By Day of Greenleaf, the Founding Yaiyr
Welcome, Dear Reader, to Chapter One of my book on Nasarean Essene Vegetarianism. That is the variety of vegetarianism taught and practiced by Yahshua (‘Jesus’) and his wife, Miriam (‘Mary’) the Magdalene. This first chapter deals with the topic of MOTIVE.
I hereby assert that the most important motive for vegetarianism is expressed by the Sanskrit word AHIMSA. In English we can call it, Merciful Compassion in ascending levels of nonviolence that features spiritually-motivated vegetarianism. I will show that Ahimsa is the main motive of spiritually oriented vegetarianism of various ‘relatively high’ religions.
In other chapters, other significant sub-motives for Nasarean vegetarianism will be examined, including the health and environmental reasons. But in this first chapter, I stick mostly to what I consider the main motive of spiritually oriented vegetarianism: AHIMSA.
Before looking at the Nasarean Essene teachings on Compassion-Motivated Vegetarianism, I will define the Sanskrit word Ahimsa and then launch a study of the historic role that it has had in the yoga practices and religions of India in general and, especially, in the yogic traditions that are based on the ancient text called, The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. Having set the stage, I then introduce Yahshua’s (Jesus) and Miriam’s (‘Mary’ Magdalene) teachings that relate to the topic of this chapter – Compassion-Motivated Vegetarianism. We will go on to study the vegetarian teachings of other Nasarean teachers including Moses.
Before launching into a definition and detailed study of the key Sanskrit term AHIMSA, I am going to share the story of how I became a vegetarian at age seventeen. This story contains a graphic account of the killing of ‘my’ pet pig by the local butcher; unfortunately, teenage me was complicit in that horrible act. As you will read, my motive at the time seemed ‘noble’ – to help the family food budget – but I came to realize that what is considered a ‘noble motive’ at one level of spiritual awareness may be viewed as relatively primitive and ‘low-level’ from higher levels of enlightenment on the Spiral Ladder of Spiritual Evolution.
As I came to realize, that friendly, smart, young, joyful pig, did not deserve to die with a couple bullets in its head.
I feel I must warn my gentle readers: the following account is extremely violent. As violent as the death of the family pig was, I believe that accurate reporting of how I became a vegetarian demands I share the shocking story.
Well, I hope it shocks you all! ☺ It should shock us all into an enhanced realization of how spiritually ‘low-level’ this sort of slaughtering of animals for food really is.
It shocked me to remember how spiritually weak it was of ‘teenage me’ not to have intervened in the sweet pig’s death. Here is the story. And though it ends with its share of blood, that blood led to my decision to become vegetarian and to dedicate my life to promoting the many advantages of the various types of vegetarianism. That work has resulted in several thousand people (so far) that I know of that have become vegetarian through me. If each of them causes several others to become vegetarian – and each one of those newest vegetarians goes on to likewise inspire several more – those several thousand that I know of are the proverbial ‘tip of the iceburg’. I share the above simply to affirm the positive reality that the blood of this pig has altered reality in a positive way.
The story that follows is directly related to AHIMSA.
How I (Day) Became Vegetarian at age Seventeen Just Before Meeting My Essene Teacher
As I write these words, it has been nearly fifty years since I became vegetarian due to the following life experience – a TRUE LIFE LESSON. The story begins with my having had what seemed like a good idea with a noble motive: to help my family with the food budget by buying, and then raising to be butchered for meat, a baby pig.
When I was seventeen, knowing that my family was having some financial challenges, I decided to purchase a baby pig and ‘fatten it’ for eventual slaughter to help with the family food budget. My family lived in a rural area where it was common to raise farm animals and a friend of mine had long been raising pigs for money. He offered to sell me one for a low price.
When I went to his house – his parents had a small farm – to pick up the baby pig, I thought it was funny that he had given all his pigs names like ‘Pork Chop’ and ‘Bacon’ so I named the one I purchased, ‘Ham.’
The previous owner of my families’ property had long before built a pigpen, so I made a few repairs and introduced Ham to his new home.
A problem soon developed. ‘Ham’ became like a family pet. The whole family loved him, especially me, perhaps because I fed him every day and so had the most contact.
Did you know that many experts say that pigs are the second most intelligent species of animal after dolphins? Whether that is exactly right or at least relatively close, I can testify that THIS PIG WAS SMART!
And sweet! And obviously loved life and embraced each day joyfully. Until the day we followed through on the original plan of slaughtering our friendly pig and thus put an end to his joy.
I don’t know what we were expecting to happen as far as the details of actually killing the pig, but our whole family was shocked when those ‘details’ played out before our very eyes.
Yes, Ham was friendly and playful – until the day the butcher came and delivered two bullets to his head.
Well, actually – and even worse – the butcher let his son – who was several years younger than me – pull the trigger.
Looking back, I have often wondered why I went through with the original plan to turn Ham into, well, ham. (And bacon and sausages.) When the time came that his weight was just right for slaughter, my dad made the call to the butcher and nobody in the family suggested otherwise. It simply was not discussed.
The local butcher in our rural town ran his own meat shop and was available for hire for slaughter. He showed up with his son – I will estimate the boy was about 14 – in an old pickup truck. They got out of the truck with a rifle and, as the butcher watched with fatherly pride, his son put two bullets in the head of the friendly pig named Ham.
After we paid them, they took the dead body of the young pig and threw it on their truck to take it to be ‘cured’ and turned into individual packages of various kinds of pork: bacon, sausages, etc.
About two weeks later, the butcher returned to drop off a freezer-load of pieces of the friendly pig wrapped up in white butcher-paper. It arrived in time for Sunday breakfast. Back in that era – the 1970’s – it was very common for the entire family to have a big breakfast together. Our typical Sunday family breakfast included sausages, eggs, toast, and pancakes. Nobody in the family had previously had a problem eating the Farmer John’s brand of store-bought sausages.
On the first Sunday family breakfast that featured pieces of our own ‘pet pig’, NOT ONE MEMBER OF OUR SIX-PERSON FAMILY WAS ABLE TO EAT A SINGLE BITE OF SAUSAGE. Not even my tough old Dad.
Speaking about (well, writing about) my tough old Dad, here is an interesting tidbit. I grew up knowing that my dad never ate chicken. He ate other kinds of meat, just not chicken. I had assumed he just did not like the taste. But one day my mom told me that, when Dad was a little boy during the era that came on the heels of the ‘Great Depression’, his family raised chickens. They gave one with a gimp leg to my dad, then a little boy, and it became his pet. He attached a string to the gimp-legged chicken and each day after school they walked around the backyard together.
But one day my dad came home from school and his pet chicken was nowhere to be found. And then his mom offered him a bowl of homemade chicken soup. Yup, the family was so poor that they had beheaded the very chicken they had given to him and made a pot of soup.
Now back to my teen years and the pig story. Although no member of my family – not even ‘tough old Dad’ – was able to eat a sausage made from our pet pig, the very next Sunday every member of the family but me ate the ‘Farmer John’ brand sausage. [We gave away the freezer-full load of pork to friends and neighbors.]
I stopped eating meat but did not think of myself as being a vegetarian. I was so grossed-out having witnessed the slaughter and processing of a happy Being into wrapped pieces of meat that I did not feel up to eating meat.
As Divine Timing would have it, I soon met the elderly man that became my Essene teacher. He (Malachi of Alexandria) explained why he was a spiritually motivated vegetarian. Hearing him speak those words right on the heels of my experience with the pig, I chose to affirm my intention to become a vegetarian on a permanent basis. It has been nearly fifty years since that affirmation, and I have not had a single bite of meat in all that time.
Though I soon came to know and appreciate the many great reasons to be a vegetarian – including health and environmental reasons – MY MAIN MOTIVATION IN BECOMING A VEGETARIAN WAS, IN ENGLISH, ‘MERCIFUL COMPASSION’ TOWARD ANIMALS. That motive is intimately linked to what is called in Sanskrit: AHIMSA.
The religions from India that are linked to the word AHIMSA include various Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist traditions. After introducing you to various Indian religious and yogic traditions that feature Ahimsa in their practices – especially, but not exclusively, amongst the monks, nuns, and yogis of those traditions – we will explore the Nasarean Essene tradition of Ahimsa as taught by Yahshua and Miriam. I will also provide a chapter on how the modern ‘Animal Rights Movement’ includes many great examples of how the ancient practice of Ahimsa can be creatively employed in our contemporary world.
Reader, let me ask YOU a question: DO YOU LOVE ANIMALS? Most Americans answer that question affirmatively. Most Americans have – or previously have had – a beloved pet. Most of us have had more than one. Yes, Americans love animals… but only around 2% of Americans are vegetarians that do not even eat fish or birds. And only a percentage of that 2% are vegan (abstain from all animal products including dairy and eggs).
