Being Vegetarian?

I am sure we all have questions in mind when we take certain actions and we ask every-time whether they were right or wrong. Like eating non-vegetarian food, some say it does not matter and some say it does, some say its important for world to have people eating non-vegetarian food as the food is available in limited quantity. Some say its just a question of few generations and we will have human meat as acceptable food considering the rate of population growth and availability of food in the future.

Given the fact that i have a choice now which may not be available for people in the future. I wanted to understand why monks are vegetarian? What spirituality has to do with what you eat? and how eating or not eating affects your 'self'? I am not sure i could provide any logical answer. Neither i want to advocate and preach why should you have vegetarian diet.

However i came across something which challenged some of my thoughts and pushed me to understand the fundamentals of life. This is expert from Mahavira's Jain Sutras (simplified and put into context)

"A man that does not understand and (become aware) renounce the causes of sin, descends and wanders, , is born again and again in manifold births, experiences all painful feelings"

Truth is comprehension (understand) and renunciation (become aware and growth in consciousness). Those who knows this called a reward-knowing sage (muni)

As somebody may cut or strike a blind man (blind man cannot see the wound is used as an example to explain the plants and animals, to be precise water bodies, fire bodies and earth bodies), as somebody may cut or strike the foot, the ankle, the knee, the thigh, the hip, the navel, the belly, the flank, the back, the bosom, the heart, the breast, the neck, the arm, the finger, the nail, the eye, the brow, the forehead, the head, as some kill (openly), as some extirpate (secretly), (thus the earth-bodies are cut, struck, and killed though their feeling is not manifest). 

He who injures these bodies (earth-bodies, water-bodies, fire-bodies, wind-bodies) does not comprehend and renounce the sinful acts; he who does not injure these, comprehends and renounces the sinful acts. Knowing them, a wise man should not act sinfully towards earth, nor cause others to act so, nor allow others to act so. H e who knows these causes of sin relating to earth, is called a reward-knowing sage. 

There are numberless lives or souls, not only embodied in animals, men, gods, hell-beings (tasa, trasa), and plants (vanassaî, vanaspati), but also in the four elements--earth, water, fire, wind. Earth, &c., regarded as the abode of lives is called earth-body, &c. These bodies are only perceptible when an infinite number of them is united in one place. 

There are beings living in water, earth and fire, many lives; of a truth, to the monks water has been declared to be living matter. See! considering the injuries (done to these bodies), those acts (which are injuries, but must be done before the use of water, eg. straining) have been distinctly declared. Moreover he (who uses water which is not strained) takes away what has not been given (i.e. the bodies of water-lives). 

He who injures these bodies does not understand this sinful acts; he who does not injure these, comprehends and renounces the sinful acts. Knowing them, a wise man should not act sinfully towards these bodies nor cause others to act so, nor allow others to act so. He who knows these causes of sin relating to water/fire/earth, is called a reward-knowing sage."

Lets keep aside the part of sin (difficult to understand in many cases). the way i understand is we need to respect life in every form as we have the same life, the same spirit. If we do not respect and revere (reverence to life) then who will understand? All forms of life exist such as humans and we as humans possess no special rights to kill and use the other forms for selfish reasons.  The real question is that aren't we killing the plants in case we eat vegetarian food?

If you have read this and have an opinion, do write!!

The Superman

Thus Spake Zarathustra

I TEACH YOU THE SUPERMAN. Man is something that is to be surpassed. What have ye done to surpass man?

All beings hitherto have created something beyond themselves: and ye want to be the ebb of that great tide, and would rather go back to the beast than surpass man?

What is the ape to man? A laughing-stock, a thing of shame. And just the same shall man be to the Superman: a laughing-stock, a thing of shame.

Ye have made your way from the worm to man, and much within you is still worm. Once were ye apes, and even yet man is more of an ape than any of the apes.

Even the wisest among you is only a disharmony and hybrid of plant and phantom. But do I bid you become phantoms or plants?

Lo, I teach you the Superman!

The Superman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: The Superman SHALL BE the meaning of the earth! I conjure you, my brethren, REMAIN TRUE TO THE EARTH, and believe not those who speak unto you of superearthly hopes! Poisoners are they, whether they know it or not.

