Ask any number of yogis to describe their diets and you'll likely get
responses as varied as the styles they practice. Many traditionalists
see yoga as being inextricably linked with the meatless path, citing
numerous ancient Indian texts to prove their conviction. Others put less
stock in centuries-old warnings like "the slaughter of animals
obstructs the way to heaven" (from the Dharma Sutras) than in what their
bodies have to say. If eating flesh begets health and energy, they
argue, it must be the right choice for them--and their yoga.
Today's range of dietary habits might seem like a recent development,
but delve back into the historical record and you'll find a long
tradition of ethical wrangling with respect to animals. Indeed, the
different stances yogis now take on vegetarianism reflect just the
latest turn in a debate that started thousands of years ago.
The Past-Life Argument
The history of vegetarianism in India began in the Vedic period, an era
that dawned sometime between 4000 and 1500 b.c.e., depending on whom you
ask. Four sacred texts known as the Vedas were the bedrock of early
Hindu spiritual thought. Among those texts' hymns and songs that
described with reverence the wondrous power of the natural world, we
find a nascent idea that sets the stage for vegetarianism in later
centuries. "The concept of the transmigration of souls... first dimly
appears in the Rig Veda," explains Colin Spencer in Vegetarianism: A History
(Four Walls, Eight Windows, 2002). "In the totemistic culture of the
pre-Indus civilization, there was already a sense of oneness with
creation." A fervent belief in this idea, he contends, would give rise
to vegetarianism later on.
In subsequent ancient texts, including the Upanishads, the idea of
rebirth emerged as a central point. In these writings, according to
Kerry Walters and Lisa Portmess, editors of Religious Vegetarianism
(State University of New York Press, 2001), "gods take animal form,
human beings have had past animal lives, [and] animals have had past
human lives." All creatures harbored the Divine, so that rather than
being fixed in time, life was fluid. (A cow alone, notes Spencer, held
330 million gods and goddesses. To kill one set you back 86
transmigrations of the soul.) Again, the idea that the meat on a dinner
plate once lived in a different--and possibly human--form made it all
the less palatable.
Dietary guidelines became explicit centuries later in the Laws of Manu,
written between 200 b.c.e. and 100 c.e., say Walters and Portmess. In
this text, we discover that the sage Manu doesn't find fault just with
those who eat meat. "He who permits the slaughter of an animal," he
wrote, "he who cuts it up, he who kills it, he who buys or sells meat,
he who cooks it, he who serves it up, and he who eats it, must all be
considered as the slayers of the animal."
The Bhagavad Gita, arguably the most influential text of the Hindu
tradition (written sometime between the fourth and first centuries
b.c.e.), added to the vegetarian argument with its practical dietary
guidelines. It specifies that sattvic foods (milk, butter, fruit,
vegetables, and grains) "promote vitality, health, pleasure, strength,
and long life." Bitter, salty, and sour rajasic foods (including meat, fish, and alcohol) "cause pain, disease, and discomfort." At the bottom rung lies the tamasic
category: "stale, overcooked, contaminated" and otherwise rotten or
impure foods. These explanations have endured, becoming the guidelines
by which many modern yogis eat.
Spiritual Contradiction
The case for vegetarianism mounted as centuries passed, while another
practice--animal sacrifice--persisted alongside it. The same Vedas that
extolled the virtues of the natural world also emphasized the need for
animal sacrifice to the gods. The uneasy coexistence between India's
emerging inclination toward vegetarianism and its history of animal
sacrifice continued over hundreds of years, says Edwin Bryant, professor
of Hinduism at Rutgers University. Oftentimes the conflict played out
in the pages of the same text.
The sage Manu, for instance, condemned recreational meat eating,
stating, "There is no greater sinner than that man who...seeks to
increase the bulk of his own flesh by the flesh of other beings." But
orthodox followers of Vedic culture--including Manu--were "forced to
allow the performance of animal sacrifice," Bryant notes. Ultimately,
the discomfort that many in ancient India felt about animal sacrifice
helped fuel the demise of the practice.
Some orthodox traditionalists, for instance, felt uncomfortable
challenging the ancient texts on the issue out of respect for what they
believed were the writings' divine origins. However, they did condemn
everyday meat eating, adding a number of conditions to animal sacrifice
so that "the practice accrued ghastly karmic results that far
outweighed any benefits gained," explains Professor Bryant in A Communion of Subjects: Animals in Religion and Ethics, edited by Kimberly Patton and Paul Waldau (to be published in 2004).
Others simply deemed the ancient texts outdated, and went on to form
groups such as the Jainas and the Buddhists. No longer bound by Vedic
authority, Bryant says, they "could scorn the whole sacrificial culture
and preach an unencumbered ahimsa," or doctrine of nonviolence.
This concept of ahimsa, championed by Mahavira in the sixth century, has
emerged at the core of the vegetarian argument in modern times.
Some later Indian sages strengthened the case for vegetarianism. Swami
Vivekananda, writing a hundred years ago, pointed out the communality we
have with other animals: "The amoeba and I are the same. The difference
is only one of degree; and from the standpoint of the highest life, all
differences vanish." Swami Prabhupada, scholar and founder of the
International Society for Krishna Consciousness, offered a more stark
pronouncement: "If you want to eat animals, then [God] will give you...
the body of a tiger in your next life so that you can eat flesh very
freely."
In most cultures today, the rights of animals have at least prevailed
over the ritual of sacrifice, if not meat eating. Scores of yogis live
and eat with the understanding, as expressed by B.K.S. Iyengar, that a
vegetarian diet is "a necessity" to the practice of yoga. But other,
equally dedicated yogis find flesh a necessary fuel, without which their
practice suffers. Those yoga enthusiasts still on the fence when it
comes to the meat question should take heart, however. It seems that a
thoughtful, deliberate, and at times even challenging consideration of
vegetarianism is very much in the spirit of the Indian spiritual
tradition.
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