Saturday, November 2, 2013

My Rabbits eat Hay, but I don't..


So here it is. My personal view on eating meat.

I am well aware that a large proportion of the people on my friends list are deeply committed Yogi's. It is not a secret that it is also a big part of my own life, in spite of the fact that I quite openly reject aspects of Yoga, such as: Insincere commercialism; idolism; dogma and blind devotion to name a few.

A question that comes to me quite often, is what is my view on vegetarianism. I came to Yoga because I needed a path to physical and emotional health, and my single minded pursuit of being an elite runner had given me all it could. I'm not sure that Yoga was the reason I started a serious self-inquiry into my own life. I think that happened because when you hit a really low place, you are finally ready to start asking the right questions.

The simple fact is I am a physical person and need to live a physical life in order to maintain my sanity. The problem is that in most cultures you do that by finding a sport you are good at.  You then seek victory over others. Your identity becomes a by-product of your results, tangibly measured either by a stop-watch or by the number of points you can put on a score-board. To cut to the chase I came to the realisation that it is not what you do but why you do it. Defining your own self worth though sports results will eventually let you down. No matter how good you are eventually someone will come along who is better. I don't think this should dictate your own sense of self worth but for me it did, so I had to stop what I was doing and find another way.

So I didn't start Yoga because it had a predefined set of ethics or moralities. I started Yoga because I'd finally found something that apparently wasn't interested in judging me at how good I was at doing it. I won't ever forget my first class because it utterly humiliated me. Equally I won't forget it because not a single other person in the class, including the teacher gave a shit. It didn't matter that I could not do 90% of the poses the way most of the other people could. It was only me that cared about that, it was only my own ego I had to contend with and after what I had already learnt through my time in sports, I was ready to see the truth of that and "get over it".

I can't say how amazing it was to find something I could turn my full tenacity to, without the fear of competition being the driving force behind my efforts. It didn't take long to realise that I am just a person who loves to work hard at things that capture my imagination. The pursuit of the results, and the idea of being defined by those results actually just gets in the way. Not only does it cloud the vision but it ruins the journey and disconnects me from being at peace with who I really am.

Having said all that, the truth is I never really found a single class or style of Yoga that felt 100% like me. In fact often it was a love hate relationship and there were teachers who crossed my path who left a very bad taste in my mouth. Either that or their belief system forced me to think about, and make decisions about the Yogic doctrine, and what parts of it worked for me and what parts I needed to discard, simply in order that I could continue to do "yoga" without feeling like I was no longer being true to my own belief systems.

So here's the thing about doctrines, whether they are tied to religion or sport or philosophies: They are a predefined set of rules that give the system it's structure. For this reason alone I am very uncomfortable being labelled with anything. It seems to me that the moment you hook your hat to a label you have introduced limitations on where your mind and heart can travel. The limiting thought structure is fundamental, and the example for today is via a quote from a deservedly famous Yogi

"Stop eating flesh, that is Yoga".

Not that it should matter to anyone who understands the concept of "critical thinking" but I am a vegetarian. I did however eat meat growing up, and I personally have no issue with the basic idea of humans eating meat, but I'll get into the details of my own philosophy a bit later.

For me though, it comes down to this. I don't believe anyone has the right to define Yoga in such absolute terms. If we are to take the above statement in it's most literal form, if you eat meat, then it doesn't matter what else you do, you are not doing Yoga. Honestly, regardless of the debate about whether eating meat is good or bad, I call bullshit on that. The world is not made in digital. We are not a series of ones and zeros. The digital world was designed to allow computers to approximate the real world (using cold hard logic) not the other way around. We should not make the mistake of applying such limited Boolean expressions to our real lives.

So to the question of eating meat. No I don't eat it, but it is not so much a decision about health, as it is a way of protesting commercial farming, both on land and in the oceans. ethically, I think humans do treat farm animals despicably. Animals are sentient. They feel pain, they feel love, there is no question in my mind they feel fear. Most people reading would have no problems recognising these qualities in their own pets. For this reason I feel we have a moral responsibility to farm animals with a genuine concern for their quality of life while they live. I don't, however think it is inherently wrong for a human to eat meat anymore than I think it is wrong for any other animal to eat meat. Our evolutionary biology marks us as omnivores. We are not true vegetarians go check out the biology of a Rabbit and you will find it is completely different from us. Failing that try living on a bale of hay for a month and see how that works out for you. Yes, I realise there are other options than grass, but my point is we are quite capable of eating and digesting meat and depending on some peoples constitutions, I am at least anecdotally convinced that certain people become quite unhealthy if they do not have at least some meat in their diet.

In simple terms, I take a naturalists viewpoint. Nature, in balance, has always involved the killing of animals by other animals for reasons of food and survival. However humans are now the shepherds of this planet, and we are smart enough to know that we have both ecological and ethical responsibilities to all other forms of life on this planet. Those people who become evangelical about being Vegan are not doing their cause any favours. All they are doing is alienating themselves from the people they want to change. Along those lines I have to wonder, is Yoga about trying to change other people to think the way you think?!?

That seems very "external" to me. I prefer to see Yoga as a personal and internal practice of self inquiry. As a practitioner and teacher I don't have any interest in trying to change anyone. I'm just doing and sharing a "process" that has made my life better, and I hope that in some shape or form it may do the same for others. I may have questions, but I sure as hell don't have answers, nor do I want to. For me, that is kind of the point.

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