This past weekend, I went to the second part of a meditation series (read about Part I.) These are Buddhisty folks, which certainly made my eating requirements for the event way easier. Veg options are always plentiful, and, as a bunch, I tend to think of these Buddhisty types as pretty veg-sympathetic, if not veg themselves.
So, it's the second day, and I am chatting with a lovely woman who is one of the organizers of the weekend. I had met her last July, and I had been impressed by her. Somehow the topic of vegetarianism comes up (presumably because we were eating at the time), and she first launches into this monologue about how humans are "designed" to eat meat (some sort of theory about our teeth.) But then, in some seemingly strange attempt at showing solidarity, she talks about how meat is so "different" now than how it used to be. It's so fatty now. Oh how the quality and healthfulness of meat has declined! So, really, it's understandable you wouldn't eat it. And then there's contamination risks, blah blah blah blah blah.
There I am, talking to this Buddhist woman (and she is actually full-on Buddhist, BTW, and not just Buddhisty) listing all the reasons why one might abstain from meat and waiting for her to give the obvious reason why a person (much less a BUDDHIST who follows a precept about protecting life) might choose not to consume animals!
And I wait. And she's talking. And I wait.
So finally, in my most compassionate, least aggressive, quiet tone, which might have even suggested that the idea had just occurred to me, I said, "And, well there's also that little thing about the suffering of millions and millions of animals. That would be a reason not to eat meat."
"Oh, right!" she said. But before I had a chance to feel too superior about the whole thing, she took me down a notch by letting me know that the Dalai Lama eats meat.
Well that changes everything! Bring out the spit!
It was so discouraging. How much more obvious could things be? I say that, yet at the same time recognize that the entire system of industrial food production is actually predicated on things not being obvious - on the relationship between the piece of meat that ends up on our dinner plate and the living, breathing being who was slaughtered in pain and fear being completely obscured.
But if this kind and generous woman who has sought out a life path of compassion and wakefulness - of being aware - won't see it, what hope is there for the rest of the planet?
