I got wondering after a recent post by Tapati on vegetarianism being a hot issue with yoga practitioners.
You need not comment, but I am really interested in your current dietary habits, so I hope you do vote.

Nice Poll, thanks. I voted #3 Onions=yes, Mushrooms=no, they are still very creepy to me.

If the animal volunteers to be eaten, I consider it within the definition of nonviolence and vegetarianism that it be eaten.

How can it volunteer? I've been trying to come up with an example, but cannot think of any

PS I'm going with meta's answer, except that my onion--mushroom preferences are vice-versa. Oh, and I tend not to ask whether a cake has eggs or not, if I am offered one, but I couldn't prepare, or even buy some, myself.

I'm a mix of a couple different options. Very quickly after losing any value placed in Krishna dietary restrictions, I returned to eating my beloved garlic and such. But I went vegetarian when I was a young teen, and still an atheist with no spiritual quest on my radar. I'm actually vegan now, because I realized that even on organic farms, there is mistreatment and eventually sale/slaughter of cows.

After I left KC, I had people say stuff to me like "when are you gonna eat your first steak?" "When are you gonna drink your first beer?" As if I had been dying to be "free," that KC was restricting me from these great indulgences. People just didn't get that these were tenets of my personality long ago, and always will be. In fact, it was KC's emphasis on these values that I held important that helped convince me it was worth looking into.

Since my wife and I were vegetarians before we became devotees, it was not an issue that was tied to ISKCON when we left, except for the ban on onions, garlic, mushrooms, chocolate, coffee, tea and grains in foodstuffs that were made by non-devotees, all those stipulations went out the window, though we each have certain things like onions or mushrooms that we are just not that fond of, though will eat it while eating out or visiting others.

Eggs are something we have not used either in our cooking or buying, but like Amberline, neither of us ask if they exist in cakes and cookies when eating out or with family or friends who make desserts with it. Since neither of us were big social drinkers before devoteehood, that also is something that did not come back, though I will slip some ginger brandy into my tea when I have a cold coming on, for it’s an old family treatment that makes me feel much better mentally just smelling and tasting.

Most of my friends who were once devotees are still mainly vegetarians years after leaving, though I can’t really judge anyone negatively for not being so, but everyone is free to decide for themselves how to lead their life.

I have met so many people in life that are very compassionate to other human beings and animals, while still being meat eaters. People who work and sacrifice for the homeless and the oppressed, for animal shelters and rescue groups, for so many worthy causes, that though I personally see the horrors in factory farming and slaughterhouses, I can’t really judge others in terms of their personal diets and decisions, when they may do more than myself and many other vegetarians in the help of other living beings.

I follow the Aryan system of meat eating. only eating vegetarians.

I am deeply suspicious of people who do not drink coffee. That is why I lost faith in myself while in Iskcon. Who is this pretender?, I asked. Conclusion was that my whole life was a lie. So I got out, started to drink coffee and found myself again. Lately I have heard, though, that the Sri Vaisnavas drink some darn good coffee, so maybe I was just in the wrong aktiebolaget.

I try to eat what I used to eat in ISKCON but due to scarcity sometimes the pakoras are of the 'buffalo wing' variety. If you liked pakoras you will gobble them right up.

You can't fault people for offering the best they can under the time, place and circumstances.

I'm guessing you are from Europe and not familar with the Native Americans who living closely with nature was of such a deep love that animals volunteered to be eaten.

"The Bison gives itself so The People may live." Lakota Sioux

These sentiments are expressed similarly by indigenous tribes the world over who are honored reverently as "Keepers of the Earth."

Such sentiments as well existed in prehistoric Europe but did not survive the engaging of the reactive mind which has spewed the great false doctine of veganism.

Long live animals volunteering to be eaten!

Good guess! And now you've mentioned it, it does sound familiar.
I agree this was a much sounder idea than veganism.

It sure is amazing how many animals that I have to fend off daily, all coming up to me ... just begging to be eaten, especially all those bison. They usually just sit in front of my car each morning, with that glazed look of stupidity that these lowly creatures have, just begging with those big brown eyes, "Please, please kill me so I can enter your highly evolved body and fulfill my mission of sustaining your life, for mine means pretty much nothing otherwise!

In 1885, only about 500 bison were left in the country from the estimated 60 million that once roamed the American prairie, yeah, you've got to just love those old American pioneers going west and how they dealt with the Indian and bison problem standing in their way ... now the Lakota Sioux in the Dakota's say this on the reservation, "the Happy Meal of the great Golden Arches gives itself ... so The People may live."

I wanted to indicate that I eat eggs but it got lumped in with fish...very different categories of things. I don't eat fish or meat. I don't like mushrooms but onions and garlic are things I regularly cook with.