My Essene teacher, Malachi, used to wear a tunic with the following words on it: BE KIND TO ANIMALS: DON’T EAT THEM! The same slogan graced a wall of his cabin and a wooden sign in his garden. The sentiment that slogan expresses is AHIMSA. (At some point in this book I will quite boldfacing the word Ahimsa but not yet! ☺ For many of you this is a new word and I want to help you remember it!)
In The Encyclopedia of Eastern Philosophy and Religion, we are given the following definition:
Ahimsa. Sanskrit. Literally: ‘nonharming’. Abstinence from injuring any living creature through thought, word, or deed; one of the five virtues on the first step (first yama) of Raja Yoga, as stipulated in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali…. In Buddhism “nonharming” [Ahimsa] of living beings is considered one of the most important aspects of the Buddhist spiritual attitude. The rule of vegetarianism for monks and nuns in most Buddhist cultures is based on this principle of ahimsa.
While some people point out that the literal definition of Ahimsa – ‘nonharming’ – does not mention a requirement of being a vegetarian, most Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain sources have considered vegetarianism a key element of Ahimsa.
The reference in the above definition to Ahimsa being “one of the five virtues of the first step (first yama”) of Raja Yoga, as stipulated in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali”, will, over the course of subsequent pages, be fully explained. For now, suffice to say that both the Hindu and Nasarean versions of ‘Patanjali’s Sutras’ include a list of things that a practitioner of spiritual yoga should do and should not do to experience progressively higher states of bliss-consciousness on the Spiral Ladder of Being via spiritual evolution. Both the Hindu and Nasarean versions include AHIMSA.
In a resource text called The New Age Dictionary, Ahimsa is defined as follows:
Ahimsa. Noninjury, nonviolence, active love.
In Dictionary of Philosophy and Religion, William L. Reese wrote the following definition of Ahimsa:
Ahimsa. A Sanskrit term meaning non-injury. Basic to the practice of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. Because each living thing is in process of working out its salvation, one should be careful not to interfere in any way. The prohibition has religious force.
In the following excerpt from Nathaniel Altman’s book, Ahimsa, we get a hint that Ahimsa is a holistic form of ‘non-harming’ that includes an entire way of life not just vegetarianism or abstention from the military or other obvious things like hunting (though it includes those obvious things). Altman writes:
The pathway to Ahimsa involves the most exciting journey a person can experience. It helps us tap our deepest sources of inspiration, truth, and compassion. It helps us understand the essence of patience, of humor, and of sharing the best we have to offer. The pathway helps us become integrated, aware, and dynamic human beings who care about the world and want to make it a better place for all its citizens. Most of all, Ahimsa involves a unique process of creativity and enjoyment in living which will be reflected in everything we do.
In her book titled, Yoga and Vegetarianism, vegan activist and respected yoga teacher Sharon Gannon makes a strong case for vegetarianism to be considered as an essential part of Ahimsa for modern practitioners of yoga. I am going to share a lengthy excerpt from Sharon, but first I will share an excerpt from the Foreword to that book. In that Foreword, noted animal rights activist Ingrid Newkirk writes:
In the 1800s, the celebrated British writer Henry James proclaimed that there are three things in life that count. The first is to be kind, he wrote. The second is to be kind. And, yes, as you’ve no doubt guessed, the third is to be kind.
Kindness is the magic word that links, with all-encompassing positivism, every being in the universe to all the others. Through meditation and self-awareness, yogis come to see this interconnectedness that most of humanity only dreams of, yet there are clear and easy steps all “mere mortals” can take to reach this understanding.
It is indisputable that all… animals share our capacity for love, grief, joy, and pain. Once upon a time, we ruled the Earth with an iron fist, taking whatever we desired from anyone and everyone powerless to defend themselves, including people of other colors and abilities, and it was acceptable to treat animals as inanimate objects. Today, unless we have hardened our hearts and closed our minds to reason, we appreciate them as sentient forms of diverse life, as the “spirits” that they are.
Animals are individuals with families who are traveling through life, as we are, vulnerable and hopeful, like us vested with dreams and the desire to escape suffering….
We go through life having many lessons to learn, and those of us who seek to be better people try hard to mold ourselves into beings we can be pleased about, spiritually successful, able to conquer our base desires and striving to be virtuous. By working to extend our kindness to all, without bias and without asking for anything in return, we realize our own potential as good people.
After Ingrid Newkirk’s beautiful Foreword to Yoga and Vegetarianism, author Sharon Gannon writes:
Yoga students often ask me, “What does practicing yoga have to do with vegetarianism?” I hope to answer that question in this book by exploring Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, a scriptural text thousands of years old that lays out the philosophical underpinnings of yoga.
The first step is yama, which means restraint. It consists of five ethical guidelines regarding how yogis should treat others, all of which clearly support a vegetarian diet. The first yama Patanjali gives is ahimsa, or nonharming.
Patanjali implies that if we can become firmly established in ahimsa, others will cease to harm us. Many spiritual leaders have noted that there is so much suffering in the world because there is so much violence. If we can reduce the violence, we can reduce the suffering. Patanjali says future suffering should be avoided, and he prescribes ahimsa as the method – stop perpetuating violence, and it will cease. ….
Billions of animals are killed every year for human consumption after living confined in horrible conditions on factory farms and enduring untold extremes of suffering. This fact alone is good reason for any yoga practitioner to adopt a vegetarian diet….
Finally, as yogis, ultimately our goal is enlightenment, which involves realizing the unity and interconnectedness of all beings and things – not just human beings. Extending compassion toward animals purifies our karmas, creating an internal state of being conducive to enlightenment.
In the following passage, Sharon describes what led her to become a vegetarian and an advocate of kindness to animals. She writes:
In 1982, while living in Seattle, Washington, as a dancer, poet, musician, and painter, I went to see The Animals Film – a British documentary that probed into the relationship between human beings and animals. ….
Those two hours and twenty minutes in the movie theater altered my life like no other single incident. The film exposed the cruel, exploitative, and inhumane way that we human beings treat animals…. It ended with the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) rescuing animals from a laboratory. The movie caused me to radically rethink art, the purpose of the artist, and what I was doing with my life. If I wasn’t contributing to stopping the insanity I saw depicted in this film, what was the value in what I was doing?
I had been an on-again off-again vegetarian before the film. After viewing it, I became a committed vegetarian and, soon after, a vegan. I was deeply affected and vowed that I would find a way to help stop the suffering of the animals I had seen in the film – but how? ….
I realized through the practice of yoga that ideas were not enough to change the world or to change my own life. Whatever I wanted to see in the world around me had to first become real in my own life, in my own body, down to the molecular level. Change had to start with the way I lived, the way I breathed, and how I spoke.
Yoga gave me the means to dehypnotize myself from the cultural conditioning to which I – and everyone – had been subjected….
Yoga taught me, above all, that life provides us with opportunities to be kind. Kindness leads to compassion, and compassion is essential for enlightenment, which is the goal of yoga.
Through the practice of yoga, I have learned something about the nature and meaning of karma. I have come to realize that how we treat others determines our own reality…. That is what finally motivated me to become a yoga teacher as a way to share the benefits of vegetarianism with others who are interested in the path of enlightenment….
Our present reality is a projection of our inner reality, and that inner reality arises according to our past karmas. Our past karmas are the result of how we have treated others. How we have treated others in the past determines our present reality….
Sharon Gannon is going to go on and specifically address the role of spiritual vegetarianism – in her case veganism – in the Patanjali-based form of yoga that she practices and teaches. But first let us pause to define and explore a key term that she introduced above: KARMA.
Her own definition was succinct but accurate:
Our present reality is a projection of our inner reality, and that inner reality arises according to our past karmas. Our past karmas are the result of how we have treated others. How we have treated others in the past determines our present reality….
Let us spend a bit of time and effort to further illuminate the key term Karma.
The following excerpt from Paul Younger, a Sanskrit scholar, is from the Introduction to his book, Indian Religious Thought. He first defines the word karma and then asserts that whether or not we ascend to a higher – or fall to a lower – rung on the Spiral Ladder of Being from one incarnation to the next is a result of our personal karma. Younger writes (of karma):
From the root… “to do” or “to work.” The word itself means “work.” The “law of karma” is the understanding that one’s works in the present incarnation determine how high or low the next incarnation will be.
