Two related articles explore the relationship of food to yoga practices and the fundamentalism of yogis who say you can't progress if you eat meat.
When Chocolate and Chakras Collide, and Om Scampi: A Top Yogi Comes Out of the Meat-Eating Closet.
Excerpts:
And in yoga and foodie circles alike, contemplating the awesome significance of every bite taken — its flavors, its implications, its history — often seems to lead to moral judgments about others.
“It’s been one of my struggles,” said Rick Bayless, the Chicago chef, who has been practicing yoga for 15 years, is not a vegetarian and loves pork. “I think that sometimes the yoga community is a little too austere, and it’s hard to talk about what I do with people who believe in eating just what you need to stay alive.”
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Ms. Taylor said that it was once difficult to reconcile her commitment to yoga with her love of good food. But in the Upanishads, the sacred Hindu texts, she said, she found an aesthetic philosophy in which the appreciation of worldly things is not only acceptable, but necessary to achieve true understanding. “Until you appreciate the fullest taste of a vegetable, you don’t know the truth of it,” she said. “And you bring out that truth by cooking it, making it beautiful and delicious and appealing to the senses.”
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Ahimsa is now interpreted by some American yogis to allow meat, if it is humanely slaughtered. Many teachers say that they have adopted a “don’t ask, don’t tell” attitude about meat, and Mr. Romanelli says he eats meat when he knows its source (and sometimes when he doesn’t). Bacon, he said, is a yogic teaching tool, providing an opportunity to contemplate principles of attraction and revulsion, desire and self-denial, and why we are so attracted to things we know to be unhealthy. (It also, of course, provides priceless shock value.)
“This is the hottest of all hot-button issues in yoga,” said Dayna Macy, a managing editor of Yoga Journal, who recently attended the slaughter of five steer at Prather Ranch, an organic, certified-humane cattle ranch in Northern California, in an attempt to resolve her inner turmoil about eating beef.
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Many American yogis are so particular about what they put in their bodies that they make Alice Waters look like Paula Deen. Sometimes, even an all-vegan, organic, low-carbon-footprint diet is not pure enough: each vegetable must be grown in an atmosphere of positive energy. Steve Ross, an influential teacher in Los Angeles, says in his book “Happy Yoga; 7 Reasons Why There’s Nothing to Worry About” that yogis must ask themselves this question in the produce section: “Are the farmers full of gratitude and love, and do they enjoy growing food, or are they angry and filled with hate for their job and all vegetables?”
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I see the loving compassion in many a yogi's eyes light up when someone is behaving the way they'd like: calm, cool, collected, in control, eating nothing with a face. After all, we're all one, especially when we're living life the way that one feels, through their studies, and beliefs about the world are right for all of humanity to adopt.
But when faced with a yogi heathen who asked for grilled chicken in their quinoa and kale salad, the light blinks out, and they assume a teaching stance, spouting their gospel truth, and towering spiritually over the poor, unenlightened student, akin to Harry Potter receiving a sorcerer smackdown at Hogwarts. They might say they don't feel "more than"... but deep down, or not so deep at all, they do.
I have heard celebrity teachers say to packed classes, "Eating meat is an unconscious action, and you simply cannot count yourself as a yogi if you do."
To back up their ideals, they quote Scripture [written largely by unknown authors, scholars and poets -- sound familiar?], repeat the admonitions of their gurus, or teachers, and set their own opinions in stone. "The way, the truth and the light", they seem to be saying.
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Some yogis neglect to recall their history -- that yoga as a philosophical system is thousands of years old and comprises hundreds of different styles, including Tantra, which included schools that exalted eating meat if it served the body's needs, drinking a little wine, and generally having fun...in moderation...or not.
It was all divine, many Tantrics said, just an energetic dance or "lila" that had its consequences one way or the other, but should not be judged as inherently "good" or "bad" by anyone.
I'm not a classical yogi. I'm not Tantric, either. I'm just a girl trying to get through this life with courage and balance and love. When it comes to what I eat, I prefer to take a page from my Native American heritage, and honor any animal, vegetable or mineral that I choose to eat for giving its life essence to me, so that I might go out and make of my life, now our lives, something beautiful and brave. In this way, we are truly all one, and as one, we continue to lead by example, and be the change we wish to see in the world.
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Of course we all know first hand how bitter the meat vs anti-meat debate can get. I just found it interesting to see it in the context of the larger Yoga community as well. The ideal of the consciously grown vegetables, beans and grains cooked with love etc. is just unattainable. Unless you grow all of your own food and are in a perpetually good mood during the whole process of growing and cooking it, you are hardly going to eat the ideal diet for your consciousness. It would seem to me that the energy involved in judging others is also a huge distraction from any yoga path. Where is the spiritual humility traditionally seen in the idealized yogi? How is policing the spiritual lives of others going to help anyone's path?
I may not want to eat animals but I'll be damned if I'm going to be nasty to anyone who feels it is right to them. All that I ask is that we no longer support the factory farming model of production.
The other thought that occurred to me is that by cooking FOR God, the Hare Krishna movement firmly embraced the foodie ethic. Food could be opulent--as long as you could say you were cooking for God's palate and not just your own.
