On being vegetarian

Just read this tweet of Steve Pavlina

@MetroPed Absolutely. Eating no animals means killing fewer plants. So does eating fruit since picking fruit doesn't kill the plant.

This is very interesting, and so very true.

This reminded me of a recent reply I gave to a friend on mail regarding my view on being a vegetarian.
Here it is:

My incomplete reasoning on being vegetarian….
I am not arguing you to be vegetarian, but sharing just for information sake and for the sake of discussion


the way i see it (or as i have come to believe or understand)
animals and plants both have souls, animals are more developed forms
and killing them certainly would release stuff  in their body when in extreme pain
besides kiliing someone for taste is so very mean an low
plants on other hand do not always get killed by taking off fruit from them... the originating plant basically lives
btw in ayurveda they do mention animal meat for certain ailments.... but do not recomment it
and even when they recommend it they say that that animal should be free animal a happy and healthy animal only
then there is also the concept that animal food is tamsic and rajsic
I also consider non-veg or even spicy veg food to be addictions

Earlier I did not eat non-veg food just because I fealt filthy and dirty…. But then I used to eat stuff like cakes etc which may have some animal relation (eg egg used in cake)
But now realizing that consuming such foods leads to indirectly doing harm to animals…. I now have given that up strictly
An excuse is that increased no. of animals could then become a problem (a possible argument) but then there could other ways to keeping them in control

My reason for not taking non-veg food has never been religious
I have had pork chicken etc, but just because of curiosity
But I do value what our forefathers have said after much evaluation and study
And I don’t want to spend time doing the same evalutiona myself
Btw… doing kapal bhaati does bring some kind of change (I am not advocating for ramdev or pranayam), because I feel some changes in myself
Like I have started noticing more what are addictions… even eating sweets just for taste is also an addiction (in my opinion… now)


and here is one link from Steve Pavlina site
http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/09/why-vegan/
this person experiments a lot , and does extreme experiments
he has read hundreds of self improvement and health books
from non-veg he moved to being vegetarian, then vegan, then now for past 1 year he is only on raw foods
and he says that his abilities have increased drastically by change in diet

I did a search of why vegetarian and of the various reasons these are the major ones
Religious beliefs is just one of them

1. The love of animals and not wanting to kill them to sustain our life
2. Environmental concerns
3. Disagreement with factory farming and killing
4. Religious beliefs
5. Concerns about antibiotics and steroid use in animal farming
6. Health concerns


btw I am also trying to give up leather completely