If, in our current incarnation, we do not give up – spiritually transcend – the brutal dietary practice of slaughtering animals for food, would it not follow that we ‘karmically deserve’ to be slaughtered and eaten in our next incarnation? Food for thought! (Vegan food for thought, no less!) ☺
In his essay titled, Choosing: Karma and Dharma in the 21st Century, William Metzger, in a compilation of essays from twenty-five scholars in a book titled, KARMA: Rhythmic Return to Harmony, writes:
Karma and dharma interact in our life choices moment by moment. We are conditioned by the sum total of past experiences, thoughts, and actions, and this is our karma. We say, then, that karma is the universal law of cause and effect. This means that every action has a reaction, every… act has consequences….
We also know people who have broken past patterns [Day: past karmic conditioning] … and transformed their lives and the lives of others [Day: that is the purpose of Karma Yoga]. Therefore, our understanding of karma must be combined with our understanding of dharma.
Though we are surely conditioned by our past [Day: past karma, good or bad]… we also have a responsibility to our particular time and situation, and this is our dharma, our duty, or inner obligation. Distinguishing our conditioning [Day: past karma] from our responsibility to act beyond the boundaries of that conditioning is the task of a lifetime, or several lifetimes. [boldface added by Day]
I ask the reader to consider how the degree of merciful kindness that one cultivates in the garden that is their current incarnation directly relates to their future incarnations and the degree of merciful kindness that will be shown to them by others according to the principle of Cause and Effect or “What you put out, comes back to you”. This directly relates to the principle of Ahimsa in its entirety, and quite obviously so to the specific aspect of Ahimsa related to dietary practices motivated by spiritual kindness.
Dr. John Mumford (a.k.a. Swami Anandakapili Saraswati), in his book Karma Manual, writes:
Let’s go back to Karma itself, and I will define the word for you. It comes from the Sanskrit root word, kri…. In Sanskrit, the word literally means… an act….
Kriya usually means “technique” or “action,” and in English we actually recognize the concept of being creative, of releasing our personal creativity.
This tells us something: that Karma, or the Law of Karma, is an opportunity to make our lives one creative journey from womb to tomb [boldface added by Day]….
A similar link between the words karma and create appears in the following excerpt from Karen Armstrong’s Karma: The Ancient Science Of Cause And Effect. This excerpt also serves as a perfect entrance into our look at how karma is linked to the doctrine of REINCARNATION. Armstrong writes:
Of all the subjects that are crucial to us human beings, karma – or ultimate cause and effect – is one of the most important.
Karma is about all of the things we do and the results that proceed from that doing….
Before there was modern science with its notion that “every action has an equal and opposite reaction,” ancient thinkers throughout the East studied karma as the science of the reactions to everything we do.
The word “karma” stems from the Sanskrit root kri, which means “to do.” The English word create [boldface by Day] is derived from this root.
The idea is that everything that surrounds us is interconnected in causal chains that are not always obvious. And as we engage in actions, we desire the ability to predict their outcomes.
In a limited sense, this is also karma, the science of understanding how the outcome is related to our behavior: to what we do.
The scientific thinkers of ancient India also studied material nature in exactly that way, in terms of cause and effect. But they realized that in order to ultimately understand what we do and its long-term implications, we also have to understand three other things.
Pay close attention now as Karen Armstrong identifies those three things and makes a reference to reincarnation:
One of those things [Day: that we need to know in order to more fully understand the workings of cause and effect] is the individual doer, the second is material nature, and the third is the Supreme Controller or Divine Intelligence.
In other words, cause and effect are not just about the mechanical operations of matter; they are also about who we are in essence and what our ultimate destination could be, as well as our relationship with the Supreme Being and the various laws of nature.
Karma raises the questions of who we are in the final state of our being, where we come from, why we are here, who or what is in control of the universe, and what possibilities are there beyond our present experiences.
Karma not only asks how we can interact with and control the world around us [Day: as does mainstream science], but also brings forward the moral questions of what right and wrong actions are and what the future consequences of our present actions will be….
It is for this reason that we often hear the words karma and reincarnation in the same sentence [boldface by Day]. The missing question regarding cause and effect that science and many religions have failed to consider is this: what if we, the doers, are neither the body nor the mind? What if we are indestructible conscious entities that move from body to body, life after life, creating and receiving the results of our various doings? [boldface by Day]
We learn important information on the link between ‘Reincarnation’ and ‘Karma’ in the following excerpt from Reincarnation And The Law Of Karma, published in 1908 by the Yogi Publication Society. The author, W.W. Atkinson writes:
This view holds that the present condition of each soul is due to its own progress, development, advancement, unfoldment, or the lack of the same – the soul being its own Fate and Destiny – the enforcer of the Law upon itself, under the Law of Karma….
…. that the soul is one of countless others… from the Source of Being aeons ago, equal in power, opportunities, etc., and which [each] individual soul has worked its way up to its present position through many rebirths and lives, in which it has gained many experiences and lessons, which determine its present condition, and which in turn will profit by the experiences and lessons of the present life by which the next stage of its life will be determined….
Atkinson then quotes a French writer – Figuier – to support the above view:
If… we admit the plurality of human existences and reincarnation… all this is made wonderfully clear…. Before our birth, we have already lived, and this life is the sequel and result of previous ones. We have a soul that we must purify, improve and ennoble [Day: ‘make noble’] during our stay upon earth; or having already completed an imperfect and wicked life, we are compelled to begin a new one, and thus strive to rise to the level of those that have passed on to higher planes.
Having quoted Figuier, Atkinson then continues his own remarks:
The advocates of Reincarnation point out that the idea of Justice is fully carried out in that view of life, inasmuch as what we are is determined by what we have been; and what we shall be is determined by what we are now; and that we are constantly urged on by the pressure [Day: ‘push’ or ‘motivating power’] of the unfolding spirit and attracted upward by the Divine One.
I hope that it is clear to my readers that all the above is also a description of what we Nasareans – and many other spiritually-oriented thinkers – call: SPIRITUAL EVOLUTION UPON THE SPIRAL LADDER OF BEING.
Here is a great excerpt on Spiritual Evolution. We read in Alan Sasha Lithman’s book, An Evolutionary Agenda for the Third Millenium:
All this, then, the sub-atomic and interstellar galaxies, light-spinning within and around it and us, are forms, fields and figures of Conscious Being (in which consciousness is the very substance of being) unfolding itself in an unbroken stream that appears to us through the device of time-space in discrete intermediary phases and stages of Conscious Being engaged in a process of self-knowing, a peek-a-boo play (in Sanskrit, called the Divine’s Lila); becoming progressively more conscious of itself through various forms, filters and instruments of expression, sensation and cognition…. And it is here, now, where we find ourselves, both in this evolutionary chapter and in this evolutionary moment….
For as a species, we are in fact the recipient of all that aeonic evolution that has preceded us: the torch-bearer of that consciousness which threads and spirals all the way back through a… tunnel to that first moment of becoming, that first divine urge, that fire-to-be which emerged, passing itself on like a molecular torch through our Cosmo-genetic DNA, and impelled by that irresistible inner fire-to-be, that spark forever coded and kindled in the very core and nature of Being….
A Fire of Consciousness slowly gathering momentum as its inner will evolves more and more consciousness-sensitive instruments and organs through which to express, sense and experience itself; evolution accelerating in micro-bursts with its potential for self-will, self-awareness, self-development; allowing for swifter “evolutionary downloads” – for a swifter evolutionary unfolding, operating in progressively-more-rapid cycles, frequencies, wave lengths and vibrations….
It is this Consciousness, then, this Conscious Being, that both presses from within and without, pressing us forward from our past while simultaneously attracting us from our future, inviting and impelling us now to break through…, to consciously and courageously collaborate in our own self-evolution: The ultimate act of activism.
I trust my readers realize that they were just treated to some very advanced words on Spiritual Evolution in the above excerpt from Alan Sasha Lithman’s, An Evolutionary Agenda for the Third Millenium.
The ‘up’ and ‘down’ directions on The Spiral Ladder of Spiritual Awareness are intimately linked with the Laws of Karma and the Eternal Process of Spiritual Evolution. The way to ascend upward is to advance your practice of Ahimsa, your level of merciful kindness as a natural expression of your ADVANCED DEGREE OF UNIVERSAL LOVE CONSCIOUSNESS.
Until your degree of expression of Universal Love Consciousness includes a level of Ahimsa that abstains from the eating of animal flesh, it is, according to the greatest spiritual masters that have walked our planet, not high enough to transcend incarnating again in a violent world rather than a heavenly one. And that point brings us back to where we left off in our sharing from Sharon Gannon’s book, Yoga and Vegetarianism.
