Veganism And Ethics

[Live Life Liam]

26 minutes ago, Martin123 said:

Im just gonna chip in, I haven't read the whole topic, sorry.
After I had a deep meditation realization of unconditional love, I kind of realized I can't continue being a meat-eater. It feels like I eat ashes when I do eat meat. `
So Im gonna finish up what I got in my freezer, and then go vegetarian, and prolly slowly transition to vegan. I don't think there is a right or wrong diet. Whatever you are ready for, you shall pursue. 

Yes I had this exact thing with meditation so I can relate. Only thing I can say is that if you want to transition smoothly try buying the vegetarian meat alternative foods so you don't miss out on the taste since I know a lot of people who give up vegetarianism or veganism are usually finding it difficult due to there craving for the previous foods taste. A friend started going from eating junk food and animal products all the way to raw food lifestyle immediately and ended up not being able to handle it very well I must say. I know your probably not like that but all I'm saying is you have to research into nutrition and your own reactions to certain foods when changing a diet. I don't know if you have a shop called Holland and Barrett in you country but here in England its a great store full or vegan and vegetarian food so Id go to a place similar for your shopping.

I hope the transitioning works well for you. It would be great if you made a post about it reporting how it went.

[Martin123]

@Live Life Liam Thanks, I prolly wont tho its not my style =D.

[Bizarre]

On 13/11/2016 at 2:02 PM, WaveInTheOcean said:

You're such a troll, lol.

Well, was fun, good luck with liberating "yourself" from the ego of yours

I'm sure the imaginary train will take you somewhere.

Thanks 

I meant to get back to you earlier, but I've just been caught up with speaking to others. 

Nice perspective tho. Will keep it in mind

Cheers 

[Bizarre]

On 13/11/2016 at 1:39 PM, WaveInTheOcean said:

 "The first thing you and your BFAM-pal Turbolover should realize (the sooner the better) is that the 'you' seeking liberation from what you call 'ego' is the ego itself."

Just want to address your comment now actually. 

Firstly, myself and NTO probably don't agree that much on enlightenment. I have my own ideas, well, they are not mine, they are what belong to my tradition. 

The Self I speak of is "Atma". Which is the sentiency that you can call your own awareness. Another word for this is Brahman. But when Bhraman is used, it's used to explain the "one" consciousness that is the substrate of all life.  So I'm not actually referring to a true self, I'm referring to consciousness itself when I speak of "the Self"

On 13/11/2016 at 1:39 PM, WaveInTheOcean said:

Someone likes to define ego as all that makes them do/experience stuff in a special filtered way. What is the 'them' then? And if you remove ego, what is left to make you do/experience stuff?

Yes, you can see ego as filters. But there will always be filters. Enlightenment just depends on what the filters are. Enlightenment may be very pure-empty-non-judging-non-claiming filters, but THAT is STILL a filter. And it is not easy to replace your programmed filters with pure, empty filters. But it's possible of course

No quarrel with this! The ego is the doer. The part of the mind that claims it's doing "all of this". Enlightenment is about understanding that there is no real doer, no "middleman" between pure awareness (Atma) and it's reflected manifestation. The "doer" is in fact just the field of manifestation interacting with itself. Therefore revealing that in fact pure awareness (The Self) never really got involved in its dream, and therefore is limitless, forever free, unborn and therefore immortal.

However, I've not heard the thing about filters. That kind of throws me a little, because as long as there is a subtle body, there will always be an interpretation going on.  That's just life. Were always going to be a person, and without the ability to interpret reality as it is, were not going to understand that were non dual, limitless awareness appearing as a body.  The important factor is that the mind knows that it is free of its conditioning. Therefore there is no need to change it. So the "free from filters" thing sounds weird. As long as the filter is accurate (the vision of non duality in the mind of the person is steady) then everything is fine. That's what we're going for.  I also don't understand this non judging thing. Without the intellectual ability to judge things (accurately if possible) then were not going to have much going for us . I might pick up a rock thinking it's an apple and attmept to eat it. Reality is non dual, therefore judgement is also part of reality and this does not change with liberation. Enlightenment is not about losing ability to function in Samsara.  I think you have conflated "judgement" with likes and dislikes (vasanas). Which are again, not a problem because self actualisation means that the likes and dislikes have been rendered non binding and merely appear as preferences.

