[Dharma Mittra] told us about a man who came to him for advice. He had meditated for 30 years but could find no spiritual peace. “It turned out he was eating too much meat,” said Dharma. “He was a butcher. I told him to change his profession immediately.”
“Without the first step--ahimsa (nonviolence)--you gain nothing with meditation,” he reiterated. You get stuck in your chakras “when deep in your heart you know that as a real yogi you should be able to put yourself into someone else’s place. You should be able to put yourself in the place of a cow. Would you like for people to bring you to the slaughterhouse and take meat from you?”
He said that eating meat turns the stomach into a graveyard. “If there’s a nice house with a carcass in it, it turns into a morgue. If Rama and Jesus came and saw this house, they would not go in. They would wait outside.”
“So if you’re not a vegetarian yet, reduce the amount of meat intake,” Dharma encouraged.
As for dealing with unsavory people, he said, “You should love even the bad man. But keep your distance. If you start despising them it bounces back. If you send the negative thoughts out, it flows back to you.”
....Dharma said he suspected many of us half-believed in some things such as reincarnation and karma. “How many of you believe you came here with just a one-way ticket?” he asked. “What if you don’t accomplish what you want in this life, and you’re just a one-way incarnation?”
He said that bad karma does indeed follow one into the next life, and that the aforementioned butcher would face violence in his next incarnation. His guru said that when people help you, they are from your past. “If you died with money in the bank, it’ll be there in your next life--with interest. Everything has reasons from the past.”
After one morning session, some students were talking about Dharma’s hard-line take on vegetarianism. “I understand what he's saying, but I can't give up fish,“ said one. “I mean, I've been a vegetarian for ten years because of yoga, but I just love fish.” That afternoon, after chanting the Govinda mantra, Dharma began his talk by explaining that animals are like children, without hate. Then he discussed how many fish suffer so those humans can eat them. “It takes how many minutes for them to die without water? Animals are made to be loved, not to be eaten.
“If you have to eat meat, wait for one of the great saints to die and feast on his flesh. Then the vibrations will be positive.”
Click here or here to read the rest of this article about Sri Dharma's 2005 weekend workshop in Chicago.
“If you died with money in the bank, it’ll be there in your next life--with interest. Everything has reasons from the past.”
ReplyDeleteEXCELLENT!!!
Ralph from Dekalb
Saw the twin to this post on Facebook this morning. Can't comment there.
ReplyDeleteI was a "vegetarian" who ate fish for almost 20 years, then a "flexitarian" for 5 before giving up meat completely about 18 months ago. I wasn't in love with fish. It was just "easier" when going to someone's house to eat or at a restaurant.
I still struggle to figure out a good answer to: "No meat? Why?" One that works at a business dinner. Talk about ahimsa is ill-timed when your business guest is diving into a bloody steak. But I won't have a lobster/clams in Maine next week.
I also wonder: if everything has a reason from the past, is there any point in trying to figure out that reason? Or is it unknowable and an exercise in futility?
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ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteI also wonder: if everything has a reason from the past, is there any point in trying to figure out that reason? Or is it unknowable and an exercise in futility?
This question is answered in the Swami Radha book.
Well OK, I'll look there then (Thank you). You have a nice week next week.
ReplyDelete"I don't like meat" is the response I use at business dinners. It generally works. It's not political or preachy- just an expression of preference.
ReplyDeleteReminds of of this quote from "Indestructible Truth" by Reginald Ray:
ReplyDelete"The whole process of meditation is about softening up, opening, and surrendering to the deeper aspects of one's own being, aspects that are not self-centered. Negative actions, if persisted in, lead us in the opposite direction by making us hard, selfish, insensitive, and defensive. The more one tries to sit, the more the enormity of one's actions will assert itself."