I promised that after our pause to study the meaning of the word ‘Karma’ we would continue our excerpt from Yoga and Vegetarianism. In the following paragraphs, Sharon Gannon specifically address the role of spiritual vegetarianism – in her case veganism – in the Patanjali-based form of yoga that she practices and teaches. We read:
A yogi, by definition, is someone who is striving to live harmoniously with the Earth and, through that good relationship, purify his or her karma so that enlightenment can arise. What is realized in the enlightened state is the oneness of being or the interconnectedness of all beings. Such a shift in consciousness has the potential to save our planet.
Karma means “action.” It covers all actions – thought, word, and deed. The law of karma says that for every action there is a reaction. Albert Einstein was reminding us of the law of karma when he pointed out that space is curved. Whatever is thrown out there will eventually, but inevitably, find its way back to its origin. So we should be careful about what we choose to think, say, or do, because we will be revisited by our actions in due time. ….
We assure our own future suffering by what we do to animals now. These warnings date back thousands of years to the Yoga Sutras, whose dictates are as relevant today as they were then….
The choice to become yogis and the choices we make about what to eat are karmic, political, and economic decisions that affect our mental and physical health. They have repercussions in our families as well as in our larger communities.
It is an indisputable fact that a vegan diet causes less harm to ourselves, to animals, to plants, and to the Earth….
The livestock industry is the single biggest contributor to global warming, as it creates far more greenhouse gas emissions than all forms of transportation combined!
There are more cows (most of them hidden from our view) in the United States than there are human beings. By enslaving these animals and abusing them through lifelong torture and degradation, we deprive them of their freedom and happiness. How can we ourselves hope to be free or happy when our own lives are rooted in depriving others of the very thing we say we value most in life – the freedom to pursue happiness?
If you want to bring more peace and happiness into your own life, the way to do so is to stop causing violence and unhappiness in the lives of others. Yoga reminds us that all of life is sacred, that all of life is connected, and that what we do to another we eventually do to ourselves. The best way to uplift our own lives is to do all we can to uplift the lives of others.
She now directly defines Ahimsa and then goes on to again link it with dietary nonviolence:
Ahimsa means “nonharming.” What happens when you practice ahimsa long enough to become established in it?
Through the practice of yoga and ethical vegetarianism, we can realize that we were meant to live in harmony with all the other animals and all of life. We come to know that our physical bodies function better without having to instill fear into others and to kill them, and that there is no nutrient that we need that we can’t get directly from plant sources or from sunlight.
We will come to recognize that our old bodies can be transformed and become light and whole – holy bodies, used as vehicles to bring peace. We can truly become the peace we wish to see in the world, and all beings will rejoice in our presence and not fear and run away from us.
Nonharming is essential to the yogi, because it creates the kind of karma that leads to eternal joy and happiness. According to the universal law of karma, if you cause harm to others, you will suffer the painful consequences of your actions. The yogi, realizing this, tries to cause the least amount of harm and suffering to others as possible.
Compassion is an essential ingredient of ahimsa. Through compassion, you begin to see yourself in other beings. This helps you refrain from causing harm to them.
Patanjali gives ahimsa as a practice, meaning you do your best to cause the least amount of harm. The yogi strives to cause the least amount of harm possible, and it is clear that eating a vegetarian diet causes the least harm to the planet and all creatures.
Some Hindu Teachings on Ahimsa
Mahatma Gandhi (born 1869 and assassinated in 1948 after leading the world’s first nonviolent revolution), a Hindu – the first of a number of Hindus we are about to excerpt from on this topic – wrote in hisMission and Message:
I do not regard flesh-food as necessary for us at any stage and under any clime in which it is possible for human beings ordinarily to live. I hold flesh-food to be unsuited to our species….
In a speech to the London Vegetarian Society in 1931, Gandhi said:
“. . . the basis of my vegetarianism is not physical, but moral. If anybody said that I should die if I did not take beef-tea or mutton, even under medical advice, I would prefer death. That is the basis of my vegetarianism.
“I would love to think that all of us who called ourselves vegetarians should have that basis. There were thousands of meat-eaters who did not stay meat-eaters. There must be a definite reason for our making that change in our lives, for our adopting habits and customs different from society, even though sometimes that change may offend those nearest and dearest to us.
“Not for the world should you sacrifice a moral principle. Therefore the only basis for having a vegetarian society and proclaiming a vegetarian principle is, and must be, a moral one.”
In the spiritual classic Autobiography of a Yogi, there is a photograph of the author, Swami Yogananda, eating a meal with Gandhi at a Gandhian Ashram in India. (Note: Gandhi founded several intentional communities – called ‘Ashrams’ 〝 in which Ahimsa was taught and practiced.) Yogananda describes the following conversation with Mahatma Gandhi at the Gandhian Ashram he visited. Yogananda writes:
Gandhi looked up with his unforgettable smile. I said, “Mahatmaji, please tell me your definition of ahimsa.” He replied, “The avoidance of harm to any living creature [as far as I can]….”
Yogananda, knowing that Gandhi strongly advocated vegetarianism as a necessary part of Ahimsa, and also knowing that Gandhi, unlike many Hindus, included eggs in his diet for health reasons (Gandhi describes in his autobiography that he healed his own health as well as the health of others by including eggs in the vegetarian diet though he ate only unfertilized eggs), Yogananda asked him:
“Eggs are a high protein food; are they forbidden to satyagrahis?” [A ‘satyagrahi’ is a practitioner of Gandhis form of “active ahimsa” called satyagraha.]
Gandhi replied: “not unfertilized eggs.” The Mahatma laughed reminiscently. He said, “For years I would not countenance their use…. One of my daughters-in-law was once dying of malnutrition; her doctor said ＆Ganhiji, unfertilized eggs contain no life sperm; no killing is involved.’ I then gladly gave my blessing for my daughter-in-law to eat eggs; she was soon restored to health.”
When I later share the Nasarean version of The Ten Commandments of Moses, you will learn that Nasareans permitted members to eat dairy or eggs provided that the animals are well treated, but some of them chose to be vegan (that word did not yet exist but the practice itself existed). Like Gandhi in the above example, we will learn that Yahshua (‘Jesus’) was for a time vegan and later included non-fertilized eggs in his diet. Yahshua highly commends the vegan version of the vegetarian diet (no meat, eggs, or dairy products) but cautions vegans against considering themselves to be ‘holier than thou’ compared to non-vegan vegetarians.
Nevertheless, it should be understood that Gandhi was an exception when it comes to Hindu vegetarians: the vast majority eat some dairy products but do not eat eggs. Of course, the reason they do not eat eggs is that they know that eggs can become baby chickens. Gandhi and Yahshua both point out that non-fertilized eggs would not become a baby chicken.
The link between Ahimsa and vegetarianism is strongly made in the following excerpt from a Hindu text called Saiva Dharma Sastras: The Book of Discipline of Saiva Siddhanta Church. The author, Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami, writes:
Most importantly, ahimsa, the great imperative of Hindu dharma, demands that sishyas [Day: disciples] adhere to vegetarianism, as stated in sutra 32: “none of my followers shall intentionally kill or injure any creature whatsoever. Full of Compassion, free of the instinct to kill, they are never a source of fear, pain or hurtfulness. They perceive their oneness with all. Aum.”
This cardinal idea is likewise embodied in the virtues of… moderate appetite and purity as reflected in sutra 25: “All my followers shall be moderate in appetite, neither eating too much or consuming meat….”
Here is the vegetarian vow: “I believe in You, the one supreme God, Lord Siva and the Gods of our Saivite faith, and in the Saiva Dharma. In love and trust I recognize your goodness in providing for my every material and spiritual need. I accept the principle of sakahara [Day: it will be described below] as the method by which I may acknowledge my compassion, my karuna [Day: karuna means merciful, compassionate, kindness], for all living beings. As an act of dedication, I am resolved this day to begin (or continue) the regular practice of eating a strict vegetarian diet….”
The second vow, Sakahara Vrata, is likewise fundamental, as Saivam in Tamil means vegetarianism, and all higher consciousness depends on a pure and healthy body as outlined in sutra 111, “All my followers shall eat a strictly vegetarian diet. They understand that higher consciousness depends on the chemistry of foods consumed and thus forbid themselves to eat meat….” This vrata embraces the science of ayurveda, as explained in sutra 111, “All my followers shall cook and eat in the balanced, varied, time-tested… ayurvedic manner.”
Swami Chidananda, 1916 – 2008, is another Hindu yogi that refers to the ayurvedic aspect of the vegetarian dietary practices linked to Ahimsa. In a speech he gave at the 24th World Vegetarian Congress in 1977, he said:
“The Yoga Science has classified all things into Purifying, Agitating and Stupefying in their ultimate effect upon human faculties. Satvaguna is Purifying, Rajas is Agitating, and Tamas is Stupefying. The food that human beings consume is also subject to this classification. Meat diet falls under the Tamasic and Rajasic category. It is inimical [Day: not compatible with] to the upward evolutionary ascent of the human nature. Vegetarian food has been advocated by Yoga Science as purifying and beneficial.
