Why to be a vegetarian?
Here are some of the reasons based on yoga teachings.
'Aghnyaa yajamaanasya pashunpahi'( Yajurveda 1.1).
“O human! animals are Aghnya – not to be killed. Protect the animals”.
'We are what we eat', ' gross body is made of food' - Our state of mind and emotions are influenced by chemicals in the physical body and the other way round, state of mind influences the body and stimulates it to produce certain chemicals. Meet eating creates toxins which poison mind in a way that it becomes more gross and insensitive to subtle energies. This is one of the reasons why yogins do not consume meet.
'karma' - 'nothing ever comes of nothing, we pay a price for all our choices made' (LAM) - the law of cause and effect is at work all the time. During this life we create habits and tendencies by our repeated actions. These tendencies lead to situations and experiences of pleasure or pain in this life and in the future lives. Meat eating brings a man into karmic circle formed by active participation in the food circle. A meet eater cannot avoid worlds of suffering in any way - either he develops increasingly more and more aggressive tendencies and becomes a demon or another scenario can be that he takes a place of those whom he made suffer. In any case eating meat brings you again to eating meat and you will stay in the world of 'kill and eat' for ever. Yogn is interested in withdrawing himself from this circle of cause- effect. He withdraws himself from a gross physical world and enters into more subtle relations with nature which are more on the level of energy rather then on the level of matter. This is another reason to be a vegetarian. Some yogins manage to go further in it and feed only on the energy of air or the sun. (I have met such yogins personally, so I witness they do exist).'ahimsa' - non violence. Non violent behavior creates tendencies to be reborn in non-violent worlds. This is an egoistic reason. A more metaphysical reason is that a yogin experiences himself as not different from the universe, so he does not harm himself and spreads the message about non-duality and unity of life by manifesting divine love (not divine madness). Practice of 'ahimsa' leads to supernatural powers such as: enmity ceases in the presence of such a yogi, he causes love in the hearts of people, and eventually he realizes the unity and oneness of life, or Advaitic (non-dual) Consciousness. There can be an objection that rejecting something also creates duality: pure- impure, gross - subtle.Universal consciousness is all-encompassing. For this we point out to a stage of yogin's development. Meat-eating itself does not lead to liberation. Subtle and pure worlds on the contrary stimulate further development. First stage is to create good karma which allows one to practice more intense methods of liberation like 'tantric' methods. In tantra purification of impure substances is final and extremely secret as well as a dangerous discipline (nothing to do with mindless eating a pock every day).
