Jesus Was a Vegatarian. Must see!

[SimonR]

Dear Hellsviking,

I don't disagree with your words, and if you read my posts on this thread you will see that there is no contradiction with what you said on your last post. I am not a vegetarian, I just feel my heart guides me (gradually) to stop eating animals, it is not an intelectual desire. And at the end, the most important opinion I could give is to follow what the body, the heart and the spirits asks for, when we are aware of ourself, we conect with our essence.

Best wishes!

Simon

[shaolin_mike]

Dear Anthony,
I am glad to see that you seem to be speaking out of a deep concern for your patients and a desire for their wellbeing. I also have some concerns for people´s health in general and the state of the environment. I think we are both coming from a good place.

How do you know that these vegetarians are functioning optimally? Do you have a way of objectively measuring their health? Do you have a way of objectively predicting their health 10-20 years down the road?

For many that I know I can say yes, they are functioning very well by my definition. They do not get sick often, have energy to carry out the tasks they need to and seem quite psychologically balanced too. One is an athlete and has more energy than most people I know put together, he has been a vegetarian since the age of 5. I do not have the ability to ´see´their chi so I do not know what is happening on the inside and no I cannot predict the future but from what I can see they are as healthy or more than meat eaters.

Without question, I can say that the vegetarians and vegans that we have seen in our clinic have been unhealthy as a direct result of their diet. Of course, many of the omnivores are also unhealthy as a direct result of their diet. But the point is that vegetarians in the U.S. (other countries are different because the nutritional content of the veggies is different) are not doing their health a favor with their diet.

"Vegeterian" is a large category that includes many kinds of people, not all of whom are healthy. I can not speak for all veg people because it includes people like my flatmate who also smokes, drinks, uses snus (swedish tobacco) and rarely eats much more than pasta or potatoes. If this guy gets a cold (which he does often) can we attribute it to the fact that he doesn´t eat meat or that he has lots of other unhealthy habits? So no the debate is not whether all vegetarians are healthy (there are wayy too many factors involved in health) but whether it is possible to be a vegetarian and healthy, which I think it is. Have you seen anything definitive that proves otherwise? If so I will look with an open mind even though I have seen much evidence that going veg can be a great health boost.

For what I said about the pill I happily concede, I don´t know why I included it there as I am not a big fan of pills, an oversight on my part. It is true that from plants we can get all the nutrients that we get from eating animals, if one knows how to eat properly.

As for what you said about the ethical argument it is true that plants are sentient and even have what may be classed as "feelings". The thing is there are different levels of consciousness, and I would not place humans animals and plants all on the same plane, especially with regards to feeling pain. I mean can you dismiss the great amount of pain and suffering a chicken is put through when one can get a similar amount of protein from a cup of qinoa? I think a lot less harm is done by avoiding this excessive harm to animals, so I think the ethical argument still stands.

[Darryl]

Hi Mike,

Have you considered that this discussion is not 'healthy vs unhealthy' but 'healthy vs healthier'?

I only ask because you've started contradicting yourself

[Antonius]

Hi Mike,

Just a quick response because I'm extremely busy today. Yes, I certainly think it's possible to be vegetarian and also be healthy. In my country, it's also highly unlikely. The vegetables here are much less nutritionally dense than the vegetables that my grandmother ate.

If a vegetarian drinks raw milk, eats eggs from pasture-fed chickens, and eats nutritionally dense vegetables and beans (of the correct variety), then he or she can absolutely be healthy. In my country, this rarely happens, even among well educated vegetarians. You'll find far more healthy omnivores than vegetarians.

Regarding your ethics, I don't like to draw lines in the sand like that. I agree that rabbits are cuter than tomatoes, but it's not my place to justify eating of one over the other by speculating which one is a higher level of consciousness. I prefer gratitude. I'm grateful to the animals and plants (and minerals?) that give their lives to nourish me.

[parrapiti]

Ajó, Brother Anthony!

Piti

[Nick Jones]

Mindfulness is key

Thank you everyone for the interesting discussion.

I believe the most important issue is not what you eat but that it is how you eat that is important.

Are you mindful while you eat? Are you aware of the sensations of eating? Can you taste the food? Are you grateful for the food? Do you respect what has died so you can eat? Are you with God while you eat, alive, and sensitive to every atom in your being?

