Eating meat- How does it affect the body? | Mohanji
It’s very simple, like if there’s no oxygen in the room, how does it affect us?
The body absorbs everything. Whatever it is, whatever is given to the body, it takes in. When an animal dies, it does not die out of pleasure. What is the feeling it has? When you’re killing an animal, it knows very well it’s going to be killed.
Fear of death
Imagine somebody is going to death row and is convicted to death. People can be convicted to death, right? They sit waiting for death. How do they feel? How does a person feel when they know that they’re going to die? Fear, anxiety, all these go into the flesh. Because our body is like a sponge, it absorbs everything. And that goes into the flesh.
Psychosomatic diseases
There’s a terrible feeling of injustice, especially when the animal is a free moving animal in the household. It feels that we are protecting it, but one day we are killing it. So, it feels betrayed. The trust is broken. All those emotions enter the flesh, and that’s the flesh we’re eating. Our body becomes a graveyard. And all these things enter the system. That’s why many diseases happen, psychosomatic diseases because of this.
Balance in nature
But it’s not the same in the forest. A lion does not eat until it’s hungry, not like us. And it kills only for the food. And even if it kills, it eats together. That means each lion will not kill a different animal.
Nature has its balance. It has its flow. We have manipulated things. That’s why we have all these problems.
Victimhood
You know, the victimhood or let’s call it sin, depends on the helplessness of the victim. If a victim is helpless, it has no choice to survive, and we are killing that thing, then it’s a deep sin. One or two-day-old calves are killed. Lambs are killed.
All these are real violence because, just imagine, the mother had the child in the womb for many months and delivered. It doesn’t get to feed the child; the child is taken away and killed. How does the mother feel?
All these things I don’t want to explain further, but you can contemplate on it, you can understand. Everything is our responsibility. We have a big responsibility. We have to understand that whatever we do, whatever we say, whatever we involve in, we should be responsible. It’s our responsibility. It is very important to understand.
Live responsibly
That’s exactly what I always say, live responsibly. Live with responsibility, be kind, be compassionate, understand the other being, feel them, recognize them as an individual. A cow has nine months of pregnancy, just like a human being. But it doesn’t get to look after its child. Imagine a human mother had the same experience; what do we call it? Injustice, and so many different factors. We have to understand all this. I’m just saying that be sensitive.
Transcribed by Ulla Bernholdt
Proofread by Rekha Murali