It should be emphasized that the refusal to eat the flesh of slaughtered animals, to which the Mahayana scriptures call us, should not be equated with the choice of a vegetarian lifestyle for health reasons. When I say this, I mean first of all Adolf Hitler – this freak in a noble family of vegetarians. It is said that he refused meat because of a panic fear of getting cancer.
Proponents of the meat diet love to cite Hitler’s love of vegetarian food as an example, as if to prove that even completely giving up meat, you can still remain aggressive, cruel, suffer from megalomania, be a psychopath and have a whole bunch of other “wonderful” qualities. What these critics prefer not to notice is the fact that no one has proven that all those who killed and tortured people, following his will – officers and soldiers of the SS, ranks of the Gestapo – also abstained from meat. There is no doubt that vegetarianism, which has as its only motivation concern for one’s own health, without taking into account the fate of animals, their pain and suffering, has every chance of turning into another “-ism”: attachment to a certain diet for the benefit of “beloved one”. In any case, none of the apologists for the righteousness of the vegetarian lifestyle has ever tried to argue that vegetarianism is a panacea for all ills, a magical elixir that can turn a piece of iron into gold.
The book “Animals, Man and Morality” — in a collection of essays subtitled “Exploring the Problem of Cruelty to Animals”, Patrick Corbett gets to the heart of the moral issue when he says the following:
“… We are convinced that almost any normal person, faced with a dilemma “should a living being continue to exist or not”, or, to paraphrase, “should he suffer or not”, will agree (as long as it does not endanger the life and interests of others) that it should live and should not experience suffering … To be completely indifferent to the life and well-being of others, making rare exceptions only for those in whom you are, for one reason or another reasons, currently interested, to be ready, like the Nazis, to sacrifice anyone and anything to your aggressive urges is to turn your back on the eternal principle … a way of life full of reverence and love, which each of us carries in our hearts and which …, being sincere, we must finally put it into practice.”
So, isn’t it time for the representatives of the human race to stop cruelly killing our smaller brothers by eating their flesh, and start taking care of them, filled with love and compassion?