Last week I woke up aware of the impossibility of accepting meat eating. It was directed at the Muslims and their concept of Halal/Haram, and that after watching "Four Lions" which oddly I found extremely moving - maybe that is what got me to thinking about mortality.
The basic principle of vegetarianism is that animals don't want to die and to kill them is against their own instinct to live.
This seems to be irrefutable. I don't think anyone thinks that animals want to die. The only issue is whether it matters what they "think".
At the 40th birthday do, I took the opportunity to eat both beef and chicken because I have become too deeply distressed at dead animals and need to get back to seeing flesh as just food. Eating meat actually makes me want to be sick, but I concentrate on it being just food and I can swallow it like anything. To be honest if that meat had been human flesh it would only have taken a bit more concentration and I could have eaten that - it is all just flesh and food.
But it makes me question the wisdom of people who eat it without any sense at all, like it was just a picture book, cardboard cut out of an animal with all the reality of the actual death that pervades the entire substance of meat somehow washed out.
For the Muslims however it is not the death which is wrong, but the manner of the death. To eat a piece of meat killed the wrong way is sinful, while killed the right way is non-sinful. What an alien concept that is to me.
I feel a bit sorry for the Muslims because they have no choice but to follow their prophet. If you are born into the Muslim world and everyone expects you to do things a certain way, it is extremely difficult to question it. Just as I should feel sorry for my own culture because it is extremely difficult for people in the West to reconsider drinking which is so deeply based in our culture. Here you have clash of worlds one which says that all drinking is sinful, and another (my own) which says that all killing is sinful. There are equal arguments for both sides.
But perhaps the most important argument is that no-one is in a position to question the great prophets. It is like a small child thinking he knows better than his teacher; quite ludicrous. And given that the prophets speak the word of G-d, the Almighty creator of the Universe and everything in it, even more ludicrous. Who the hell am I to question God. If God tells me to kill my own son, as He famously did Ibrahim/Abraham, then only the unfaithful would not go and kill their own son. This is why Abraham is so revered, because He loved God so much that he was even prepared to sacrifice his most precious only son to Him.
But now speaks the Devil. The Judeo/Christian/Islamic tradition will remember that God made Man in his image. And that in the beginning He made mankind sinless, and in His image. But he gave man one instruction: not to eat from the trees of knowledge or ever-lasting life. It was the Devil, disguised as the snake, slithering through the grasses of that primeval garden, who found Eve sitting alone, and speaking in soft caressing tones lulled her mind with thoughts of the sweet succulent fruits of that tree of knowledge. And so mankind gained knowledge of sin, but they remained mortal - something they would have to wait for Christ to correct by ridding us of that original disobedience of God and original sin. But a very important transformation occurred that day in the primeval garden so that the two abandoned creatures that were cast out into the fields had something that nothing else in creation had - the will to disobey, or to obey God. It follows, doesn't it, that a creature that cannot disobey God cannot do a sin for the essence of sin is that we do what we know we should not do, or do that which we know God has strictly forbade us to do. If we do not have this knowledge then we cannot sin, for we are not acting in disobedience.
Now where does this knowledge of God's law lie? We did after all eat the apple, and we do possess that knowledge ourselves, and we are made in the image of God's originally anyway. Some will say that the Law lies in the books of the prophets. But what of the illiterate, the dumb, the deaf, the blind and the stupid? Are they shut out from the Law simply because the windows into the outside world are closed? Does God enter our Hearts through our eyes? Does He live in the outside world waiting to flood in like sunlight into a room? If so then we can close our eyes and shut God out! God enters all and all knows God. The deaf, dumb and blind can see God just as well at the intellectual reading aloud the actual words of the prophet. Indeed they may well see God better because the words of the prophet can sound like anything the hearing mind wishes them to sound like. A line read one way to one person means one thing, and to another it means the opposite. If the prophet was so Almighty himself then only He can know what he meant and we are shut out from Gods wisdom anyway. Yet we are the children of that first couple who ate from the tree - we Know! That is our sin, and that is our power: to either follow God or disobey Him. And that is why we get judged upon our own actions and not the actions of our teachers. It is what we decide to do that is the basis of what God will punish or reward not what anyone else decided to do.
So to enforce God's law seems to be one way to misread the words of the prophet. Those who sin have already made a place in Eternal Hell. In the few trivial years we are alive on Earth what does it matter to us what they have done? We need only concern ourselves with doing what we know to be good. And this brings me to the point of this blog entry. I don't believe, after much thought, that there is a difference between the beliefs of the world.
1) There is no faith that does not recognise our individual responsibility before God - for it is me and me alone who will be judged.
2) There is no faith that therefore doesn't recognise the individual essence of our choice. If we cannot chose as individuals, then we can't be judged as individuals.
3) There is no faith which doesn't recognise our ability then to be like God, because we have the ability to chose God's way correctly. This is why we are told we are made in God's Image but we disobeyed. (This doesn't not mean we are God, it means we are alike to God.)