I was tending towards vegetarianism before I ever joined ISKCON and had tried a couple of times--at 15--to go veg but didn't know much about cooking. When I got a vegetarian cookbook that got easier so I was able to make the transition in very veggie UNfriendly Iowa. School lunches were a struggle.

I wanted to go veg because I grew up on a farm and saw animal slaughter--after I'd bonded with the farm animals, being an only child and having no one else to play with. I just didn't see this huge division between us.

I've been a vegetarian so long now that meat seems as disgusting to me as a dead human corpse. I can't imagine ever eating it again unless I'm lost in the wilderness for a long, long period of time and starving. (In such a case I think one has the moral right to do so. But it would be difficult until I got to that level of starvation to choke it down.)

However, I could care less what other people choose to do, don't claim that I have some kind of inside track on what's right and what's not in the food realm. The only thing I do know for sure is that factory farming is not good for animals, people, or the environment.

You see, this is where you vegan hippocrates don't know recognize how much you exploit animals, whether it be the earthworms that tunnel their way through the soil depositing their nitrogen rich dung or the microorganisms also present in the soil increasing its nutrients that you as well exploit to sustain your thirsts of the tongue. You as well burn fossil fuels which are from the remains of dinoasaurs which you may have yourself even personally killed in a previous lifetime while you were in an animal body to sustain your current greed. Anyways, don't go around eating those buffaloes outside your house asking to be eaten. My guess you live not to far away from a zoo and that they have escaped. You might even want to give the zoo a ring as someone is probably looking for them. And am not quite sure what the connection is between those pile of dead bison, killed by people who had but a faint glimpse of consciousness and what I have proposed.

You go Babu!

Yeah, and darn Vegans who care little about the Microbes too!

Vegan hippos in crates, earthworm tunnels, rich dung microbrews, exploited tongues with thirst burning fuels for us fossils who know some old sore guy named Dino. Oh greed Babu, a term that we worked so hard on during craft period in the big house, or was that the encounter group behind the counter chanting on counters? I know little of previous lives, much less the one lived tomorrow, but I've been to Buffalo where I escaped the zoo, not once, twice, thrice but on the corner of fourth and fifth where it was done six, six, six.

Connections, connections, you ask for connections bewildered by piles and piles of more dead piles glimpsing the conscious proposals of vegan hippos in crates, oh yes you do, which again, always ends up on some reservation reserved for pasty old white men shamans who only eat the holy faces on paws that come knocking on the door with window reflections of her, the mother of all vegans with one eye on the wheel and the other upon ... up ... on ... on up the the prop opposed to the last faint glimpse that was there ... but vanished.

No longer going vege.

I find the ethical reasons behind vegetarianism to be not too solid when you get down to the final facts of the hundreds of millions of birds, rodents and insects killed in veg production annually, the forests and habitats cut down to give room for more fields, and the average 2000 km veg and fruit travel distance we have here in Scandinavia... Moreover the idea of relief for famine through global vegetarianism is a distant pipe dream in the current economy, where tons and tons of grain overstock are thrown into the seas to keep the market running.

jIvo jIvasya jIvanam is the deal in any case, and the only real difference appears to be in whether you chew on the killed animals in the end, or not. And when it comes down to "what I will put into my body", we talking about a very narrow spectrum of ethics or no ethics at all, as it primarily features you and your body, with little concern for what happened before the vegetables came onto your plate. To further "actual" ahimsa across the board would require a very different, and practically impracticable approach.

With devotees, they get to of course clear the karmic balance by saying that "Krishna takes away the karma" from whatever is offered to him. What I wonder is how it's any different from the other high-power Lama who thinks the Buffalo goes to a blessed pure land after he's eaten by the brotherhood of monks, and how vegetarianism has any particular merit in this. The actual possible ethic benefits of vegetarianism are something that are realized in a utopian growing environment.

I never had much of an ethical approach to vegetarianism. I just like animals, so I don't want to eat them.

If you rephrased that as "I just like animals, so I don't want to cause their killing directly or by proxy with my actions", things would get a lot less clear-cut. It's a lot easier when you measure the impact of what you do, and your implication in the results, in terms of things put into one's mouth. There's a lot more to life than eating that has an impact on others.

I also like the animals living in their natural habitats, and I like them not going extinct due to mass farming. I don't eat much exotic fruits (for no special reason), and I believe its impact on the overall ecosystem and global animal happiness is quite comparable to being an average vegetarian who wants to save animals by not eating them.

One reason for writing as I do above is precisely the holier than thou approach adopted by many vegetarians, who in most cases leave every bit as heavy an imprint on the ecosystem as the sausage-eater next door. Not saying anyone here holds it, but this was the starting point with the yoga article.

Reminds me of someone who said:

I am a vegetarian not because I love animals, but because I hate plants.

