why a vegetarian diet is good for people?

The big question that lurks our mind is why a vegetarian diet is good for people. Science may offer variety of complex reasons for the ill effects of animal flesh, but they are not very much relevant to the bigger perspectives of spirituality. If viewed from spiritual perspective, Biochemistry is a tool of karmic law. We may study science in parts but it is meaningful if studied in wholeness. An auto mechanic may use all sorts of tools in fixing a car – wrenches, pliers, screwdrivers but just knowing the individual function of each tool will not serve the purpose as repairing the automobile is the major purpose of the mechanic.

Similarly, in the area of diet it is very easy to lose sight of overall spiritual scenario in a mass of scientific terminologies. Biomarkers, antioxidants, free radicals, fatty acids, LDL and HDl, T-cells, B-cells and NK cells – these terms are useful in describing the physical damage that results from killing of animals for food. However, the message of spiritual science is much more comprehensive and powerful tool for understanding the harmful effects of eating meat.

When we look at the effect of food we eat from a spiritual perspective, we see a specific application of the karmic law. The sufferings that animals endure to satisfy the tongue taste of meat-eaters can be reflected in the diseases and disabilities that make humans suffer in turn. This obviously does not mean that all vegetarians will be healthy. Disease is a function of karma, and it will strike vegetarians and meat-eaters alike as it depends on the quantum of negative karmas. But, as it is said, killing adds to our negative karmic load. It may seem less scientific to say that killing animals for food is wrong than to say that eating meat increases the risk of physical sufferings, yet both statements are true.

If karma lies at the root of both health and disease, then to become truly healthy, we need a spiritual doctor, not a medical doctor. Though we cannot deny the role of modern medical science, as bit by bit it is making progress towards uncovering the causes of chronic illnesses. Berkeley Wellness Letter published in April 1996 issue of the University of California writes: “In the past decades, scientists have made great strides in understanding the relationship between diet and health, and have suggested that cancer, heart disease, and other chronic disease may in some sense be ‘deficiency’ diseases. That is, if we improve our eating habits, maybe we could decrease our risk of chronic diseases. (University of California at Berkeley Wellness letter (New York: Health Letter Associates, April 1996), p. 1)

While one may agree, that this is a cautious interpretation of scientific facts. Many medical researchers have concluded that chronic disease almost certainly related to diet. That is, most of the health problems that afflict us, especially in later years, are self-induced. A large proportion of heart attacks and tumours are produced by the food we eat. And what kind of food do these reports indict as one of the main culprits that cause so much pain and sufferings? It is meat.

Frequently people argue that it is natural to eat meat: that evolution has fine-tuned humans to subsist on a mixture of animal and plant foods; that we have descended from hunters of mammoths and sabre-toothed tigers; and that cows, pigs and sheep, and other domesticated creatures are simply a substitute for the savage beasts on which our ancestors survived.

Well this view may have its own logic, but it is strange that something humans supposedly are meant to eat is so bad for our health. Perhaps nature is actually telling us something different, that meat eating is bad for us, both physically and spiritually. Certainly solid support comes for shunning meat comes from an expanding body of scientific research.

There are plenty of books available for those readers who want to know, in detail, why meat is bad for our health. Here the argument for vegetarian diet is based on compassion for oneself and others, not on physical well being. Killing animals for food is a unwise and unsafe choice because it causes suffering to a form of life that has a refined mind which feels pain when butchered.

The reality of our concern for others is balanced by self-interest, “What I will gain by this act.”We have already seen that karmic law offers the solution: “Do good to others, and in return you will receive pleasure; Do wrong, receive sufferings.”

----By Vipin Tyaagi