INTELLIGENCE...
Just about everyone with a brain has understood that if one fools around with heavy drugs, alcohol, homosex, or any one of a number of reckless activities recognised as dangerous, that pain and embarrassment will surely follow.
It is, however, a very well kept secret that the eating of meat reigns supreme at the head of the list of extremely dangerous activities...almost nobody, in western society at least, is instructed about the dangers of this abominable practice of killing poor animals for the sole purpose of pleasure for the tongue.
If meat-eating were actually necessary, it would be quite understandable that people would eat meat, but, as many, many, many, perfectly healthy vegetarians, many of them life long vegetarians, will attest, meat-eating is actually unnecessary. In fact, a vegetarian diet is considered by many knowledgable persons to be the foundation of a healthy life.
BLOOD ON THE GRASS...
Billions of animals die in slaughterhouses each year! (Seven billion per year in the United States alone...God knows how many world wide.) Yet all of this horrible suffering is merely so that we can enjoy the sensation of the taste of their carcasses upon our tongue.
Just go to a slaughterhouse and spend a whole day, if you can, watching the animals come in in crowded vehicles, forced into pens, and then led to the place where the slaughterman ruthlessly takes their lives. Just watch the animals as they helplessly await their turn to suffer. Look into their eyes and see their fear, their confusion, their sadness. Close your eyes and hear their bleating and bellowing, and while recognising that they can understand that they are about to die, plan a bar-be-que, or a party at MacDonalds. Look at the animals while they are still alive and ask yourself if you think they look appetising. Then watch an individual beast go down the race to the killing room. Watch it held tightly in the steel crush, (yes, that's what they call the steel-walled machine that holds the larger animals immobile while they are killed) then watch the pitiless slaughterman plunder it's life.
After having it's life stolen from it, you can watch the "people" cut it's body apart, into smaller and smaller bits. Then ask yourself if you still want to eat some of the pieces of it's body.
Then ask yourself if you would be willing to take your children or your grandchildren to visit the slaughterhouse ... chances are that the tender children would be totally traumatised by the experience; children are so soft-hearted, they love animals especially the calves and the little lambs whose butchered carcasses line the shelves of retail outlets, as well as the pockets of their murderers and the pockets of others who are party to these murders.
IGNORANCE IS NOT BLISS...
Of course we can ignore it, if that's what we want to do. It will, however, be impossible to ignore the karmic result of inflicting such terrible suffering upon the helpless.
I guess that we can only ask ourselves how on earth we let ourselves become so hard-hearted that we have continued this abominable practice, many of us, for most, if not all of our lives, and we still have the gall to consider ourselves to be human beings.
Of course we must eat but, as stated above, it is not necessary, nor even difficult in most cases, to maintain an appetising and nutritious dietary regieme without murdering our poor brothers and sisters, the animals. For those who really want to justify their involvement in this brutal practice, there are plenty of ignorant nutritionists willing to uphold the value of eating animal flesh, and even the bible can be interpreted to state that it is permissible to eat meat. Despite any justification, though, the practice is, simply stated, inhumane and ghastly when we consider the cost to the poor animals. How on earth could we voluntarily consume the product of such a hellishly contaminated activity as the commercial slaughtering of billions of defenceless beings, every one of whom we should be protecting instead of exploiting for our own profit and enjoyment.
THOU SHALT NOT COMMIT SUCH INHUMANE BARBARITY...
"Thou shalt not kill" means "Thou shalt not kill", and nothing else, so since we have to eat, let us eat the lower, less conscious species, such as plants. Surely condemnation to a frightening and terribly painful hell awaits those who persist in vesting such evil upon the defenceless, and, I might add, there are holy scriptures that state exactly that, whether you believe them or not. Is it not any wonder that hard arteries are caused by a high cholesterol diet...hard arteries, the just dessert of the hard hearted.
Besides, there are plenty of nice dishes to be made from dairy products; we can utilise milk products or soy products rather than kill the poor cows.
Please try to understand just how evil (and dangerous) is this practise of causing untold suffering just so that we can enjoy some small taste, and straight away give up this horrible activity.
I have heard that when Saint Francis and his group of followers were cold and starving whilst living an austere life in the mountains in the dead of winter, a well-wisher offered them a lamb to eat, but none had the heart to take its life, despite the fact that they were so hungry. We heartlessly kill countless numbers of the poor creatures and we have plenty of other (cheaper) things to eat.
So please consider the suffering of the poor animals and let them live free as food for carnivorous animals if that's their fate, just as nature intended.
I implore you. Please become a vegetarian...or else...go to hell.
Wishing you love and happiness.
<*>< tarunkrsnadas.