Or are you gossiping to your friend, shovelling the food down without tasting, picking at it, fussing over it, complaining about it, daydreaming of being somewhere else.

If you're mindful while you eat, whether animal or vegetable, it is a spiritual practice. It is joy.

Best,
Nick

[Charles David]

Beautiful.

[Hellsviking]

And may I add, mindfulness as a community. How we raise/grow our food, animal or plant. That care and respect is taken for the land and the life on it.

As we saw by the video Cymon posted "Earthling" (which reactivated this thread), we as a community have a long way to go.

Public enemy number 1: Monsanto

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2008/07/08/tthe-most-evil-company-on-the-planet-monsanto.aspx

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/11/21/France-Finds-Monsanto-Guilty-of-Lying.aspx

[Zach]

As a reformed vegetarian, I'll add my experience.

When I was 17 and 18 I lived in New Zealand, coming from Alaska (the US.)

At least then, some 20 years ago, New Zealand had amazing meat and dairy products. The milk was much more creamy than the US, and much tastier, too...

My hosts were too kind! I ate meals with so many good people who wanted to show their best: rack of lamb, choice steak, and such. Pretty much too much meat 3 meals a day, for a solid year. Add a fair bit of beer for an 18 year old, and by the time I returned to Alaska I felt that whenever I ate meat I didn't feel well. I had overdone it, and I'll add again that the beer didn't help either, though I never had an aversion to good beer.

So I stopped eating meat for a while, about five years or so. It wasn't deliberate, but after a number of months I started being labeled vegetarian. I didn't long for meat, until a week or so before I re-entered life as an omnivore.

That first hamburger sure tasted good, wow, and it was on an airplane.

What I came to realize in retrospect is that being a vegetarian in a Northern climate was for me just plain silly. I probably averaged 6-7000 calories a day or more, largely heavier foods, like Mike's roommate: pastas, breads, potatoes. I never counted calories, but during my vegetarian days I only met one guy who ate as much as me (I didn't know my Shaolin Brother Chun Nga, then...), and he was 6 inches taller and easily 100 pounds heavier, not to mention an athlete. Still, I wasn't that healthy, at 5'10" and probably 140 pounds or so.

My conclusion was that living in a climate where your body doesn't need to supply a lot of heat would be more conducive to vegetarian eating. For that matter, people in warm climates probably don't need to eat as much.

About the time I switched back to meat I also did some thinking about where my food came from. In Alaska darn near everything comes in on 60' steel and aluminum containers, either by sea or by semi. And furthermore, all that food came from agriculture on former wild lands that had much higher biodiversity of animals as well as quality of life for wild animals.

Being in Alaska you can hunt and fish reasonably close to home. And even more importantly, nothing connects you like eating locally: plant, animal, and fish. Hunting for me is a spiritual experience. That's another subject, one dear to my heart...

So yes, looking at where your food comes from is key. I know it really gave me satisfaction a while back when I realized that my family hadn't purchased any meat for at least five years. There's even a spirituality in that, and an accountability knowing who took those lives, that each life is appreciated, praised, enjoyed, and shared by friends and family.

Well, life's been busy these last few years between a young family and business, and we don't harvest all of our meat anymore, for now. But boy how I miss it. Friends are still kind and give us fish and venison when we haven't been out.

My deep feeling is that we as humans were hunter-gatherers for so long that it's deeply in all of us, that beautiful seasonal shift with at least one eye on what's good to eat in your backyard at a given time of year.

I can recommend a book called Heart and Blood , by a greater writer and thinker, Richard Nelson who lives here in Alaska. He's put into words a lot of what I've felt, and explores some interesting ideas, from PETA to beer-swilling 4X4 urbanite hunters. Most importantly though, he explains his position as a dedicated lover and hunter of animals.

That's my two cents for now.

My best,

Zach

[Charles David]

Reverence and Respect

My story is similar to Zach's. I was a vegetarian for many years, mostly because of being so shocked about the conditions in factory farms. So it is no surprise that now my meat of choice is wild meat that I or one of my friends has shot and killed with reverence and respect. Living in the wilds of Canada it is easy to do this, living in China less so. However, at the table we always remember to give thanks for the animal that has given its life for us.