On 13/11/2016 at 1:39 PM, WaveInTheOcean said:

'Sometimes it happens spontaneously, but most of the times it takes 'hard work', exactly like Leo teaches. Hard work can refer to doing meditation daily, self-inquiry, seeing videos like Leo's, and even doing psychedelics. 
Yes, it pisses me off (but in a good fun way) to see that you, NTOgen, and your pal Turbolover in many ways disregard that fact that it most often takes work to become enlightened. Yes, enlightenment shouldn't be your goal - Truth should be. Yes, there's nothing fancy about enlightenment; it's just having pure, empty filters instead of your programmed-truth-distoring filters. But it takes -most of the time- work to get there
 

Again, I got no quarrel with hard work. I think I mentioned in one of my first posts (24 hours before you posted this) that enlightenment is about hard work. But it's not about changing the person, it's about getting the mind qualified to assimilate knowledge of the self.

Once you know you are the self, the world and everything in it appears as fine the way it is. No need to change it, no need to change the apparent person. The person belongs to awareness, but awareness is always free from it.  So why awareness would want to change itself because it doesn't like itself is beyond me?

It's only people who are unenlightened and don't know that they are the light would feel the need to change the person in any way. 

I think the main point of all this work however is freedom, and the release of the need to "do things" that invariably land one in trouble because one didn't feel free. Which is Truth. Which is enlightenment. Truth and enlightenment are the same thing.

So not sure what you mean when you say enlightenment has nothing to do with Truth?

Care to elaborate?

P.S. And don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to convince you that your way is wrong, I just couldn't look at what you wrote with a straight face because most of it was not true. This is why I'm addressing it now.

Plus your comment calling me a closed minded fuck made me laugh 

Edited November 15, 2016 by GTITurbolover

[WaveInTheOcean]

@Bizarre With a non-judging filter I just meant not judging people negatively I guess.

I never said anywhere that enlighentment has nothing to do with Truth. Obviously enlightenment = being one with Truth.

When I sad you shouldn't pursue enlightenment, but instead Truth, i just meant exactly that ... i.e search for what is true, whatever that might turn out to be.

All the Advaita Vedanta-stuff is probably really good to get an accurate understanding of reality. But just remember, any 'understanding', any concepts are only tools, analogies to what's going on. What's really going on, can't be explained in words/by logic. Whats ultimately True can't be said - there can only be said things about Truth - and here some things are relatively more true than other of course.

[WaveInTheOcean]

On 12/11/2016 at 9:23 PM, NTOgen said:

@WaveInTheOcean

I knew I was in trouble yesterday when you bookmarked my videos on the other page.

Here's my favorite quote from the second one:

You're right, I couldn't care less. And neither do you, despite what you said in the "Why Do Animals Fear Death?" thread: "vegetarians "care" more about other living animals than meat-eaters do. Do that make them less selfish? You be the judge."

So ok, I be the judge. And my ruling is that all this "caring" is about nothing other than ones own ideas. Because that's all they are, and that's all there is to care about. That's simply the mechanism of delusion, there is nothing else.

So the thing you're such a stalwart defender of is simply your own delusion. That's it, that's the long and short of it. And the only reason you care about it is because you care about being seen as "a good person", which is to say a self-satisfied and self-congratulatory ego.

All your threads are about nothing else than spreading your personal ideology which has no relevance to anything at all, and insisting that everyone else agree with it. That's what your "caring" is really about.

It's about instructing the world, it's about adapting society to your desires, it's about looking for favorable answers, it's about associating with people that flatter you, it's about living in a fairytale land instead of being honest with yourself or other people, it's about forcing your mental picture onto others. It's about all those things from my very favorite Richard Rose quote. Great job. And you will have to be the one to see the foolishness of it.

Which brings us to why I write. I'm not on a mission to save the world, I just want to get this shit out of my system. So I don't write that I couldn't care less, because I couldn't care less about opinions either, not yours and not mine. But thanks for the opportunity to rant

It's not even that I "weigh the convenience and taste of eating meat over concious animals getting treated properly", as you put it, but that I don't weigh anything at all. The ONLY thing in the universe that weighs the events and provisions of life is EGO. That was the point of my first rant in this thread, but it clearly went way over your head.

