The Dharma

Pain or Pain-killers by Tensin E.Ra

The Reason for a Choice

The choice of being a meat-eater or vegetarian has been raised many a times in the past decade. This is a good sign as a debated issue can only mean that it is gaining social ground and creating awareness. The majority knows that eating meat is not conducive to optimum health and that an organic vegetarian diet has loads of benefit. In the sphere of religion, the Buddhists know too that the law of karma or cause-effect works against those with greed for meat; bringing them closer to the klesas and further from enlightened states. Other adherents have decidedly switched to vegetarianism as animal liberators, advocators of peace or simply distaste for 'killing'. I believe the last reason mentioned here is the most practical reason why we should take less meat. The point I am trying to make is to refrain from inflicting pain, without deeper contemplation, on a living being that is born with as many pain-sensitivity nerves as we are, and that desire to survive as long as possible, like we do.

What is Pain?

'Pain' is defined as both bodily pain, mental anguish and distressed. The pain of being killed, a sudden, violent and unwanted death, is the total extreme of how much pain can ever be inflicted or be felt by a living being in our universe. I believe if there exists other universes and life forms, the same would hold true, with regards to such a negative sensation and the realization of limiting and finally, having to do away with it.

Do not blur the issue with the fact that 'pain' is a much needed survival response that keeps living beings safe from walking straight into a fire or drinking burning hot water. These examples are of naturally-borne pain that helps us to avoid external dangers. They are not pain that are forcefully caused on an unwilling living being and that sends a totally different message to our brains, and the brains of the victim.

In reflection, the pain many of us have experienced when we are accidentally cut by a mere thin film of paper when arranging things, a finger at the door ledge after a hasty friend or a spurt of heated oil while frying fish would already cause us to mouth an exclamation. At that point, 'pain' your only enemy and your most treasured friend, a 'pain-killer'. What then of the pain of being pierced and cut before or simultaneously being killed. That would be many times the terror, the grotesque and the pain. Imagine. Can there be a greater example of extreme pain? Worst of all, pain that is widespread, careless and not necessary to our civilization's well-being.

It is difficult to convince ourselves that pigs, cows and chickens even with their so-called 'underdeveloped' brains, do not understand that they are being truck-loaded, conveyed in belts to machines that will mercilessly pierce, slash and chop them into pieces, that they know no pain nor terror; amidst the hue and cry, and smell of raw blood in the albatross. This is nonsensical. There are ample stories of such animals literally crying to their 'masters' with a butcher knife or on the way to the market where they will be sold. We need not delve further on piglets and lambs led to death for the tenderness of meat and whether their parents felt anything. Wouldn't we? After all, it is natural for dumb mammals to have great fondness for little ones resembling themselves in all cuteness.

Now do we still wish such terror to exists in the new millennium together with our generation and our children's, where even wars have a plan to reduce destruction of the innocent. Mankind is reaching or has reached one of its highest levelof well-being. We can boast of material comforts, longevity, recourse to a spectrum of medication for ailments, cross-cultural knowledge exchanges and are better educated and cultured than our predecessors of the near past. Yet, a large moral [some of us hate this word.....but it is needed] 'ozone hole' exists in our inability to lessen the mass killing of animals worldwide, especially domesticated, for food and other enjoyments. Food is, of course, a part of mankind's modern day comforts. But the truth is, we can make an easy choice to kill less and inflict less pain because, unlike our ape-like ancestors which reveled in a mouthful of bloody, raw meat and thereby had also led a short life filled with similar fear and violence, ! we have countless of other food choices. Although my point is...., not to lessen meat-eating because we have more money and more varieties of food but...., to underscore the idea of being a pain-killer rather than a perpetrator. The latter premise has a far greater impact to the future that we want to build than the former. It is not just about food choices.

Being a realist

It is quite unlikely that a person born into a meat-eating family, raised and conditioned to enjoy the taste of meat would so easily switch to being vegetarian. Be realistic and act by rationing how much meat to take each week and gradually try more fruits, nuts, beans, mushrooms and vegetables. Discover and enjoy not curtail reluctantly for social approval or disapproval.

Try substitutes for the taste of meat to appease your taste buds. Acculturate them to parallel tastes that differ slightly from real chicken, ham, mutton, beef or seafood. Go easy on yourself but avoid procrastination or alibis. You and your family will soon acquire a taste for non-meat and it would seem less a moral duty.

Most of all, refrain from concentrating too much on how your mouth and body feels, take your attention to the little but real changes in quality happening in your mind and your environment. There is no need to talk too much about it but simply cultivate a healthy and joyous effort to what you are doing. The butcher, meat-seller and fast food chains of course will not go overboard praising your decision but you notice that in countries where the culture is vegetarian-based, that even MacDonalds had created a menu of non-meat burgers and their clients did not drop in numbers. It's a healthy chain reaction to the question of mass killing in fast food chains.

Less demand, Less pain

As long as the market demands for meat and meat products, producers will continue to increase their farm size and killing machines. Again,.... the fact that mad cow diseases and chicken or bird flu should only serve to inform...., that our daily intakes are getting dangerously close to killing ourselves, and not be the sole premise why we should start reducing our meat intake. Surely we have read about the unimaginably massive farms, almost ten or fifteen times the size of a football field, where cattle so numerous that from a helicopter, cattle at the edge would look a tiny speck. How can you clean such a huge fold? You cannot really, and the filth just has to accumulate and rot. Talk about hygiene. How do you feed such huge numbers when development and environmental degradation has already robbed away two-thirds of your planet's green meadows? You can't. You can only offer them rubbish and fodders of carcasses. Never mind the morality of making cows eat dead cows. Can humans eat dead humans?

The idea is to try and inflict less pain on another living being and consequently, let grow our civilization's accumulation of compassion and simple kindheartedness; a true change in the universe of our consciousness. Pass this down to your descendants.

Tenzin E. Ra., writing from Tibetan settlement, Dharamshala.

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