Now there are many things said by many people in many places and they are almost always different and in disagreement in some degree with one another - but it seems that nothing disagrees with this core teaching above. In Buddhism there is a special word for what I am referring to "Buddha-Nature". It is the perfect core of the soul which is clouded by sin and base desires, which is weak in the normal state of human degradation but which does know right from wrong and which as a conscience tells us, and we know it if we listen, whether what we do is Godly or not.
Returning then to the issue of meat eating. My conscious tells me without any doubt that it is wrong to kill. It is a sin. It is not the worst sin - I believe getting angry is a worse sin than killing an animal. But killing an animal is most certainly not a good thing.
Now this is in contrast to Judaism and Islam. If I was born into those cultures then, based upon the above reading of the books, I would disobey the teachings. In one sense it is a simple choice and if I am wrong and commit a sin then I will go to Hell. God might say at judgement that I was too egotistical taking my own thoughts too seriously. Is it really possible that Judaism and Islam are wrong? On the other hand is it really possible that my conscience is wrong? Why it might be argued do I take the Genesis chapter more seriously than the Deuteronomy or Sunnah?
Well the argument is that if Submission to the Law is an imperative in which we have no choice then how can anyone ever sin? It seems inescapable that to be accountable for sin I must have the power to not-sin and so therefore must be alike to God. If we to watch someone punishing fish because they could not fly we would think them quite insane; this is certainly not our image of God. God punishes fish because they will not swim.
So it seems that Judaism and Islam are actually wrong here. The killing of animals in sacrifice is not an act of love or devotion. I do not know the details of how this practice came to be part of religious practice or even whether God ever actually asked for it. It seems peculiar to that part of the world along with the rules governing pigs also. It may of course be that I am wrong myself, I am but human. What is perhaps more certain however is that God will judge people based upon this and if my conscience is what I think it is (and not the Devil) there are many pious people out there who will find they have been mislead by their teachings. It is a bold thing to say, but at the moment I can't see any other way to look at this. One needs only observe an animal dying to see things that these teachings seem to ignore.
And so to Multi-Culturalism. There is a great movement of mutual respect going on in Britain where diverse cultures are being allowed to develop side by side. I myself have been deeply sensitive to this movement realising that if any one culture took dominance it would eradicate all those good things in other cultures. But over the years my thinking has changed slowly. Culture can be superficial like when what clothes we wear, what music we listen to, what holidays we celebrate, how we get married. But while superficially things are different everyone knows what they are doing when they get married or have a religious festival - even while the superficial details may be radically different. So is the god that we worship a superficial or a deep aspect of our culture? It would seem like marriage that we all worship a god, so the differences are just superficial. But there are people who turn this on its head and say that similarity is superficial and the difference is fundamental. They say that you and me may get married, but what is important is that you do it around a fire and I do it in front of an altar - and that difference makes the two practices completely different. That same person will say that we both wear formal clothes to a wedding, but while I wear a Sherwani you wear a suit and that makes what we do completely different. I leave it to the reader to judge that argument.
The issue then is between the superficial and the deep. The superficial which ever we decide it is is not important and while people may fight to preserve the trivia of their culture actually there is no loss in losing it. As if to prove that within a couple of generations the trivia is all but lost already. In my own lifetime I have seen a second generation of Asian people grow up who have no clue of their culture or language. Their parents have to send them to special schools to try and teach them it. I used to argue with the Chinese that if I went to one of these schools would I then be Chinese? If you need to send your kids to a special culture school then the culture has already been lost! The point is that it is only trivia which is lost - even toughest traditionalists wear modern shoes an jeans these days.
Yet at the time we should be forgetting the trivia of culture it is being strengthened. The very existence of multi-cultures in one country actually has the job of defining the cultures. No Indian in the history of the world ever thought they were Indian or worse Hindu. It has only arisen, firstly as a reaction to colonial rule, and now as a feature to globalisation. Hindu is a silly designation anyway - it is like saying European and collecting everything European in one blanket term yet people still stand by this fake identity. Chinese may be different because of the actions of Emperor Chin but even that designation has growing significance in the globalised. So by huge irony as these designations become less and less important people are holding onto them harder than ever before. The danger of all this multi-culturalism is that we are losing sight of the similarities in the stampede to define our differences.
And so returning to meat again. There is only one culture that used to seriously respect this and that was the one now designated Hindu. They spread the idea to China, Africa, Europe, America and the Caribbean (Rastafari being vegetarian). The idea is sophisticated in that it recognises that practical requirements of meat in some environments where agriculture is poor, so it is not a dogma, but it simply respects the life of other creatures - ideologically because of reincarnation, but ethically because of compassion and love. It is true that food is food and what actually passes our lips is a superficial point - I tested this last night. But what is very different is the difference between cutting down a field of wheat and cutting the throat of an animal. We simply don't harvest animals; there is nothing similar in our thinking about agriculture and cattle farming beyond the unhappy marriage of intensive economics and farming. These are subtle points and must be left to individual conscience and scrutiny but there are things that transcend the trivia of cultures. Killing animals may be a slow burn for cultures that have been doing it for millennia, but aspects of neighbourhood and society are simpler. Murder, theft, lying, dishonesty, adultery, insulting speech, greed are universally acknowledged across all mankind. We fight over the superficial right to wear an item of clothing or a religious pendant but who fights for the deep principles that unify God's Earth? We may even fight for a particular version of the Law and in so doing over look the deeper Law that remains unchanged in the heart of all Mankind always.
