Is it right to eat plants?

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karan

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Is it right to eat plants?

Post20 Mar 2010

Dear Sister/Brother,

I really appreciate the reason for not consuming non-veg but If it is true that plants too are living things, what makes us eligible to consume them?

Awaiting your reply.

nischaybuddi

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Re: Is it right to eat plants

Post20 Mar 2010

:D :| :-?

duty bound

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Re: Is it right to eat plants

Post20 Mar 2010

If a plant has a face, then do not eat it.
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Mr Green

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Re: Is it right to eat plants

Post20 Mar 2010

To eat and to be eaten is part of living, everything dies to give life to another, it is the most honour bound exhange possible.

Your body will be eaten by some force even if it is burnt.
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ex-l

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Re: Is it right to eat plants?

Post20 Mar 2010

This is usually the question asked by meat eaters who are challenged by the moral or ethical superiority of a vegetarian or vegan.

What is this stuff called "Life" you talk about?

Some of the arguments against eating animals (and the nature of dairy foods also cause animal death and suffering) is that animals are sentient, they can think, feel and suffer, they have a soul, they a right to live free from being exploited.

The simple answer is, vegetables have no brain and nervous system, there for they cannot think and feel. They have no soul. If we do not eat something, then what is the option!?!

Better answers for the reason to be vegan or vegetarian is that the planet we live on cannot support the energy waste, pollution required by a meat based diet, it has and is destroying the planet, it is highly inefficient and unnecessary and our bodies are designed to work much better on a high fruit, grain and vegetable based diet.

If someone then answers, "but how do you know carrots do not have a soul" they are being silly and do not wish to change so there is no point carrying on the conversation.

If one accepts an esoteric viewpoint of life, and I do not know if I do any more I can only repeat it, what you are confusing is the difference between atma and prana. Yes, plants contain prana, as we do, but prana is not atma. Two separate things.

As to "eligibility" ... "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law".

dubiousity

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Re: Is it right to eat plants?

Post23 Sep 2010

Dear ex-l,

With all due respect (and I have found you to be one of, if not the only, reasonable voice on this forum) calling someone silly because they ask you how you know a carrot has no soul sounds like it comes from the bottom rungs of the argument pyramid you kindly offered for our perusal some time ago. ;)
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Mr Green

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Re: Is it right to eat plants?

Post23 Sep 2010

I already gave you the answer, let me put it simply

Everything consumes something else, it is how existence works, you don't have a choice in it.
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ex-l

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Re: Is it right to eat plants?

Post23 Sep 2010

Mr Green wrote:It is how existence works, you don't have a choice in it.

Except, perhaps, the choices of whether to be the consumer or be the consumed perhaps and how much to consume? I agree with Mr Green on this. I even agree with others who say eating a vegetarian or vegan diet is not necessary the least destructive, although by choice I would do.

But I still think the "how do you know carrots don't have souls" argument is someone being very silly and the best policy is not to answer it but just tell them. I suppose you could enter into a debate with them over relative values of animals and "souls" and if all are equal, and if they are, ask them why they don't eat their mother or cat?

For me, the winning argument about vegetarian or vegan diets are, a) environmental. There is a very good argument to support it. And, b), aesthetic. If folks had to slaughter their own meat, there would be more vegetarians. Recently, there has strengthened an ethical argument based around "abolitionism" (not animal welfare but abolishing the suffering and exploitation of animals for human wants). It likens our financial exploitation of animals to our exploitation of black people as slaves. It is a good point of view.

Just stick to it calmly and keep likening meat eaters' eating of meat to the life and death exploitation by white people of black people point out how humanity evolved to condemn and stop it. They hate it.

Sinful me ... I posted the 'Graham's Hierarchy of Disagreement' a long time after I posted that.
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dyavu

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Re: Is it right to eat plants?

Post29 Sep 2010

Yes, it's right to eat plants as plants too have soul but it is "INERT' (Jad) means cannot feel or think, but animals are not like plants. Animals can feel and think.

bablusagar

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Re: Is it right to eat plants?