Yours,

Charles

[Zhang Wuji]

My apologies if my post seems to have covered topics already discussed, but I wrote it over the past 2 weeks offline.

As Piti said, this thread is proceeding well on the theme of “do as you want/need, respecting diversity and plurality in dietary perspectives”. No one is passing judgment on vegans or meat-eaters. Doing so would be as bad as condemning people on their religion (a reflection of personal beliefs, choices and calling).

It is interesting how the meat-vegan diet debate has arguments on both sides. The vegans like to argue that the human body is not constructed to eat meat, as our intestines are much longer than a carnivore, we have no claws and we as a species generally take no inherent pleasure in the killing of an animal. But we do have canines and a single stomach which suggest a inclination towards eating meat. My conclusion is that we humans are extremely well-evolved and highly adaptable. More importantly, as humans, we can choose to eat meat or only plants since our anatomy does not restrict our survival abilities, unlike dolphins, wolves and lions, or rabbits and cows.

I have yet to meet a healthy vegan. You may be the only one, but that would be because of your chi kung training. Routinely, vegans are blood deficient, malnourished, qi deficient, and have various other problems that will get worse and worse with time. If you live well, it is due to your chi kung training. Other vegans are not so lucky.

The vegan diet is a completely intellectual one. It is not based on any traditional (nor modern) dietary wisdom. It is simply an effort to avoid harming animals. As a result, vegans end up harming themselves instead.

http://wongkiewkit.com/forum/showthr...ighlight=vegan

I meant to discuss this point made by Antonius a long time ago, but somehow it slipped my mind. I was mulling over this and I completely agree that all too often, to avoid harming animals, vegans harm themselves instead. But “harm” is a very loaded word and it can be interpreted in many ways. Insofar as there may be some nutritional deficiency from being vegan, vegans harm themselves by their choice. At the same time, I can think of worse means of self-mortification.

For a period of time, I think I was weakened by my change to a vegetarian diet. One of the key reasons was of course the fact I was addicted to meat all these years, and the change triggered withdrawal symptoms. The other reason was I was not eating a balanced vegetarian diet anyway. As Shaolin Mike and others have said, a lot of deficiency comes from not having the correct variety in one’s diet. I also had too much sugar in me, thanks to too many carbohydrate food types.

However, I have the unfair advantage of practicing high-level qigong. I exercise regularly and do active sports, and have no problems keeping up with my contemporaries who are not vegetarian or vegan. Whatever I don’t get from food, I get from the cosmos. And my health screening reports for the past few years indicate that my body chemistry is normal, and not out of sync due to my diet (I am not sure if of the longer term effects though). As I have told many people, my search for and my path to genuine qigong and the internal arts only truly began when I made the choice to become vegetarian. The day I made the decision was, I think, a karmic cross-road in my life. It was quite amazing, really. I made the big decision on that very day and started the “cold turkey” treatment immediately, and shortly after, I stumbled onto great books about qigong and found Sifu.

I would add that the case for a vegan diet is not merely a “completely intellectual one”. I would call it a moral, or more accurately, morality one (since a vegan is not necessarily more moral or better than omnivores). I am not really concerned with the health benefits which academic evidence is tenuous anyway. The reason for my personal choice is quite simple – animal welfare. If I believe what happens at these animal farms – and I do – then I cannot in good conscience eat the meat these farms produce.

I have always wondered if I would allow myself a chunk of Kobe beef. For those who do not know, Kobe beef comes from cows who are specially fed and housed in the best living conditions (they get to drink special beer!) and given regular massages so that their flesh will taste better. Talk about happy cows producing more milk….Still, given the price of Kobe beef, the point is moot anyway.

Do plants feel pain when we pluck them and eat them? I am not sure, but I would be the first to declare that plants are very sensitive. I have read many studies about how plants react well to music, soothing tones by their owners, and curl up and die if exposed to heavy metal music or screaming by their owners. The plants I grow also flourish in my presence and die if I ignore them. But as the story shared by Dr Damian in another post shows, we humans at least operate on a spectrum of reactions to taking the lives of other living creatures (mowing grass up / down to murder). I cannot hear the screams of a plant as it is taken for food, but I accept that it may be happening, just like a meat-eater accepts (either knowingly or in ignorance) that an animal may have had to suffer and die for his meal. As someone wisely pointed out, our very existence and survival means something else on earth has to make way for us. So, I feel it is our duty to be grateful and do some good in return for what we have taken away.

