If you really want to turn up the temperature to "High", take the precept of not killing.

 

It is okay to take precepts because of a moral judgement. It is okay to take precepts because of an inner knowing. It is okay to take precepts because you understand that your cultivation will not work without them. It dosen't matter why you take the precepts. It is only important that you do.

 

Just remember that if you are trying to bake a Buddha without precepts, you are like a baker who refuses to heat his oven.

 

I hope this talk helps.

Edited November 9, 2007 by nightwatchdog

[mantis]

i like chicken and tuna

[林愛偉]

For the sake of discussion:

If consciousness and life are one, non-dualistic, the eternal Dao, what is the difference if I eat vegetable, fruit, nuts, fungus, fish, fowl, animal, or, for that matter, human? Where is the distinction, is the distinction not illusory?

 

 

Perfect question.

 

The distinction is only with the one who is attached to them. Living beings are attached to views, their ideas of what is. Therefore they are stuck in relativity because of their views of separation. Because of this, they create the karma that creates more karma which exaggerates the view of separation, leading them to believe it is true.

When one realizes there is no separation, they come to a mind that wouldn't impose harm to another, especially eating them. Animals run and beg for their lives, they are not willing. Vegetables also scream when you harvest them, chop them up. Yet creating affinities with something more closer to the elements in a more purer form than an animal or human, would be better for cultivation.

Humans and animals develop toxins in the body, not good for cultivating a clear mind, healthy body. Vegetables though turn to waste in the body, help to clean out the wastes and toxins. It is just more healthier to eat veggies, makes the body and mind lighter and clears emotional attachments.

 

It is thus that we utilize an illusion to manifest an illusion to give the illusion others are benefiting. If we know th function of the tool, it is no problem using it, but if we are ignorant to the tool, it no longer is helpful.

 

Peace,

Lin

[宁]

"if we are to sense life as one and united,

we should start with sensing it in smaller united groups,

to have a proper bite for our mind to chew.

we are not really individuals,

Tao agrees on that,

there is nothing in the univers that is done by individuality

in the Universe there is only team work.

on Earth, the perfect team is an ecosystem,

in which everyone is food for everyone,

and their essence evolves sometimes merely as an act of eating.

so death could not be something negative,

it is only a means by which the team shares

and lets go,

for the essence to be transformed.

its just one of the many ways of Nature"

[林愛偉]

Hi Taomeow,

I watched a Discovery Documentary called Alien Planet, there was a science-fiction movie about how an alien planet would look like and what kind of forms of life and intelligence would we encounter. It was made with all the technological details and machines that would imply it. The planet was called Darwin 4.

As I watched this, it suddently dawned to me: why would God conceive this concept of an ecosystem, where, practically, plants and animals hunt and eat each other in order to ballance each other out.

I cannot say that a plant is less alive and counscious than an animal, based on my experience with my garden and flowers.

But I thought then, wait, it must be that, for God, killing in order to eat, transforming and transferring of the essence of one animal to another, is not such a bad thing.

Actually is an accelerated form of evolution. When a higher form of organisation and consciousness eats a lesser one, the essence of the lesser one is fused into the higher one. And so on. And I don't think humans are the top of the food chain. Just the other day my teacher had to pluck some energetic parasite from my skull, where it stood for some days causing me a lot of misery that I didn't have the energy to transform any more...

 

So, we are food for other beings too... angels I think are the same predatorial essence, only they leave a good imprint on us. At least this is how Aivanhow taught us.

One thing I don't understand about buddhism is why don't they take Nature as it is.

There are so many fun stories about buddhists seeing only what there is...

How about it, Lin?

 

 

Little1

 

In Buddhist School, they take nature as it is. But not conditioned nature, original nature of all things. It is hard to conceive of someone actually knowing, being enlightened to their original nature. That nature is what is "seen" in Buddhist schools, and that is the nature they always refer to.

 

The nature of an animal is his causal nature, not his inherent nature. The inherent nature of the animal is the Enlightened mind, complete in wisdom. The conditional/causal nature of the animals is to eat when hungry, go to the bathroom when needed, breed. Then hunger gets the better, and they run after other animals if they are carnivores. It is because they are stuck in the state of mind of need and ignorance. But there are tigers and other meat eating animals who have gone to a Buddhist temple on their own, and lived there without harming the monks...only eating vegetables. It has nothing to do with religious moral dogma, Buddhism never had dogma. It has everything to do with right views.

 

 

Peace,

Lin

 

Tao designed us as a hunter-gatherer, chewer-swallower, digester-eliminator species.