“The essential Reality within man is an Eternal, indestructible Spiritual Principle which is Divine in essence. The true goal of human life and the destiny of man is the awakening of the unfoldment of the inner Spiritual essence and experience of Divine Illumination.
“Animal food is the product of slaughtering. It is unspiritual and therefore deprives man of the attainment of his Spiritual destiny, namely Divine Perfection. Compassion is Divine. Cruelty is unspiritual.
“The human body, which is the moving temple of the Living God enshrined, is not meant to be made into the fleshy graveyard of slaughtered animals….”
We will continue to share some additional Hindu teachings on Ahimsa and vegetarianism. After that, I will share some Buddhist teachings on Ahimsa, and then some from the Jain religion. I will also have a saying from Confucianism, and one from a mystical Sufi teacher. And maybe some surprises that even I don’t yet know about! ☺
Hindu sage Jayantilal N. Mankar (born in 1895, died in 1977), said the following in a speech at the 24th World Vegetarian Congress in 1977:
“Since all life is considered sacred, exploiting, killing, and torturing animals is morally wrong and spiritually suicidal. Man, as a… being in evolution endowed with powers of discriminating between right and wrong and conscious of his rights and responsibilities, is expected to do what is morally and spiritually right. It is in this respect that a highly evolved man differs from the less evolved lower animals.
Man devoid of ‘Dharma’ [Day: ‘Spiritual Purpose based on Universal Law and Divine Principles’] is nothing short of a lower animal. To be violent, to fight, to injure or kill animals for food, fashion, sports, and science, or in the name of religion, are acts prompted by the lower instincts.
The great Hindu law-giver Shri Manu has aptly said that ‘Man is not a man merely by being born as man. He has to be ‘Man’ by leading a ‘humane’ life.’ The extent of adoption of vegetarianism is an index of humanistic evolution of man.
The vegetarian way of life leads to psychological and spiritual evolution and higher ideals of life.”
Ten years earlier, at the 14th World Vegetarian Congress in 1967, he – Hindu sage Jayantilal N. Mankar – said in a speech:
“It should be realized that vegetarianism is based on the sanctity of all life. It is not merely a question of filling one’s stomach with this food or that…. Merely becoming a vegetarian, therefore, cannot achieve Ahimsa’s basic objective unless associated with love for all life that includes animal welfare. It is the love-prompted compassion and not merely love for a vegetarian diet which can alleviate the soul and develop the true image of Man.”
Kavi Yogi Maharishi Shuddhananda Bharat, a Hindu sage, speaking at the 24th World Vegetarian Congress in 1977, said:
“From grass to Godmen all are equal souls sensitive to joy and grief…. The intelligent man must treat plants and animals with tender love and compassion. Man as… evolved soul, as the paragon of living beings, is obliged to practice non-violence in thought, word and deed. Soft mercy marks the human from the beast….
The man who kills screaming life for food is dead to mercy and compassion…. The faithless man whips and rips them and gluts his stomach with their flesh. A killed animal is dead; its flesh stinks. Man eats it and makes his stomach the graveyard for poor creatures.
Nature gives man clean, sweet vegetables; but unrefined man cuts the throat of crying animals and gluts his stomach. His heart becomes hard and the hand that cuts animals cuts tomorrow the throats of brother men in the battlefield. If war must stop in the world, blood-soaked food must stop and men must become vegetarians.”
In a speech titled The Vegetarian Way given at the 24th World Vegetarian Conference in 1977, a Hindu scholar named Vaswani said:
“I regard all life as sacred, and it seems to me that in ethics we are concerned not alone with mankind but also with animals. The ethical ideal as I understand it is: help all life; have sympathy with all life; avoid injuring anything living when you can….
I believe all education is defective which does not teach sympathy with birds and beasts. I believe, too, that without teaching our students to do their best for God’s creatures, all efforts at character-building must fail. In training your children in acts of kindness to animals, you teach them effectively the one great lesson of life: “Be ye kind to one another!”
My next two excerpts on the topic of Ahimsa are from two different American Hindus each named Kriyananda. The first of those excerpts is from the California-based (now heaven-based since he dropped his body) Kriyananda whose birth name was Donald Walters. His Guru, Paramahansa Yogananda, wrote the classic Autobiography of a Yogi. Decades later, this Swami Kriyananda (Donald Walters) wrote a book with an intentionally similar name: Autobiography of a Western Yogi.
The California-based Swami Kriyananda (Donald Walters), under a sub-heading titled, Pathanjali’s Ashtanga Yoga: The Eightfold Path, writes in his book, The Art and Science of Raja Yoga:
Hatha yoga is the physical branch of the meditative science of raja yoga. Patanjali, the great ancient exponent of raja yoga, wrote that the path to enlightenment embraces eight stages. (His teaching is also known as Ashtanga, or “eight-limbed,” yoga.) ….
The first two stages of Patanjali’s eightfold path are known as yama and niyama…. Literally, these two stages mean the don’t’s and the do’s on the spiritual path. They are, one might say, the Ten Commandments of Yoga. Interestingly, there are ten of them too….
The approach of yoga to the subject of right living is always from a standpoint of what is natural. From a standpoint of diet, too, the emphasis is purely natural. What is the proper food for the human body? …. The question is, simply, whether meat (as one example) is the right food for one particular species, man.
Swami Sri Yukteswar, in his book, The Holy Science, points out that the body of man is not that of a carnivore. His intestinal tract, compared to the length of his body, is that of a frugivorous, or fruit-eating animal….
A final, but important, thought should be expressed on this subject. The food we eat is more than an assortment of chemicals. Essentially, it is vibration. As such, it affects our consciousness.
Animals, because of their more developed nervous systems (compared to that of vegetables), feel intense anguish, anger, and fear when they are killed. These emotions fill their bodies with toxins. More than that, they implant in the animals’ bodies the vibrations of their strong emotions. People who eat such flesh take into themselves something of these emotions.
It is no accident that the more warlike, aggressive nations are also heavy meat eaters, or that the more peaceful nations incline to be vegetarians. For a person on the path of yoga, it is important to give up foods that of their very nature obstruct any effort to achieve inner peace and harmony. For the yogi, a fruit and vegetarian diet is important above all because of the calming effect it has on his mind and nervous system.
Having exposed you to the California-based Swami Kriyananda (Donald Walters, a disciple of Yogananda), I now introduce you to the Chicago-based Kriyananda (also an early disciple of Yogananda). This Chicago-based Kriyananda (likewise now ‘heaven based’) is often referred to as Goswami Kriyananda. Here is a small portion of his description of some of the other aspects of Ahimsa that make clear it is not only about nonviolence in our dietary practices but is a holistic practice that involves cultivating nonviolence in your body, mind, emotions, soul, environment, etc. He writes in his The Spiritual Science of Kriya Yoga:
Baudhika Ahimsa: Intellectual Nonviolence
Our intellects ascertain harmonious or inharmonious energies of the mind, which sooner or later must manifest harmoniously or inharmoniously. Later it manifests into harmonious or inharmonious action. Therefore, complete nonviolence is renunciation of violence in body, speech, and especially thought.
The practice of non-violence produces a number of effects:
1. It brings about the accumulation of good karma in this lifetime, as well as in succeeding lifetimes.
2. It brings about non-agitation of the mind so that concentration is possible. It is only with concentration that meditation is possible. It is only with meditation that illumination is possible.
3. It magnetically and mystically draws into your life nonviolent people and events. Your social exchange becomes filled with happiness and pleasure, and there is an effortless intellectual exchange of human consciousness.
The more you realize that everything is Spirit (atma), the more easily and more fully you become established in nonviolence. When your life is permeated by ahimsa, your intellect is not disturbed, even when you become hurt or insulted. This brings about the attainment of a non-scattered mind. This attainment enables you to concentrate which in turn enables you to meditate. This rapidly brings you into full cosmic consciousness….
Before performing any mental or physical action, you should reflect upon its consequences. As you move forward in the establishment of non-violence [Day: Ahimsa], your heart will be bathed in a stream of compassion and fearlessness, which will give birth to that blessed state called Bliss (Ananda). The Yajur Veda states that when a yogi is fully established in non-violence, he cultivates the feeling of the Spirit toward all life-forms, and therefore does nothing that will bring… grief….
We start with the gross and the obvious [Day: like hunting, fishing, eating flesh, killing humans], working towards the subtle and the less obvious….