Just last week, I had the chance to cook a big lunch with a group at cooking school. Being taught and supervised by a chef really makes a world of difference. When we sat down for the meal, everyone loved the vegetarian options, which tasted so much more wholesome and delicious, compared to the meat dishes. Even I who have been vegetarian for years could not believe that cauliflower and bell peppers, which I have always hated, could taste so good. Before this, I was a vegetarian because of my beliefs and convictions, but now, I think I could be one just for the taste itself.

P.S. Charles, in China, how they treat animals meant for food can be incredibly barbaric. I am reminded of the reason for the admonition by God in Genesis 9 that one should not eat the flesh of an animal in its blood (see my last post). Some restaurants in China would cut slices of flesh or limbs off a living animal, one at a time, because the customers could not afford the whole animal, and keeping parts of the carcass in cold storage was not an option, because the customers wanted their meat "fresh" (actually, the actual Chinese word is 生 ("living"). If one has to eat an animal, at least kill it. The Chinese have a very low regard for human life, but the way they treat non-humans is far worse.....

[Zhang Wuji]

The Chinese have a very low regard for human life, but the way they treat non-humans is far worse.....

Reading this again, I just realised that it could be taken in many wrong ways, not least a derogatory racist remark. When I wrote that line, i had a vivid image in my mind of those (Chinese) people ordering and pointing at the part of the animal they wanted sliced off, so that was how the sentence came out. But I certainly did not intend to paint all Chinese with the same broad brush. Many Chinese, myself included, inside and outside the mainland, are animal lovers and advocate human and animal rights.

[Shaolinfist]

I remember a friend telling me that he had stopped eating dairy products because Sigung had told him that the way dairy cows are treated is disrespectful.

They live their whole lives as slaves, living in cramped conditions barely able to move, over milked and pumped full of hormones to make them produce more milk, and at the end of their lives the reward they get is a bullet in the head and end up in a can of animal food....

I have avoided dairy products more and more ever since I heard that. Even if soy milk isn't that great for me, I am happy to drink it knowing that I am not contributing to that kind of suffering. Especially as I know I can eat pretty much whatever I like and still be healthy as long as I practice Shaolin Chi Kung!

Thanks for all your comments, I spent all day at work today reading them in between calls!

Peace and love to all beings. (vegetarian or not! )

P.S Wow, I am listening to the radio as I type this and there are sound clips from Shaolin movies in the song saying about how it is bad to fight on the grounds of the Shaolin Monastery!

[Charles David]

there are sound clips from Shaolin movies in the song saying about how it is bad to fight on the grounds of the Shaolin Monastery!

That's why the debates on our forum are so peaceful, even on such a contentious issue as this. We can practice fighting without fighting, and have an argument without animosity.


From the Temple,

Chas.

[Chiahua]

This thread probably has little to do with Jesus, so I thought I'd offer this:

It is a common misconception among many people that eating meat is necessary for providing the energy needed in vigorous kungfu. In fact the reverse is more probably true. Traditional Shaolin monks were strict vegetarians, and there was no doubt that they were tremendously powerful. Why? Where did they get their tremendous energy? About 80% was from "heaven chi", i.e. from the cosmos, and 20% from "grain chi", i.e. their vegetarian diet. A meat eater might get more energy from his "grain chi", but as toxic waste from meat is more than that from vegetables, and as toxic waste clogs meridians along which "heaven chi" flows, his net energy gain will be less than that of a vegetarian, if both practise genuine kungfu, which includes chi kung, i.e. the art of energy management.
You may be interested to know that years ago, I purposely did not take solid food for 20 days. During that time, not only my weight remained constant and I did not feel hungry, I was actually more fresh mentally and had more energy. I could comfortably continue vigorous sparring sessions with my kungfu students.

From February, 2000.


There was another interesting thread over here: http://wongkiewkit.com/forum/showthread.php?t=2613

I like Sijat Nick's advice, as well as the sentiments expressed by Sihings Zach and Charles. No matter what you eat, it's key to make sure the provenance is sound. I remember reading Thich Nhat Hahn advising one to not only be mindful of the food's taste, but also give a thought to the causes and conditions that brought the food to your palate.