I simply write from one point of view in order to contrast another, in this case yours. Because that's how to see the foolishness of it. At least for those who are looking for freedom from all this bullshit. Which is clearly not you. But do feel free enough to ignore me. Because I promise you, you're not about to change my mind on anything. I'm doing just fine.

/bow, curtain, exit left

Mate. I honstely couldn't care less if you keep eating meat or not.

To be enlightened is to become as aware as possible of how your ego functions. If you are fully aware of your ego - that is, if you manage to get all the unconscious ego stuff/beliefs/mechacnics into awareness/consciousness, then you are free. because now "you" can react to that and re-arrange the mechanics so they align with your inner nature.

I saw that it was arbitrary that I had eaten meat all my life. Arbitrary in the sense that it's what society/culture told me was "the right thing to do". I was programmed. 

Now I have contemplated my deep inner nature, and I see that my inner nature doesn't align with eating meat from animals mass produced in livestock-forms. I don't even crave eating it anymore. It's so natural now. Naturally I know nothing about your inner nature, and I know you're doing just fine, what else could you do? hehe.. cheers

And btw, of course - the fact that I now don't want to eat meat anymore is also just another programming. But somehow I feel it's a more natural "self-"conscious form of programming than the one I had before (in regard to this eating meat/or not-dillemma ... I'm sure im still "unconsciously"-programmed by a lot of other stuff... and that excites me..I wanna go to more -not-knowing-states- and see what answer the universe gives me.

cheeeeeeeers everyone. Eat whatever you fucking want as long as you don't eat me:)

Edited November 17, 2016 by WaveInTheOcean

[Peace and Love]

@Leo Gura

On 10/31/2016 at 8:20 PM, Leo Gura said:

This issue goes very deep. It's really the problem of life itself. The fundamental dynamics of life are very unfair. For some lifeforms to survive others must die. Whether that be animals, plants, bacteria, human beings, children in Africa, the dinosaurs, planet Earth itself, etc.

If we take a look a what humanity is doing to itself, it's killing itself at the same time as its growing and evolving. And this is sorta required by the laws of entropy. Even if we all became perfect vegans, we would still be killing other animals, plants, and smaller organisms in a very unfair way by the billions. We would still be destroying the environment.

None of this of course is an excuse not to improve, but it just goes to show the intractability of being alive. To be alive requires a sort of turning one's eye away from fairness. Cause life isn't fair at all to individual beings.

The great Jain sage Mahavira realized this. First he stopped eating animals. But that wasn't enough. So he stopped eating plants. And then he starved himself to death. That would be the only truly honest solution.

Which brings us to the crux of the problem: YOU!

Do you want to live? Most people do (although that's a choice). But if you do, then you must also accept all the collateral damage that comes with that. And there's A LOT of it!

Now, the only question is, where do you want to draw the line. At pigs? At worms? At trees? At bacteria? At saving the whales? At recycling Coke cans? At not throwing your garbage into the street? At starving yourself to death? Everyone will have different opinions about that depending on their beliefs and level of consciousness.

Generally speaking, the more one becomes spiritually purified and experiences personal suffering, the more one will desire to minimize suffering for other beings. But that's not as easy as it sounds, for you couldn't even walk on the grass to the nearest cliff to jump off of without stepping on some worms, snails, ticks, microbes, or flowers.

Is factory farming unfair to animals? Surely so. The issue is one of convenience though. How much inconvenience should be tolerated? Is it wrong for me to buy a new t-shirt when there are kids around the world dying of cold or mosquito bites without a single shirt to wear? And is it wrong for the mosquito to bite the naked kid and infect him with malaria? And is it wrong for us to wage war against malaria micro-organisms by the billions?

You be the judge.

Hey Leo,

Have you seen this youtube video? "How Wolves Change Rivers"?   It talks about how carnivores GIVE LIFE to other animals.  The short video clip talks about how Yellow Stone Park was absent of wolves for many years which created an over population of deer and elk.  And because of this over population of the deer and elk the vegetation was pretty much destroyed and barren.  Hunting by the human population unfortunately does not solve this problem.  We NEED carnivores even though many people are afraid and killing them.

When they reintroduced a few wolves into Yellowstone Park (in 1995), radical changes started taking place.  They chased the deer into different areas allowing vegetation and trees to grow back, which attracted migrating birds and helped to repopulate other animal species.