Despisers of life are they, decaying ones and poisoned ones themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so away with them! Once blasphemy against God was the greatest blasphemy; but God died, and therewith also those blasphemers. To blaspheme the earth is now the dreadfulest sin, and to rate the heart of the unknowable higher than the meaning of the earth!

Once the soul looked contemptuously on the body, and then that contempt was the supreme thing:--the soul wished the body meagre, ghastly, and famished. Thus it thought to escape from the body and the earth.
Oh, that soul was itself meagre, ghastly, and famished; and cruelty was the delight of that soul!

But ye, also, my brethren, tell me: What doth your body say about your soul? Is your soul not poverty and pollution and wretched self-complacency? Verily, a polluted stream is man. One must be a sea, to receive a polluted stream without becoming impure.

Lo, I teach you the Superman: he is that sea; in him can your great contempt be submerged.

What is the greatest thing ye can experience? It is the hour of great contempt. The hour in which even your happiness becometh loathsome unto you, and so also your reason and virtue. The hour when ye say: "What good is my happiness! It is poverty and pollution and wretched self-complacency. But my happiness should justify existence itself!"

The hour when ye say: "What good is my reason! Doth it long for knowledge as the lion for his food? It is poverty and pollution and wretched self-complacency!"

The hour when ye say: "What good is my virtue! As yet it hath not made me passionate. How weary I am of my good and my bad! It is all poverty and pollution and wretched self-complacency!"

The hour when ye say: "What good is my justice! I do not see that I am fervour and fuel. The just, however, are fervour and fuel!"

The hour when ye say: "What good is my pity! Is not pity the cross on which he is nailed who loveth man? But my pity is not a crucifixion."

Have ye ever spoken thus? Have ye ever cried thus? Ah! would that I had heard you crying thus!
It is not your sin--it is your self-satisfaction that crieth unto heaven; your very sparingness in sin crieth unto heaven!

Where is the lightning to lick you with its tongue? Where is the frenzy with which ye should be inoculated?

Lo, I teach you the Superman: he is that lightning, he is that frenzy!--

The True Seeker

They say the believer is non-believer in disguise and vice-verse. Believer needs one small doubt which can change his direction and that's equally true with non-believers. Both are extreme ends and in either case the true search ends. If you believe/disbelieve then there is nothing to seek anymore and the search ends. The seeker in you dies slowly and steady.

In the work of believers and non-believers i think the one who stands out is real seeker. He who does not believe or disbelieve, he who is open and ready to receive. I love this poem from Rabindranath Tagore, look at this question - If this house is certainly the house of God, then what will I do after I have found him? 

and the way it ends - And I continue the search, enjoy the very journey, the pilgrimage. 

Search of God by Rabindranath Tagore 

I have been seeking and searching God for as long as I can remember, for many many lives, from the very beginning of existence. Once in a while, I have seen him by the side of a faraway star, and I have rejoiced and danced that the distance, although great, is not impossible to reach. And I have traveled and reached to the star; but by the time I reached the star, God has moved to another star. And it has been going on for centuries.

The challenge is so great that I go on hoping against hope... I have to find him, I am so absorbed in the search. The very search is so intriguing, so mysterious, so enchanting, that God has become almost an excuse—the search has become itself the goal.

And to my surprise, one day I reached a house in a faraway star with a small sign in front of it, saying, "This is the house of God." My joy knew no bounds—so finally I have arrived! I rushed up the steps, many steps, that led to the door of the house. But as I was coming closer and closer to the door, a fear suddenly appeared in my heart. As I was going to knock, I became paralyzed with a fear that I had never known, never thought of, never dreamt of. The fear was:

If this house is certainly the house of God, then what will I do after I have found him?"

Now searching for God has become my very life; to have found him will be equivalent to committing suicide. And what am I going to do with him? I had never thought of all these things before. I should have thought before I started the search: what am I going to do with God?

I took my shoes in my hands, and ilently and very slowly stepped back, afraid that God may hear the noise and may open the door and say, "Where are you going? I am here, come in!" And as I reached the steps, I ran away as I have never run before; and since then I have been again searching for God, looking for him in every direction—and avoiding the house where he really lives. Now I know that house has to be avoided. And I continue the search, enjoy the very journey, the pilgrimage.