Metta, diet, and lifestyle
Going a step further
If you’re already a vegetarian then you could consider becoming vegan, or even just eating less dairy products and eggs. The production of milk and eggs also involves suffering. I’ve been a vegan for several years now and I’ve never felt healthier. I hardly ever get a cold (even when everyone else seems to be coming down with them) and when I do get ill it passes very quickly.
Another step most of us can take is to eat more organic food (food grown without artificial fertilizers, insecticides, and weed killers). This has beneficial effects not only on your body but for the environment as well, since artificial compounds can linger in the food chain for many years. Of course it’s more expensive to eat organic food, but at least we can buy some organic food from time to time. Remember that we’re not talking black and white here. We’re talking about degrees of suffering and harm that can be avoided.
Becoming a responsible consumer
You can look at other purchases you make. Where are the clothes you buy made? Are they produced in sweatshop conditions, or using child labor? If they do, then perhaps you could write to a company and tell them you disapprove of their employment practices.
And there is transportation, and the effect of carbon dioxide and other emissions. These are all things that we can think about. Perhaps we can carpool (some days at least), or take public transport, or cycle, or buy a more fuel-efficient vehicle.
These are just a few suggestions of course. Each of our lives is different, and each of us needs to look at his or her own life and see what implications the practice and cultivation of metta has.
Comments
Comment from David Humphrey
Time: March 31, 2008, 7:45 am
a very good article. My girlfriend has been a vegetarian for almost a year new and about a month ago i followed suit. I find that not only is avoiding meat healthier for but it is also a lot cheaper to not eat meat. At first i thought that being a vegetarian would be to restraining, but in many ways it is more liberating because it forces you to look beyond what you would normally eat, in order to find something that will sustain you and cause the least harm. It is also incredibly empowering to make a conscious effort to say “i will not eat that”, instead of eating whatever is in front of you.
Comment from Ed McGuigan
Time: January 24, 2009, 5:05 pm
I am still working my way to full vegetarianism and I am basically down to eating modest amounts of chicken typically in a restaurant since I can’t abide tofu. Ironically, this has come about because I started cooking for my dogs and decided I might as well make the effort to make something halfway decent that I could eat as well ( they do get some chicken which I forgo – I don’t want to impose my vegetarian values on them ).
As you suggest, I do need to get a recipe book to broaden my repertoire from basic beans and lentils. The upside of the economic crisis may well be that Americans simply won’t have the money to keep gorging themselves on their corn-fed beef and might inadvertently discover that they feel better with less meat in their diets.
I am hopeful that I will eventually move to zero meat consumption but I don’t feel quite as radical about as some. Like a lot of people I really need to up the intake of greens. I seem to have a block when it comes to taking the time to make and eat a salad. If only you could live on an “all fruit” diet!
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