I think there are a lot of things we don't understand about nature that we have yet to discover.

 

There are studies being done about how carnivores benefit our ecosystem and the roles they play in saving it.  Apparently from what I can see we need BALANCE.  There can be no good without the bad.  But who is to say that these animals are bad when they play such a huge role to other species' existence? 

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jan/09/carnivore-cleansing-damaging-ecosystems

http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/20165/20160223/fear-large-predators-helps-keep-ecosystem-balance-video.htm

"THE FEAR" large predators instill in their prey may be the glue holding ecosystems together, according to a new study. Aside from hunting prey, and therefore controlling population size, large carnivores paint what researchers call a "landscape of fear," inhibiting prey from feeding and restricting them to designated areas only. It is believed that this sense of "fear" can facilitate cascading effects down the food chain.

These results have critically important implications for conservation, wildlife management and public policy," Liana Zanette, a wildlife ecologist from Western University, said in a news release. "We have now experimentally verified that, by instilling FEAR, the very existence of large carnivores on the landscape -- in and of itself -- provides an essential 'ecosystem service,' and failing to consider fear risks dramatically underestimates the role large carnivores play in structuring ecosystems."

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2078511-just-the-fear-of-big-predators-can-alter-an-entire-ecosystem/
Just the fear of big predators can alter an entire ecosystem



This one is interesting too....

How whales are important to keeping fish ALIVE and effecting our climate. Removing tens of millions of carbons from the atmosphere every year.  The return of the great whales, if they are allowed to recover, could be seen as a benign form of geo-engineering. It could undo some of the damage we have done, both to the living systems of the sea, and to the atmosphere.

We are all connected to each other, in a circle, in a hoop that never ends....

"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe." - John Muir

[Godex]

Ever since the argument for animal welfare was made for me, I found the idea that animals in nature have a great life completely retarded. If I had to choose between a life of an animal in a factory farm and in the wild, I'd probably end up choosing the life of the animal in a farm(not that I'd choose it over nonexistence). Obviously the sheer numbers in nature are astronomically bigger. Also, to give some perspective, 1 in 10 lion cubs reaches maturity, the rest die brutally because of various causes. Prey animals have even worse attrition rates. In the oceans it's even far worse, for example, 1000 fully sentient baby octopuses die horribly so that one could procreate. I'm not trying to make the argument for futility, I'm a vegan myself, but this reverence for nature is ridiculous for me when its coming from people who are supposedly smarter and better. Planet earth will not be a great place if everybody would go vegan, that would be like giving a snickers bar to one Jew in the middle of the holocaust. 

[stevegan928]

@Neill did your old account get banned? 

[WaveInTheOcean]

On 30/11/2016 at 7:45 PM, Godex said:

Planet earth will not be a great place if everybody would go vegan, that would be like giving a snickers bar to one Jew in the middle of the holocaust. 

If we stopped all cow and pig-meat production today, we would

1. massively lower the total CO2-output to the athmosphere
2. massively lower the amounts of fresh drinking water spent on meat production
3. significantly reduce the amounts of rain forests getting wiped out because of livestock-production
4. have huge amounts of soy- and corn-food which we could use to feed the enitre human population many times.

But of course this would also imply that my family cannot get their pork for christmas, and they would cry big time, especially my grand mother, for that, so ...
 

[Godex]

1 hour ago, WaveInTheOcean said:

If we stopped all cow and pig-meat production today, we would

1. massively lower the total CO2-output to the athmosphere
2. massively lower the amounts of fresh drinking water spent on meat production
3. significantly reduce the amounts of rain forests getting wiped out because of livestock-production
4. have huge amounts of soy- and corn-food which we could use to feed the enitre human population many times.

But of course this would also imply that my family cannot get their pork for christmas, and they would cry big time, especially my grand mother, for that, so ...
 

Maybe you didn't read my post carefully, or maybe I suck at expressing myself. I'm a vegan and for everybody going vegan as soon as possible. My point was that as suffering on planet earth is concerned, it won't make a huge difference. We've got to go way further than that. 

[Paulo Barbosa]

But why does it have to be this way? Why all this suffering in a world created by a force that many call "Love"?

[Truth Seekah]

 

Edited May 7, 2017 by Ganesh Sundaram

[Hsinav]