Sometimes people ask me about my reasons for not eating meat. They start to talk about all the reason why humans are "supposed" to be meat eaters, or were built to be meat eaters, or they mention the real need for meat in order to be healthy. My reason is simple really.
I don't eat meat because I can live with out it. There are two reasons really.
The first is that I believe the only real way that we could ever all reach a truly joyful life, all of us together, would be if we were more compassionate. I think an primary step towards compassion is easily summed up in the adage, "Do unto others as you would have done to you", or "Don't do to others what you would not want done to you".
In a world where this is the way we begin our actions, most of us are not denied by any body else, the possibility of attaining our own happiness. Since the prime concern for most of us is being in the first place, not killing another is easily reasoned out. Since we can easily see in other beings the same efforts as ours to live then it is also to reason out including all life forms in this consideration.
This starts to bring up larger questions when applying it to our eating habits. If one includes all living beings, including plants in the scope of compassion then one could easily get to the idea that killing and eating a plant, being a vegetarian, might not be going far enough. One could then go on to the next level and decide to only eat the fruit and nuts and the different "leavings" of other living things that do not cause their death. This could come to include milk, and unfertilized eggs, seeds, leaves....
In truth, I don't have a real problem with one being eating another. It is the way our world works to a large part. But there are many beings who survive with out killing and eating others. Being human we seem to be able to adapt to many different ways of living. The practice of not killing in order to survive is a choice. In a world that is saturated with human violence, at a personal level, and at a national level, and if one considers how easily we cut down trees, and pollute habitats then on a species level as well, then the practice of not killing and causing the suffering of others seems a step in another direction.
The second reason is more selfish. I feel better, healthier for my choice. I have come to believe that my diet must change as I age, just as all other things must adjust to my older and decaying system. I look at the people around me and I see a host of ills that I do not suffer from. I cannot say definitively that it is due to my dietary choices but I believe that much of it is.
For as long as I have been eating the way I do and removed from my diet the meat of other animals I should by now be suffering some ill effects if they were to occur. I don't seem to be suffering at all. I work physically hard to cut the wood I need to heat my house thru the winter and doing all of the other work I do around here. I seem to be plenty strong enough. I don't feel that I have lost any intellectual capacity, but an outside observation would be more objective. I continue to learn new things and think critically and creatively, so I don't feel as though I have suffered any mental weakness as a result of my diet.
So, I try eat in a way that causes the least amount of suffering to other beings as possible, be they plant or animal and I do it because it is what I can do to try to be more compassionate to the other beings in our world, the way I would like to be treated.
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