Very often, we consume meat by habit, without having thought of the fact that it involves the taking of life, often in a very brutal manner. When we eat a plant, there are two things to consider.
The first is that we often do not uproot the plant in its entirety, we pick only a part of it – say its leaves (think of spinach). What happens next? It grows again. It doesn’t die. Likewise, when we pick fruit, we do not destroy the tree.
The second factor is that plants are understood to have a lower level of consciousness than animals, humans being at the tip of the pyramid of life forms.
We do have to eat to survive, but choosing food that causes as little harm or pain as possible does not burden our soul thus enabling it to easily connect with the one consciousness (read meditate and feel harmony within and without).
Some wise persons explain that fruit is meant to be eaten by man. The fragrance and visual appeal of ripe fruit attracts our attention. Our picking fruit and eating it and simultaneously throwing away its seed serves to disperse it over a wider area.
If we were not to pluck the fruit, it would fall and rot. Its seed, lying in the shade of its own creator (tree), would die.
Leo Tolstoy, another vegetarian’s words are apt for inclusion at this point, “As long as there are slaughterhouses there will be battlefields. A vegetarian diet is the acid test of humanitarianism.”
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