Post01 Oct 2010

May be plants "feel" and "think" in a manner that is not comprehensible to us ... When the cow goes "moooooo" we do not understand what it means ... but its calf responds.

Similarly, just because plants to do not go "moooooo" it doesnt mean they do not feel at all ... may be they do in a different dimension ... who knows? After all, we are human ... and not God.

God did not tell in the Bible that meat eating is sin or wrong, so it is fine with me and all those people of similar faith.'

Hope this helps ...
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swordofjustice

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Re: Is it right to eat plants?

Post23 Oct 2010

Maybe maybe ... so many maybes ... ;). I spoke with a dedicated Buddhist in the car one day and we got so esoteric I ended up doubting if I even exist. Which is just plain silly ...

I try to be practical. I can see personality, thought and feeling in animals. My pet cats show me love. Why should I kill them to eat if my body does not actually require it? Plants appear to be alive as living cells but I cannot detect any consciousness residing in them. I think we have to be able to trust our senses, as long as we try to be guided by a feeling of conscience inside.

:)
Cheers,
Sword

dubiousity

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Re: Is it right to eat plants?

Post23 Oct 2010

Oh yes, I eat meat and vegetables. I was merely being argumentative and requiring some good reason to assume vegetables do not have soul. Bablusagar seems to have understood.

So the two reasons we have for vegetables not having a soul are:

    a) that's just silly, of course they don't have a soul (presumably because they don't move or make noise?)
    b) maybe they do and we aren't broadminded enough to comprehend it.
The argument seems to be:

    only if a thing moves and makes noise it has a soul
    veggies do not move and make noise
    therefore veggies do not have a soul.
Unfortunately, we do not know for certain that the premise "only if a thing moves and makes a noise it has a soul", so we cannot know that veggies don't have souls.
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Mr Green

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Re: Is it right to eat plants?

Post23 Oct 2010

dubiousity wrote:Oh yes, I eat meat and vegetables. I was merely being argumentative and requiring some good reason to assume vegetables do not have soul. Bablusagar seems to have understood.

So the two reasons we have for vegetables not having a soul are:

    a) that's just silly, of course they don't have a soul (presumably because they don't move or make noise?)
    b) maybe they do and we aren't broadminded enough to comprehend it.
The argument seems to be:

    only if a thing moves and makes noise it has a soul
    veggies do not move and make noise
    therefore veggies do not have a soul.
Unfortunately, we do not know for certain that the premise "only if a thing moves and makes a noise it has a soul", so we cannot know that veggies don't have souls.

So you get back to my answer ... you don't know and we have no choice, well done.
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ex-l

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Re: Is it right to eat plants?

Post24 Oct 2010

Mr Green wrote:... you don't know and we have no choice, well done.

I would agree we do not cannot know ... but surely we do have a choice about meat? Ever since human beings invented Vitamin B12 factories, animals have been liberated. One man's meat is another man's plantain ... I know which one I'd rather prefer.

The two other ways to look at it - if you believe the "plants have life argument" - is that to eat meat, the animal has to kill a whole heap more "lives" before you kill it to eat it. 1,000 of times more. So by eating vegan, you are minimising how much suffering you cause. And how much environmental damage. Some, like Jains, take the way out of avoiding eating any vegetable matter than included killing the whole plant.

The problem with that argument is that some plants have lifecycles which include being eaten for their success. They encourage themselves being eaten in order that they might spread further and increase their chances of survival. Their lifecycle includes dying and being reborn via a seed.

Let's put values on every life. What is the relative value between a human, dolphin or a primate, and a potato?
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Mr Green

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Re: Is it right to eat plants?

Post25 Oct 2010

Of course we can choose what we eat, but we have to eat something.......I am saying is you cannot really have a moral arguement against eating plant flesh or animal flesh, you have to eat something the same as something has to eat you
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