Goswami Kriyananda describes Verbal Non-violence as follows:
Vachika Ahimsa: Verbal Non-Violence
As you master intellectual non-violence, non-violence of speech becomes perfected. Verbal violence manifests in various ways, such as:
1. Abusive words;
2. Insulting statements;
3. Angry speech;
4. Bad advice.Needless to say, verbal non-violence arises by acquiring the verbal habits of:
1. Speaking softly;
2. Speaking gently;
3. Speaking wisely.Nonviolence is to be observed on all levels, not just the physical level with which most people identify it….
Having shared a good sampling of Hindu teachings on vegetarianism and Ahimsa, I will now share some Buddhist teachings.
Some Buddhist Teachings on Ahimsa from Various Sources
Hurt not others with that which pains yourself.
— UdanavargaTo serve the creatures is to serve the Buddha.
— Buddhist ProverbAll beings seek for happiness; so let your compassion extend itself to all.
— MahavamsaHe who, seeking his own happiness, punishes or kills beings who also long for happiness, will not find happiness after death.
— DhammapadaLet him not destroy, or cause to be destroyed, any life at all, nor sanction the acts of those who do so. Let him refrain from even hurting any creature, both those that are strong and those that tremble in the world.
— Sutta-NipataBecause he has pity on every living creature, therefore is a man called ‘holy’.
— DhammapadaFull of love for all things in the world, practicing virtue in order to benefit others, this man alone is happy.
— DhammapadaOne act of pure love in saving life is greater than spending the whole of one’s time in religious offerings to the gods….
— DhammapadaFor the sake of love of purity, the Bodhisattva should refrain from eating flesh…. For fear of causing terror to living beings let the Bodhisattva, who is disciplining himself to attain compassion, refrain from eating flesh….
It is not true that meat is proper food and permissible when the animal was not killed by himself, when he did not order others to kill it, when it was not specially meant for him…Again, there may be some people in the future who…being under the influence of the taste for meat will string together in various ways sophistic arguments to defend meat eating….
But… meat eating in any form, in any manner, and in any place is unconditionally and once for all prohibited….
Meat eating I have not permitted to anyone, I do not permit, I will not permit….
— LankavataraThe reason for practicing dhyana [concentration of mind] and seeking to attain Samadhi [equilibrium; tranquility; heightened and expanded awareness] is to escape from the suffering of life, but in seeking to escape from suffering ourselves why should we inflict it upon others?
Unless you can so control your minds that even the thought of brutal unkindness and killing is abhorrent, you will never be able to escape from the bondage….
— SurangamaThe eating of meat extinguishes the seed of great compassion.
— Mahaparinirvana
Here is a quality excerpt from a book titled, Principles of Buddhism by Kulananda, published by Thorons in 1996 as part of a series of books on the World’s religions. We read:
The way in which we behave has karmic consequences which affect our progress along the Path…. Because of this we need ethical guidelines to follow, and the list of Five Precepts is one such guide. It describes the way in which an Enlightened person naturally and spontaneously behaves and, it is said, if we want to gain Enlightenment, we should seek to emulate such behavior, for by changing our behavior, we change our level of consciousness.
I undertake the training principle to abstain from killing. With deeds of loving kindness, I purify my mind.
To be deprived of life is to be simultaneously deprived of everything which one holds dear. The will-to-live is common to all living things and to go against it is the most fundamental contradiction to the Golden Rule – do to others as you would have them do to you.
All living beings are terrified of [being harmed], all fear death. Making comparison of other [creatures] with oneself, one should [have empathy] and neither kill nor cause to kill.
Buddhism extends the Golden Rule beyond the exclusive domain of mankind. It respects the will-to-life of all sentient beings.
When we kill, or harm another in any conscious way, we stop identifying with them as living beings – we see them only as objects, intrinsically separate from ourselves. …. Thus, when we kill, we not only deprive another of that which is most precious to them, but we also harm ourselves.
Love, the emotional identification of others with ourselves, diffuses the boundaries between us and the world, leaving us with a richer, broader experience of life itself.
The Buddhist tradition that has more non-vegetarian members than other forms of Buddhism is Tibetan Buddhism. Even so, the Dalai Lama – similar in rank in Tibetan Buddhism to the ‘Pope’ of Catholicism – wrote the following in 1967 in a text called, The Vegetarian Way:
I do not see any reason why animals should be slaughtered to serve as human diet when there are so many substitutes. After all, man can live without meat. It is only some carnivorous animals that have to subsist on flesh. Killing animals for sport, for pleasure, for adventures, and for hides and furs is a phenomenon which is at once disgusting and distressing. There is no justification in indulging in such acts of brutality.
Having examined Ahimsa and vegetarianism in the Hindu and Buddhist traditions, let us now look at Jainism.
Ahimsa in Jainism
Have you ever seen photos or video footage of a Jain monk walking the streets of modern India? They are famous for wearing over their mouth a sort of gauze bandana and walking barefoot. The purpose of the gauze over their mouth is to decrease the chance of accidentally swallowing a gnat or other flying bug. The purpose of walking barefoot is to decrease the chance of accidentally killing an ant or other ground-bug. These modern Jain monks are implementing an extreme version of the ancient Jain practice called Ahimsa.
Most scholars believe that the Jain religion began around the same time as the earliest form of Buddhism – Theravada Buddhism – in India. Both early Buddhism and early Jainism took very seriously the practice of Ahimsa/Harmlessness. Both had sects that featured what are called ‘Sky-Clad’ monks: NAKED MONKS. These early naked Buddhist and Jain monks were so into transcending the mainstream physical reality that they went without clothing and ate a fruitarian diet. By eating only the parts of the plant that you can eat without killing the plant, they were practicing an advanced form of Reverence for Life.
Even these extreme practitioners of Ahimsa – living without money or homes – were not entirely free of violence or harmfulness. For example, even walking barefoot you can still step on an ant. And even when we eat fruit we are chewing up, swallowing and digesting bacterial life-forms that live on the outside skin of the fruit. But no-one can rightfully deny that these sky-clad Buddhist and Jain monks took seriously the quest for extremely advanced forms of Ahimsa, progressive pilgrimage into the heavenly realms of nonviolence.
It should be noted that the majority of Buddhist and Jain monks did not (and do not) go quite as far as the ‘sky-clad’ monks. And the non-monks of the Buddhists and Jains were comparable to the Hindu idea of ‘householder yogis’.
Most of us are not prepared to become either a sky-clad wandering monk/nun or even a wandering robe-clad begging-bowl one. Why? Because we are doing other things in life that we enjoy and want to keep doing. Those other things, for most of us, include participating in a family-life, often including the raising of children.
If you have children, you are not likely to choose to abandon them to become a wandering monk/nun. Even if you do not have children, you may have some occupation or other interests in life that you do not choose to give up. For people like you – and that includes me – our predecessors in ＆serious yet joyful Ahimsa’ established the path called HOUSEHOLDER YOGI.
A ‘Householder Yogi’ 〝 if female a Householder Yogini – is a spiritually oriented person interested in practicing Ahimsa in the context of Intentional Spiritual Evolution into progressively higher forms of harmlessness while still a householder (not a wandering monk or nun). We are aware that we are a work in progress and that, as humans, it is quite natural for us to want to raise a family or otherwise maintain a home and pursue a career or artistic interests.
We are humans in evolution – unfolding like a flower in the sunlight of Love; we are not humans at the endpoint of evolution whereat we have achieved a body that does not need to eat organic life-forms, not even plants. Not yet, but we are spiraling up that path of ascension in unfolding degrees of Ahimsa.
Here are some samples of Jain teachings on Ahimsa from various sources. Beneath each excerpt I provide the source.
Ahimsa-paramo-dharmah – non-injury to living beings – is the highest religion….
In happiness and suffering, in joy and grief, we should regard all creatures as we regard our own self, and should therefore refrain from inflicting upon others such injury as would appear undesirable to us if inflicted upon ourselves.
— YogashastraHarmlessness is the only religion.
— Jain maximFlesh cannot be procured without causing destruction of life; one who uses flesh, therefore, commits himsa [injury] unavoidably.
— Purushartha SiddhyupayaWith the three means of punishment, words, thoughts, and acts, you shall not injure living things.
— Jaina SutrasAll beings hate pains; therefore, one should not kill them. This is the quintessence of wisdom: not to kill anything.
— SutrakritangaHe who harms animals has not understood or renounced deeds of sin…. Those whose minds are at peace and who are free from passions do not desire to live at the expense of others.
— Acharanga SutraAll breathing, existing, living, sentient creatures should not be slain nor treated with violence, nor abused, nor tormented, nor driven away. This is the pure unchangeable Law.
