CANIVORE CHALLANGE - a reply.
I simply could not resist answering to this interesting article in the Sunday Observer titledDEBATE: A questionnaire to all Ideo-Vegs such as Dr. Atukorale :
Religious extremism via vegetarianism -- a challenge
Available at http://www.sundayobserver.lk/2006/09/17/pow02.asp
For a start I admit Im not aware of the exact extent of Dr Atukorale’s alledged extremisms but for arguments sake and judging from the generous amounts of self righteous hypocrisy harbored by some prominent Buddhists, around today, I shall take your word for it .
There are basically 3 points I wish to make here:
1) By your own definition of an ideological vegetarian ,as a fanatical extremist who irrationally exaggerates the benefits of vegetarianism to the exclusion of any other lifestyle and leaves no room for any other point of view- and having read through the entire page which does not contain a single positive reference to the well known benefits of being a vegetarian, I put it to you that you have placed yourself in the exactly category that you are judging and critisicing namely an irrational extremist fanatic ideological NON vegetarian. Ironic I would say.
2) Half of your article insists that plants are alive and cry in pain when you cut them, therefore we should eat animals instead. Looking at the distorted reverse logic of this dubious finding , are we to concluded from working back up the food chain that since plants and animals both cry when being killed we should actually be eating humans too since we are all the same? If medical science proves that we would be very healthy and have super human powers by eating humans or drinking human blood will you be among the proponents?
Finally and since Im not really interested in wasting my and my readers time with simply arguing for the sake of argument –the moot point of Buddhist vegetarianism is that because we feel that animals have souls (and for your information: no world religion so far has attributed plants to having souls)- and we believe in compassion, and being a majority Buddhis and Hindu country (so far anyway -) we should be setting an example by reducing animal suffering . –the objective would seem to be to put our Christian, Muslim,Buddhist ,Hindu ,vegetarian and non vegetarian heads together and eradicate any preventable cruelty without offending the sensibilities of other religions and without violating fundamental human rights like the freedom of choice of diet.
I also accede that our focus on cattle is a bit fanatical but then traditionally that may be due to Indian and Hindu influence and then again this is something we need to consider in a multi-ethnic situation.
Either way perhaps we can have the cake and eat it too, simply by introducing humane slaughter methods. Surely this is not rocket science ! Your delicious, tempting,succulent cow ,pig , goat or whatever can be put to sleep with a sedative first and then gently bled to death – this would be acceptable to our Muslim brothers too and then maybe THAT WAY we can avoid the concentration camp sceans of screaming torture that provide us our healthy or unhealthy nutrition! I do not need to go into those scenes here, since the SUnday Observer its self has carried so many articles on how animals are killed in Sri Lanka.
What I don’t understand is why a supposedly Buddhist country cannot insist on humane killing, when there is legislation for this in major non Buddhist countries such as USA UK France Germany etc .
Seriously, how much technology would you need to sedate a cow? can we not stick to the Buddhist middle path and eradicate extreme suffering rather than self righteously judging each other in various forums? And can we for Pete’s sake leave the Eskimos out of this argument , as they are kind of FAR AWAY ?
A BUDDHIST NON VEGETARIAN
more relevant reading available at http://www.ivu.org/congress/thai99/texts/srilanka.html and a very informative website by the Christian Vegetarian Association
http://www.all-creatures.org/cva/vegbenefits.htm and
http://www.all-creatures.org/cva/sunless.htm
http://www.jesusveg.com/
http://www.wie.org/j28/islamic-veg.asp
which tells you about why non Buddhists sometimes feel they should not eat meat...
posted by aljuhara @ 8:30 PM
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