20170111人人蔬醒共善業Supporting Ethical Eating Day on January 11
Seeing the suffering of refugees we should know that we’re blessed. In addition, we must count our blessings. Seeing the turmoil of the world, we must understand that it’s caused by people’s collective karma.
In this world, good and evil are at war. Will the good collective karma outdo the bad collective karma, or otherwise? It depends on whether or not we have awakened to truth. In this “era of degeneration”, or a world of impurities, as the Buddha predicted, many of us humans are still deluded and lost, not awakening to truth.
Seeing how a single deviated thought can cause many man-made disasters around the world. Also see that with a single wholesome thought, our volunteers come forth for relief work despite heavy snow or harsh weather conditions.
It’s truly heartwarming to see that. We’ve heard many heartwarming stories about our winter distributions in China.
At minus dozens of degrees Celsius, our volunteers still gathered by trudging in the snow at midnight and prepared hot porridge at distribution sites for those who would come to receive supplies.
Considering some elders coming at dawn might suffer from the cold weather, we prepared hot porridge for them to keep them warm. Such is the power of love with which we can help many people in need. Such is also the power of good.
Yet, the power of evil still exists? Which site will prevail? It all depends on our minds.
Today January 11 is Ethical Eating Day. This is one of the approaches adopted by Tzu Chi to promote vegetarianism. This effort of ours originated from our participation in the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference, also known as the COP21.
In the COP21, an agreement was achieved to limit global warming by calling for zero net anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Greenhouse gas emissions are closely tied with our daily life.
If we can go vegetarian and raise less livestock, we can, first of all, reduce grain consumption. It takes a huge amount of water to raise a single cow. Eating a serving of beef actually involves heavy consumption of resources.
With only a bowl of soup, a bowl of rice, and a few vegetables for a meal, we can take in sufficient nutrients. Otherwise, if we eat meat, tons of resources get consumed. On the other hand, livestock feed on grains. Yet, many farmers use feed additives. Also, their breeding methods are different from free range farming of the past.
Every living being has their own consciousness. Captive breeding deprived animals of freedom creating hate and resentment among them. Why are people infected with mad cow disease, foot-and-mouth disease, and avian flu? It’s because viruses mutate in animals’ bodies.
This leads to cross-species virus transmission, causing epidemics among both humans and animals. What’s worse, whenever there are avian flu outbreaks, millions of livestock may be killed, and this results in enormous bad karma and subsequently endless disasters.
To satisfy people’s craving for meat, every day, no fewer than 150 million livestock are killed. This is really a shockingly high figure.
The COP21 presented accurate statistics about global warming and its causes. Since then, Tzu Chi has promoted Ethical Eating Day on January 11. It not only means we adopt a vegetarian diet on January 11 every year, but it also means that “everyone” of us should go vegetarian for “every meal” and persist “every day” instead of practicing vegetarianism only on January 11.
Everyone, to promote vegetarianism is to inspire a heart of compassion among people. Compassion can dispel away deviated thoughts from one’s mind. With compassion, we’ll do good and sow blessings, which will in turn counteract bad karma. To foster a sustainable environment, we should no longer harm the Earth.
By promoting Ethical Eating Day globally, we hope to inspire as many people as possible to safeguard animals’ lives. We believe that animals are not raised to be slaughtered. Killing animals is not good at all. It desensitizes our compassion. Carnism is also detrimental to our health.
So, we hope that people will no longer raise animals or slaughter them for meat. Killing animals is truly a cruel act and is also a lamentable tragedy.
In terms of negative karmic forces, we should never commit killing. In terms of our health, it’s best we become vegetarian. It’s not for the sake of Buddhism but for the purpose of inspiring compassion. In relieving people’s suffering, we should also remember what the Buddha teaches us--- “We should relieve the suffering of all living beings.”
So, we should devote ourselves to saving the lives of all sentient beings, not just the lives of human beings. I sincerely expect that all of you can promote vegetarianism whenever you can.
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