I recently had a beautiful 'sausage-eater next door' who worked in an animal shelter and brought me breakfast every Sunday (with sausage).

I think there are slightly better ways to eat for the eco-system. One can stick with cheese, and spackle their bowels shut forever.

I remember in the early 90's when the US gov. was grappling with changing the old 4 food group idea. There was a lot of arguing back and forth on it. Most of the nutritionist wanted there to be a new 4 food group, with Fruits, Vegetables, Grains and Legumes being the 4. They were saying, Anything beyond this 4 is not healthy, and anything less as well. But the meat industry went crazy, as well as the fish and milk lobbyist. So now we have the pyramid picture compromise.

yes, this is true zanardi. coffee is basis. in my present work incarnation one ting I do is repair and tune up starbucks expresso machines, which means many cups need to be drank for quality assurance. I cant imagine a normal day with out coffee.

I am a believer in eating organ meats, which native peoples and sausage eaters everywhere also practice. our evolutionary forefathers all ate animal volunteers, in their completeness. Different organs have different concentrations of vitamins thus the feats of strength and powers capable of peoples of old.

Ananda, of course anything we eat in large quantities (now that we number in the billions) is going to affect the environment. But after reading the Rolling Stone article about Smithfield farms and their fluorescent pink lagoons of waste poisoning rivers and causing people for miles around difficulty breathing, the hogs living their entire lives LYING DOWN next to each other with no room to move, fed antibiotics and anti-fungal meds in order to keep infections to a minimum...something is very wrong with factory farming of animals. They want to open such "farms" in Poland, too. I wonder if they'll stop there or other countries will let them in. You can read all about it here: Pork's Dirty Secret

Like I said, I'm not saying anyone should go veg--but I think SOME thought to how we all get our food is a good thing and if I ate meat I'd prefer to reward the business that cares well for its animals over someone as amoral as Joseph Luter.

He's the kind of person that makes me want to believe in karma...

Kalisurfer, Supreme Personality of Culinary Correctness, who diet and made you Gut?

The spacing between the letters and words that cannot be read or understood and has no nutritional value, unless one checks the Gut and Diet by the door my dear medicine man, the one they call—Pointing Finger or Wagging Finger, depending on the placement of the moon in the night sky.

I have nothing to diet for, but the gut, that is something feeling uneasy at the moment going off topic ... thank you dear sir of the giant finger from above.

I remember this issue coming up over the summer when I went to visit my brother out in Missouri. There was an article in Time Magazine at that time about the evils of the pork industry and he says, "imagine you're a farmer and you have to keep up with all the other farmers" (using all the steroids from the Monsanto company). Meanwhile the few pigs he keeps on his land are like pets, real happy. They'll get a gun in the head when it's time for bacon.

Meat-eating is for shudras. I know that's trite iskcon philosophy, but if you aren't a laborer I don't understand the need for it. I am over 50 and climb scaffolds for a living. Ocean-caught seafood is medicine. Jesus sanctions it too. (Of course I'm not sure why it's better to bludgeon rather than shoot somebody to death.)

Being spoon-fed on the music of Bob Dylan may have caused pointing-tongue, wagging-tongue as well as other "wagging" conditions

Veg for life here. I just don't see animals as "food." I don't view meat as "food." I don't have any desire for it. I don't want to eat a cow any more than I would want to eat my beloved dog.

being a shudra laborer I was suffering on a veg diet. I can say also my blood sugar problems, binge drinking and balding went away with my veg only diet, which was super high in carbs and low in everything else

Yes, Meta, only you and I see that Kali is a mass murderer every time he scatches his ass killing millions of microbes. He points the finger of the 1/10,000 (my estimation of the amount of buffalo in a bison burger) buffalo I kill when I eat a burger not seeing the millions of microbes in his eye that he kills when he puts his contacts in saline solution what to speak of all the hand washing he does with antiseptic soap. My hands are clean of any implications as I keep them dirty.

Anyways, Kali is about to get a second dose of snow this Tuesday. Karma related for all his microbe killing?... perhaps.

wonders
Those endowed with a more complex nervous system capable of experiencing imaginary pain spake "Don't kill those endowed with a more complex nervous system capable of experiencing ."
still wonders

fyi, Kalisurfer is a Human Being and they have in the 20th century alone, killed 200 million people in wars.

Take me to Truth.

May i follow you?

May i follow you?

There is a discussion ongoing amongst the moderators as we don't allow porn on this site, that we also won't allow diet related topics.

I will open up a separate thread for members to discuss this.

