
If it wasn't for the Sattvic principles, I would have never succeeded in adapting from a meat-eater to a vegan. I grew up in an omnivouros Hindu family in SUriname (formerly nown as Dutch Guyana located at the North-East Coast of South America) with Diaspora of Indentured East Indian descent dating dating back from 1873 on. I was the geeky sister who never liked eating meat, fish and eggs. Although due to my mother's and paternal grandmother's Hindu background, we never ate beef. At a certain point in my early teenage years, I decided to only stick to eating poultry, eggs and fish. Only on certain religious days, the whole family would become complete Lacto-Vegans. Growing up in Suriname, we hardly ate processed foods. Our neighbors had a few cows and sold us milk, ghee and butter. These were happy cows, treated like their own family members. I did try to stay a vegetarian for up to two or three weeks at the time and then fall back to meat-eating. It wasn't untill found a real moral drive to become a vegatarian, initiated by my own journey fo self-discovery. Even further driven to become a vegan because of the active practive of driven compassion of every living being that has a capicity to be able to experience pain and suffering.
The Understanding of Compassion & Equal Vision, Ethics 101
Two of innate primordial Godly qualities a human has that originates from spirit is the ability to sense and symphatize with another living being's suffering and the capability to see the worthiness all living beings of every different species as equal and equally important to that of human existance. These innate Godly human qualities, stand loose independently on their own from the reason of intellect. These qualities are not given to humans thru religion or conditioning through reason, as a matter of fact- religion and sensical reasoning are distractions from having the capacity to have compassion and respect every lifeform equally. At a certain point in history in human existance, religion became the instution of our ground zero thinking about ethics. And suddenly animal sacrifice to please God became acceptable and it's okay to eat meat that is religiously slaughtered, and became okay to eat fish every religious holiday. Religious rules on eating meat are set for men not to lucratively slaughter animals and profit on its carcasses, but to give the understanding to humans that at the time the crops have died in drought, it is okay to feed on animal flesh, as long as the animal doesn't suffer at the time when parting his soul from the body. Then the sentiment is shifted to the instructional practice of religion and animal slaughter and the accuracy of it while the attention from having compassion and equal vision is distracted. And from that point on humans have become the slave and victims of their religious biased practice, especially when they have to reason about their own human rights.
The biased cover-up of sentiment
My neighbor the animal rescuer loves dogs but she still get her steak and pork chops from the meat market. She can't imagine the practic of dog farming and-eating in Korea. I asked her but what is the difference between a dog's life and pork/steak? She reasoned with the facts and history how humans are on top of the food chain of livestock, and the dog was a former predator who over centuries became domesticated and serve humanity. What greater sentiment there is to bias those who serve humanity get bred and survive just for use. Seeing the dog and porkchops unequal in their evolutionary process of serving humanity is called: Biased Sentiment. Now if she had to confront the dog-eating-breeding Korean farmer, how does she explain that it is "wrong" utilize dogs to please palates and hunger! He will spit in her face, because her reason for dog-symphatizing sentiment takes the weakest stand toward his economical need to run a dog-eating farm.
This method of reasoning suits even the biased practice cannibalism, one does not eat loved ones - only enemies from other tribes whom have murdered and eaten our loved ones, eat their offspring as well.
Even those who are fully vegan will kill cockroaches and rats for pest control. What's wright to be primordially right about our capicity to have compassion and see all living beings as equals?!
Author: Ratna Sadal