Why are You a Vegetarian?

In an article a couple of days ago, Waylon Lewis, founder and editor of "Elephant" asked that very question and requested that his readers comment.

Here is my response.  I thought that, since I've never mentioned my vegetarianism on this blog, it might be of interest to some of you.

Here 'tis:

I was nearly an obligate carnivore.... I used to go to Rodizios (all-you-can-eat Brazilian steakhouse) and amuse my friends as I wolfed down pound after pound of exotic and not-so-exotic meats. I loved the flavor, the hyper-gluttonous zeal of it all.

Then, I heard a teaching on suffering from the Ven. Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche.... Never ONCE had it crossed my mind that the meat I was eating was more than meat. Further, it was an animal. Further than that, it was a being who didn't want to experience pain. After about a 10 second contemplation on what it might be like to be an animal going to its slaughter so that a nice package of meat would show up in a local store / restaurant for a couple of bucks, it was overwhelmingly evident that I had been missing out on a... no THE key perspective.

See, I wasn't acting selfishly particularly. It's not that I was inhaling all this meat thinking "booo to the animals". It was that I was being self-centered. I merely failed to consider anything but myself. It was a sort of blissful ignorance in that I didn't really think about anything other than my own tastebuds getting off.

However, upon making the connection that I was experiencing this fleeting sense-pleasure of taste and the cost for that pleasure was that a particular, specific being with desires of happiness had to be slaughtered, it was over, all done, no more.

So, it's been about 8 years. My friends *STILL* laugh about my pre-Rodizios fiber-inhalation and fasting rituals (so-as to maximize my meat consumption skills). I still occasionally pass a burger or BBQ joint and notice the smell (which I unfortunately do experience as marginally pleasant). However, the thought of having something killed for my own sense pleasure (Would I then have killed an animal so that my eyes could have the pleasure of watching it die? To let my ears hear it die? NO! Why did I then do so so eagerly to indulge my desire for taste and/or satiety?) has now utterly gone away.

I've found that a little empathy goes a very long way.

Then, after going vegetarian, I was told to read "The China Study", which essentially links cancer to animal proteins (both meat and dairy) and discovered that an *overwhelmingly* causal relationship appears to exist between cancer and meat/dairy.

All that said, I also don't evangelize about vegetarianism. This very post is the most I've said about it in the last ~8 years.

I find that, as an ex-smoker, an ex-drinker, an ex-stoner, an ex-lots-of-other-things-er, soap boxes and high horses surely lead to my own self-righteousness and even more surely lead to the current embiber of those things to fortify their own position and turn a deaf ear to me. Basically, for me to try to convince someone to quit their milk, cheese, eggs, beef, seafood, chicken, beer, vodka, weed, LSD, blow, is for me to become an ass and for them to stop listening to me, and often making stronger cases to themselves as to why they should continue.