Nothing has of yet been decided and we welcome all members feedback.

so we should eat them too

It's a bit beyond me how porn and food are related topics (though, of course, they can and do occasionally go together, but that's a whole different matter)


I am sure I can't understand a third of what is being discussed there and I thought my English was not too bad

However that might be, while at it, perhaps you should also discuss about whether gambling, lottery and similar "pastimes", or the mention of different intoxicants is allowed... to save time.
Maybe we can have the four principles thing all over again!

I agree with Amberline, even stronger, I haven't a clue what is happening in this thread. Some posts seem to have disappeared, is there a conflict, are these attempts at humour?
Could somebody please explain this to us poor foreigners?

Gerard and Amberline,

I can try to explain as much as I can concerning my involvement in this thread that may have confused things. I am paraphrasing what I remember, but at some point in the earlier posts conversation, Babu in his playful irreverent way posted that eating animals that came to him for the sole purpose of being eaten was a good practice based on how indigenous people, like the American Indians, would eat animals after thanking them for giving their live for their sustenance, something he implied he does, so eating something like a buffalo was no different than being a vegan, and we who are still vegetarian or became vegans, are also killing innocent life, including the microbes we breath. I went ahead and posted about the slaughter of the American buffalo in the late 19th century, in which Babu and I riffed in a written improvised manner, back and forth about buffalos, love, life and American wayward ways.

Then is a series of unanswered posts, Babu kept writing about the killings of microbes and humans, while in my life, a good friend from my temple days, had his 8 year old boy and ex-wife murdered in a knife attack in a community not too far from mine. My wife and I knew the deceased from past years, especially the ex-husband and dad. We were set back in grief for a few days, trying to figure out what the hell happened to these people, eventually finding out my friends current wife is the main suspect. It was all a very emotionally wrenched thing to initially deal with, and at the same time, Babu was posting in this thread, linking my name to murder and the killing of humans and plants, which angered me, so I wrote a post explaining my situation and asking that he please stop referring to me in this topic. I realized the next morning that I should have kept my anger and post with Babu private and in a PM, which I did after deleating my post, for he had no idea what was going on in my life up to that point. I also deleated a post where references to human microbes and defecation was mentioned.

Taking those post away most likely took the following post afterward out of context, so I apologize for that.

That is the story from my behalf, hope that helps you understand the path this thread has taken.

It is clearer now, thanks. Circumstances are really in for you at the moment, with murder, employment and 3' of snow. All the best!

Yes, it is almost worth going and getting an astrological chart reading, for the planets seemed to be aligned in such a way that I would like to petition them to move a little to the left or right at the present time.

I really should be writing a book about all these things, for some of it does seem like strange fiction that has slipped into my life during one night of restless sleep!

It all does make one appreciate the moment that much more, making one want to create some good in the day, perhaps something creative and life sustaining that can be left behind. Things change, the snows will melt, work will come my way and old friends bodies get buried or burnt, while new friends enter from out of the blue ... the wheel just keeps on turning with or without us, so might as well use wherever and whomever we are in the present to love what we are or have and share it all as much of it as possible.

Thanks for the good thoughts Gerard!

Wow. I am sorry.

I do find a strange humour in hearing how mis-behaving people are often called animals. Animals don't kill like this deranged and jealous woman allegedly has.

Or, maybe some do?

I accidentally ate cheese yesterday, and it's like they say about tigers getting the taste for human flesh, and such.

That is the reason I turned Vegetarian a long time ago.

Basically I am like I was before ISKCON. I was looking for love of God before, so why should I give it up when leaving ISKCON? I said my ideal was to live a simpler life on the countryside, and I do so now.

It just happens that Prabhupada's ideas coincidently rhyme with my own.
ISKCON is on another trip. I don't know which one.
Their ideas don't rhyme with mine.
How peculiar.

I drink coffee nowadays, although I don't particularly like it, but to keep awake and alert, due to some medical condition. I almost killed myself falling asleep behind the "wheel".
I don't take any "drugs" for recreation, but have no inhibation towards any drug if there is some medical/neurological/psychological/mystical benefit with it.

My ideal with drugs is to not use anything that cannot grow in my garden.
If I have anything against coffee, it is that it cannot grow in my garden, in this climate.

In short, I eat anything I want. But there is a whole lot of things that don't want to eat.

They were drinking coffee in the Sufi monasteries of the fifteenth century Prisni, so though not Vaisnava in its origin, some demi-god somewhere dropped the seeds of Coffea Arabica and Canephora onto this planet for many to get a glimpse of the bliss inherent in the Java Jive state of awareness.

I'm with you on this dietary supplement from the heavens above, Sufi Nectar it is.

Click to view attachment

I have my doubts about many of today's "Vaisnava standards".

"Simple living" means to not be so hysterical, and have ample of time just sitting together, drinking coffee, watching a sunset, or just shadows in the snow. But some persons, somewhere, thought simple living sounds boring, and therefore it is not there today. Instead so many worries.