It seems to me that multi-culturalism is a failure. It has brought focus on the differences between communities and encouraged people to found their identities on the superficial differences that exist been these groups. The society has become a flat quilt patchwork where people have only their colour upon which to base their whole meaning. What should have been done is a strong and active discussion between groups towards an agreed central Law. This would have brought integration and identity and maintained a strong social framework, focusing on what is important in Life and getting people to take a balanced view of the trivial nature of the differences.
It may have turned out that the beef industry might have won out even in this climate and the British-Hindus would have ended up eating even more beef than they already do, but at least the British culture would have benefited from the Hindu view being aired rather than being pushed behind closed doors by a overly tolerant and apathetic multi-culturalism.
Bible Study
Genesis 9:3-6
3Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things.
4But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat.
5And surely your blood of your lives will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man; at the hand of every man's brother will I require the life of man.
6Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.
This passage clearly lays out the attitude of the Jewish (and inherited Islamic) traditions. It seems that the Christians for whatever reason have forgotten this. It is interesting that "image of God" is used to protect man from killing himself - in that one assumed man, in some sense, is like God so killing man is like killing God. From which we understand that animals are not like God so they can be killed. One notes interestingly also that a man who sheds blood shall have his blood shed - even while he is like God. Unless we assume that upon sin he is no longer like God so he can be killed. All this is long after the expulsion from Eden. Here is what God said in the beginning...
Genesis 2: 4-20
4These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens,
5And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.
...
8And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.
9And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
...
15And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.
16And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:
17But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
18And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.
19And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.
20And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.
Well not exactly conclusive but the evidence is of a rather more agricultural Adam with a mandate from God to do the gardening in Eden rather than any blood letting. This passage certainly echoes through the ages flourishing in all the stately homes and National Trust gardens around the country and the world. The garden a place of peaceful repose and cultivation; that's the image of this idyll before things go so tragically wrong... ironically enough because of a plant!
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I discuss the above with a friend today and he points out that the Genesis 9 section is after the flood when of course there were no plants or crops because they had been descroyed by the waters! Quite rightly the people had no choice but to eat meats and presumably this is where the practice and the removal of blood began. It sort of follows however that once agriculture is re-established then there is no need to eat meats anymore. This seems to be missing from the book. I would imagine that the reason for many of the arbitrary rules that people stick to is that the rules have long since out lived the conditions and reasons for which the rules were adopted. Tradition is such a strong forced that just as without good reason we don't adopt new rules, without good reason we don't get rid of old rules either.
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I accepted some waste meat yesterday but today I realise that I am unable to eat it. I absolutely cannot eat meat anymore. That transition has taken 16 years! It is such a better thing to do to pass merits to the deceased animal and offer the food to some animal that might wish to eat it. I have left the food under a tree. It is not human food because humans have choice.
It occurred to me whilst visualising the animal taking rebirth in the Amitabas pure-land, before setting it out on the ground, that I was enforcing a Buddhist metaphysics on what was Halal food given to me by a devout Muslim. Food that is prepared according to Mohammed's law. I then wondered who the animal would appreciate more: the Buddhist who wished it a future of peace and happiness in a human form, or the muslim who killed it as a lower creation given to man so that man might do whatever he wanted with it. Cows are not the smartest of animals but they are certainly fearful animals and they run from perceieved danger as you approach them. It is unimaginable that a cow will run to a Muslim with a knife! If God indeed did tell man to slaughter animals then He also gave animals the will to protect themselves. A particularly cruel set up it seems. I have growing doubts about the God of the Jews and Muslims, but as blogged here before, who am I to question the Almighty! My doubt stems from the Jewish lineage through Jacob. It seems that he was visited not by God in the oasis, but rather a jin. It seems that these men of the ancient desert were befriended more by jin than the almighty, omnipresent, omnipotent God. But I mean my obsequience sincerely: God by definition is beyond human comprehension. That said, and as argued above, He also gave man the knowledge of right and wrong and unfortunately my knowledge of right and wrong disagrees with Mohammed. If I am wrong then I will go to Hell. However as said God is beyond comprehension and why shouldn't it be that He will judge Mohammed and me they same because we both followed our deepest convictions, while only on the surface apparently contradicting each other? Who is to say. Here we enter realms that I by definitionm cannot comment upon - nor any living person! Damned are those who hold opinions here in the face of God!!
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