 

Domestic animals and cultivated plants is a lifestyle of a parasitic species.

 

What's wrong with us is not that we eat meat (since we are fully equipped to hunt for it and digest it, similarly to animals like rats and baboons and plants like the Venus fly trap or Carnivora, and quite unlike a cow, rabbit, or a rose bush). What's really wrong is that we live the lifestyle of a parasitic species vis a vis both animals and plants, which is an evolutionary dead end for all involved parties.

 

A species that is not naturally parasitic that adopts a parasitic lifestyle can only deplete all resources it uses to extinction, because to be an efficient parasite that doesn't ultimately demolish its environment, you have to have been designed as such by tao, like intestinal flukes, mistletoe, or tree fungi. Our parasitic lifestyle is a creation of the human mind, not the mind of tao. Whatever we do in order to tweak this way and that way with ways to perpetuate this deadly evolutionary mistake we've made is bound to fail in the long run, and vegetarianism is not the answer by any stretch of imagination -- we can't parasitize successfully on plant foods anymore than on animal foods. As self-appointed parasites, we plant for monocultures, supporting only plants we want to eat and killing all the rest; this kills animals that are supposed to feed off those plants of no interest to us that we've killed, and then animals who'd feed off the plant-eating ones; the cycle of murder is getting wider and wider in overlapping concentric circles spreading from each corn field to the irreversible extinction of 150 species of plants and animals daily. If a vegetarian advocate will step forward and explain to me how this is harmless compared to eating an individual animal (the way our ancestors did for nearly a million years) without eliminating from existence another 150 species in the process, I'm all ears.

 

 

Why would we plant what we need and kill all the rest? The way of vegetarianism is accepted by Daoists not because of religious dogma, but because they realize that humans can actually choose not to kill, impose fear and resentment in other living beings, and thus cultivate to attain their proper result of cultivation.

People may have hunted for millions of years, but that doesn't make them wise, it only makes them hunters, and skillful ones.

 

Killing animals for food advocates more killing in the world, not eating vegetables. lol

Its like fighting terrorism with more terrorism. Gets no where.

 

One's nature is not what you describe. What you described are the conditions created by the mind, karma. Hunting is not the original nature, but it arises within it. It is because of ignorance that people kill other people and animals, as well as why animals kill other animals. They are ignorant to the causes and conditions of killing, and so look to fulfill their insatiable desire to eat.

 

One doesn't even have to eat at all. But that is only with the proper conditions for it.

 

Peace,

Lin

[Smile]

Chocolate bunny!!!! mmmm

[Todd]

Yet creating affinities with something more closer to the elements in a more purer form than an animal or human, would be better for cultivation.

Humans and animals develop toxins in the body, not good for cultivating a clear mind, healthy body. Vegetables though turn to waste in the body, help to clean out the wastes and toxins. It is just more healthier to eat veggies, makes the body and mind lighter and clears emotional attachments.

 

 

Hi Lin,

 

I am curious about your usage of the word "more" with words that already have "-er" endings. One of the reasons I am interested is that it was a habit of Max's at the Kunlun seminar that I attended. Is this just poor grammar, or is it a hypnotic tool? Or something else?

 

Best,

 

Todd

 

BTW interesting discussion on karma and conditions of the mind... I'm enjoying it a lot.

[agharta]

Humans are not natural vegetarians. Our ancestors were all meat eaters, prior to there being organized societies that engaged in agriculture. They also had better teeth and general health, speaking broadly. If you don't believe it, take a look at Dr. Weston Price's book here. Just look at the pictures. All these traditional tribes were in much better health before the white man's food arrived. Not only that, the healthiest groups were the ones that ate plenty of organ meats and seafoods. The ones closest to vegetarian were the least-healthy.

 

I tried vegetarianism and veganism. They don't work. You need some meat and fish, etc. It's part of our heritage. If you don't believe it, read Dr. Price's book.

 

I'm not saying that, if the plants you eat are healthy enough, you can't be a healthy vegan or vegetarian. But...nobody is consistently growing plants of that quality, for the most part. You either have to have just the right soil, or you have to know what you are doing really well. It's much harder than any of the fools trying to be vegetarian or vegan realize.

 

Veganism is the real danger. If you can get raw dairy of sufficiently good quality, you really don't need meat or fish. However, the plants that the cow/goat/etc. is eating have to be of really super high quality. Few know how to grow such plants, as I have discovered in my years of studying these issues. Until you can get such plants consistently, best to eat some meat and/or fish on a regular basis. I speak from experience, folks.