— Sutrakritanga
I will now share several sayings from other spiritual traditions and then it is time to present the Nasarean Essene teachings on the spiritual reasons for vegetarianism.
Here is an excerpt on the topic of compassionate vegetarianism from a Chinese Confucian-Taoist text (used by both 4th century Taoists and Confucian sects) called Yin-chi-wen. It is attributed to Wen Ch’ang who writes:
Buy captive creatures and set them free. Hold fast to vegetarianism and abstain from taking life.
Whenever taking a step, always watch for ants and insects. ….
Benefit living creatures and human beings. Cultivate goodness and happiness.
Sufi mystic Meher Baba, 1894 – 1969, in his text titled, The Theme of Creation and Its Purposes, wrote:
If we understand and feel that the greatest act of devotion and worship to God is not to hurt or harm any of His beings, we are loving God.
I just a moment ago discovered an excellent excerpt from one of the early leaders of the Theosophical Society, Annie Besant. This text literally fell into my hands as I passed a bookcase! It is from a speech she gave at Manchester, England, in 1897:
When we recognize the unity of all living things, then at once arises the question – how can we support this life of ours with least injury to the lives around us; how can we prevent our own life adding to the suffering of the world in which we live?
We find amongst animals, as amongst men, power of feeling pleasure, power of feeling pain; we see them moved by love and by hate; we see them feeling terror and attraction; we recognize in them powers of sensation closely akin to our own, and while we transcend them immensely in intellect, yet, in mere passional characteristics our natures and the animals’ are closely allied.
We know that when they feel terror, that terror means suffering. We know that when a wound is inflicted, that wound means pain to them. We know that threats bring to them suffering; they have a feeling of fear, of absence of friendly relations, and at once we begin to see that in our relations to the animal kingdom a duty arises which all thoughtful and compassionate minds should recognize – the duty that because we are stronger in mind than the animals, we are or ought to be their guardians and helpers, not their tyrants and oppressors, and we have no right to cause them suffering and terror merely for the gratification of the palate, merely for an added luxury to our own lives.
Here is a great excerpt on Pythagorean Compassion-Based Vegetarianism; the following sayings are attributed to Pythagoras:
Alas, what wickedness to swallow flesh into our own flesh, to fatten our greedy bodies by cramming in other bodies, to have one living creature fed by the death of another! In the midst of such wealth as earth, the best of mothers, provides, nothing forsooth satisfies you, but to behave like the Cyclops, inflicting sorry wounds with cruel teeth!
You cannot appease the hungry craving of your wicked, gluttonous stomachs except by destroying some other life….
As long as man continues to be the ruthless destroyer of lower living beings, he will never know of peace. For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love….
Animals share with us the privilege of having a soul.
The Philosopher Plutarch, who lived from A.D. 46 to A.D. 120, wrote in his Moralia [Day: ‘Morals’]:
I, for my part, wonder of what sort of feeling, mind or reason, that man was possessed who was first to pollute his mouth with gore, and to allow his lips to touch the flesh of a murdered being; who spread his table with the mangled forms of dead bodies… claimed as daily food….
Kindness and benevolence should be extended to the creatures of every species, and these will flow from the breast of a true man, as streams that issue from the living fountain.
Man makes use of flesh not out of want and necessity, seeing that he has the liberty to make his choice of herbs and fruits, the plenty of which is inexhaustible; but… he seeks after impure and inconvenient diet, purchased by the slaughter of living beasts….
Why do you belie the earth, as if it were unable to feed and nourish you? Does it not shame you to mingle murder and blood with her beneficent fruits? ….
But for the sake of some little mouthful of flesh we deprive a soul of the sun and light, of that proportion of life and time it had been born into the world to enjoy.
The best example of a relatively modern era Christian (of mainstream Christianity) teacher and practitioner of Ahimsa – which he called ‘Reverence for Life’ – is the great Albert Schweitzer, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.
When I was a kid, most everyone had at least heard of Albert Schweitzer – he had won the Nobel Peace Prize for his post-World War Two advocacy against what became the nuclear arms race. But nowadays most people that I ask have never heard of him. As part of writing this book, I asked about twenty persons – wise, spiritual, intelligent folks – and only two were familiar with his name. And neither of those two persons could tell me anything about him; they just knew that they had heard that name.
So, now it is your turn to answer that question: What, if anything, do you know about Albert Schweitzer?
He was called in the era of the 1920’s to the 1960’s, THE GREATEST FORCE FOR EXPANSIVE LOVE ON OUR PLANET! By the term ‘expansive love’, we mean love not just for human beings but for all living things. Many of the people that became vegetarian in that era were inspired to do so by Schweitzer’s writings on what he termed, Reverence for Life.
Before sharing some of his teachings on that topic, here is a bit of biographical information on this great human being.
Albert Schweitzer was born in Germany on January 14, 1875. Like his father, a Lutheran minister, Albert, after earning doctorates in both philosophy and theology, became a minister. Even before that, he had gained fame as a musician, his first instrument being the organ.
But when he was age 30, he made a decision that his family and friends were not happy about: He decided to become a physician – they wouldn’t have minded that part – so that he could move to Africa and serve the poor in a region where there were no doctors. That last part is what the relatives were unhappy about, simply believing it to be too dangerous. This was the early 1900’s and Africa was much more primitive than today.
In 1913 – before there were cars in the wilds of Africa – he founded a hospital in a jungle village called Lambarene, in West Central Africa. During this period he began writing articles explaining his ideas on Reverence for Life, and then began writing books.
After World War II, Schweitzer launched a new project: he began traveling the world as a lecturer, warning the world about the dangers of nuclear weapons. His writings on that topic and the general theme of Reverence for Life began to be well known and, in 1952, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, making him, at the time, a very famous person.
Even more people began reading his books and attending his lectures. He used the money awarded with the Nobel prize to build a leper colony in Africa and lived and practiced medicine there. He worked there until his death in 1965 at age 90.
Although there have been plenty of other Christian ministers that have gone to Africa and performed good works, Schweitzer was unusual in that, having become famous, he took his message of reverence for ALL life – not just human – into the Christian churches of that era, challenging Christians to take on the yoke of vegetarianism and nonviolence toward the animal world.
How did a German Lutheran minister become interested in animal rights? He said that his interest began as a child. The following account of that early interest in animal rights is from a book titled Schweitzer, authored by George Marshall and David Poling.
Albert Schweitzer spent most of his boyhood in the small… village of Gunsbach, and many incidents that occurred there left a permanent mark on his character.
One day, as a young child, he saw two men leading an old, sickly horse through the narrow streets. The boy knew it was bound for the local glue factory. One man kept yanking cruelly at the animal’s bridle in a relentless attempt to keep it in motion. The other cursed, … striking the horse’s bony haunches… with sharp blows from a switch…. Their cruel disregard of the horse’s suffering made an indelible impression on Albert Schweitzer….
A friend named Henry… once asked young Schweitzer to go with him to shoot birds, and with homemade slingshots the two set out. They climbed a hill, crouched, and waited for the birds to appear. Just at the moment of attack, a distant bell began to ring. It was the warning bell that always preceded the bell ringing of Lent, and for Albert it seemed to represent a divine warning.
He jumped to his feet, shouting and waving his arms to startle the birds out of their dangerous location, and ran home. Years later he wrote: “… ever since, when the… bells ring out… I reflect with a rush of grateful emotion how on that day their music drove deep into my heart the commandment: ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ From that day onward I took courage to emancipate myself from the fear of men, and whenever my inner convictions were at stake, I let other people‘s opinions weigh less with me than they had done previously…. This early influence on me… not to kill or to torture other creatures is the great experience of my childhood and youth.”
Here is a sampling of sayings from the mature Albert Schweitzer. The following sayings provide a look at the essence of his writings on REVERENCE FOR LIFE:
* “When you portray me, it should not be merely as the doctor who ministers to the sick. It is my philosophy that I consider my primary contribution to the world.”
* “All deep philosophy, and all deep religion, are ultimately a struggle for ethical mysticism and mystical ethics. Ethics are responsibility without limit towards all that lives…. Reverence for life engenders a new-found sensitivity which to conventional morality may well appear extravagant. All life is sacred…. By going out of our way to rescue life, however apparently insignificant… paying a debt of honor to the Author of life….”
* “In this becoming one with all life he realizes the active becoming one with the primal Source of Being to which this life belongs.”
* “We are all part of everything living…. In the very fibers of our being, we bear within ourselves the fact of the solidarity of life. Our recognition of it expands with thought. Seeing its presence in ourselves, we realize how closely we are linked with others of our kind. We might stop here, but we cannot. Life demands that we see through to the solidarity of all life which we can in any degree recognize as having some similarity to the life that is in us.”
* “Ethics are boundless in their domain and limitless in their demands…. The important thing is that the truly religious or the sincerely ethical man cannot avoid the knowledge that all life is sacred…. What we call ‘love’ is, in its essence, reverence for life.”
* “A man is really ethical only when he obeys the constraint laid on him to help all life which he is able to succor, and when he goes out of his way to avoid injuring anything living.”
* “As an ethical being, man strives to escape whenever possible from the horrible law of being obliged to live at the cost of other life, … as one who has become enlightened and merciful…. He thirsts to be permitted to preserve his own humanity and identity and to also be able to bring to other existences release from suffering.”
Many great human beings of the 1940’s through the 1960’s considered themselves to be disciples of Schweitzer and his philosophy of Reverence for Life. One of those great Schweitzer disciples was the brilliant and multi-gifted Upton Clary Ewing. Schweitzer himself referred to Ewing as “the renaissance of Leonardo da Vinci.” Like Leonardo, Ewing was a gifted painter – very gifted – but also a master of many other fields: an award-winning architect, a sculptor, an inventor with many firsts to his credit, author and lecturer on various philosophical and scientific topics. Using the Schweitzer quotes that I have asterisked above – plus additional ones – Ewing then offers the following insights. The following insights from Ewing on Schweitzer’s ethic of Reverence for Life is from a book titled, The Essene Christ. Ewing wrote this book in 1961; you will recall from above that Schweitzer died in 1965. Ewing began the book with a dedication:
This book is dedicated to all peoples in their strivings towards a bringing to pass of the “prophetic vision”: to that peaceful state in which all life, all creatures, are to share: to the future great church and the fulfillment of “Thy will be done on earth.”
Even though he never got to read The Holy Megillah, Ewing, based on his study of various historical writings, believed that a particular vegetarian sect of Essenes became the first Christians, that Jesus was vegetarian, and that modern Christianity would be well-served to reconnect with its vegetarian Essene origins to better implement the ethic of Schweitzer.
In the last section of his The Essene Christ – a section titled Conclusion – Ewing reflects on the above asterisked sayings of his mentor, Schweitzer; we read:
For my own part, I feel sure that it was mainly through my awareness of the universality of love which extends the Golden Rule to all realms of life that I was inspired to seek out and to recover this humane addition to our present knowledge of the ethical system of Jesus.
But here it should be stressed that merely abstaining from eating the flesh of animals does not in itself provide the “key to heaven.” While this is a necessary asset to the complete spiritual unfoldment of the human potential, other means, as spoken of in the Sermon on the Mount, cannot be overlooked…. Ethics has many facets. The pure and the good have many doors that must be passed through before one is privileged to stand in the “Presence.”
However, in the ethics of “Reverence for Life,” as taught by the Master [Day: here he refers to Jesus] and as practiced in our day by the apostle of Lambarene [Day: here he refers to Schweitzer], is to be found the means of opening many of the otherwise unyielding doors leading to the realms of the Most High. It is appropriate, therefore, to conclude this book [Day: Ewing’s The Essene Christ] as it began, with thoughts pertaining to Schweitzer’s ethic of Reverence for Life….
To be completely human is to be humane. Funk and Wagnall’s dictionary defines the word humane as “having or showing tenderness, kindness, and compassion.” It also presents this all-inclusive description: “The humane man will not needlessly inflict pain upon the meanest thing that lives.”
Along with the full realization of this truth the humane man begins to feel a sense of unity with the whole of creation. He no longer separates himself from the universe but becomes one with it in consciousness and spirit even as the atomic substances of his body are one with it….
I am a living creature in a living world, in a living universe. The mind through which I think, recognizes injustice, pain, sorrow, joy, and love, is of the same property through which you too recognize these things. It is also the same means, or same sense of awareness, through which every other creature feels pain and sorrow… loves, and wills to live.
Consideration for the rights and privileges of living things is “Reverence for Life.” It is unselfish respect for the great mysterious force we call creation. Reverence for life is based on a fundamental awareness of the good – of mercy, justice, and love. It comprises the basic evidence, the unadulterated identification, of ethics in its most vital form. This is beautifully illustrated in the life and works of Albert Schweitzer, the greatest spiritual force in the world today….
Thus the truly humane man takes cognizance of the evil within the will-to-live and strives to recover his true manhood….
Ewing then quotes a passage from Schweitzer; that quotation is:
“Admitting the fact of universal moral evil and the fall of man, ethical mysticism goes back to a prior state of grace from which man fell and reaffirms his original righteousness. Sin is not natural or indigenous to man. It is unnatural. What is called the “supernatural” is really the most truly natural.”
I will continue Ewing’s comments on Schweitzer’s philosophy but first will share – because the timing is purrrfect – Ewing’s description of the ‘fall of man’ (that ‘fall’ was just mentioned in the above paragraph) given in another section of the same book we are excerpting from: The Essene Christ. We read:
And God said to man: “Behold! I have given you every herb bearing seed and… the fruit of the tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.” Thus was the Divine Formula given to man. And to every beast, fowl, and to everything that creepeth upon the earth gave he likewise these things for food….
But alas! …. The will of God was no longer obeyed…. The most sacred of trusts of all time was annulled by the lusts of appetite, and the blood of an innocent creature stained the hands of man. The tree of life was rent with pain. Its leaves hung limp in sorrow….
Fear and foreboding grasped the heart of every living creature. The bold became vicious and the meek fled in terror, and the carcasses of dead beasts became the abomination of carnal appetites. Thus did the bold and the vicious fall, and the innocent suffer with the guilty. But the fall of man was greater, for after the killing of his fellow creatures did he slay his own brother.
Farther and farther man strayed from the truth of God. More and more did his power of choice became dominated by greeds and lusts. Weaker and weaker became his will to resist the cravings of the senses. Greater and greater grew the separation between the way of God and the way of man. And the True Light was obscured by the denseness of man’s own maleficent designs, and he no longer recognized the Divine presence.
Man thereafter began to invent his own god or gods. He created out of his own mind a creature equal to his wayward nature. He projected into cosmic dimensions his own emotional inconsistencies, his own lusts, desires, vanities, and passions….
He spilled the blood of virgins, of children, and of the gentle lamb and the faithful ox upon the temple altars to satisfy a lustful god. He submitted to the extravagances of the temple priests who provided spiritual remuneration in exchange for his material possessions.
With hands soiled by the blood of war and coffers bulging with the loot of conquest, he… received the blessings of a covetous god.
Dominating the bodies of thousands of slaves, he constructed great temples of costly marble. Arraying himself in lavish costumes he knelt before glittering altars inlaid with gold and precious stones in a vain overture to a pretentious god….
For many centuries man’s freedom of choice had been tolerated by the true God but too far had he strayed from the purity of his divine creation; too well had he clothed truth with falseness. Too long had the prophets cried out in vain. Too rudely had the Scribes and the mouthings of Priests made the laws of God of no effect….
And so it came to pass that upon a certain night and in a certain place, the spirit of the Most High came into this world. He came not in the searing fire of retribution… but in the light of a single candle, among the humble and innocent creatures of His creation, came He.
As promised, we now return to Ewing’s comments on Schweitzer’s philosophy:
… the doctrine of “survival of the fittest,” while stressing an obvious need, can only refer to a part, or to one side of the great process of organic evolution: a side which is necessarily the least effective to the success of life upon this earth. In the first place, the cold ruthless severity contained in the doctrine of “survival of the fittest” is void of even the slightest potential favorable to the development of ethics. It is quite obvious, therefore, that another more fruitful tendency was destined to assert itself within the will-to-live.
Contrary to the “devil take the hindmost” doctrine of ruthless competition, this other more constructive tendency is not indifferent to the rudiments of cooperation. It seeks accord with its environment and responds to the urgency of growth and development, not alone to effect a mere ephemeral success but rather as illustrating a progressive trend towards a greater and more permanent goal: i.e., a point of perfection in space and time….
It is clear which of these contains the ethical or constructive side of life and which the evil or destructive: which favors cooperation with, understanding of, and love for, another living being and which leans toward the exploitation of another life for its own gain…
The “cosmic” or the “nature will” in the will-to-live is the genius of creation, the catalyst of Order, the perfector of cooperation and the incentive of the will-to-live….
Man, as a participant in the evolution of life, has taken over legally or illegally a large measure of control in nature. He has now reached a most precarious position on the great tree of life: his fruit can either ripen with enduring seed or it can fall to the ground in rot. Through his own choice he can continue on the road to extinction along with other creatures who adhered too tenaciously to the fallacy of “survival of the fittest” or he can lend an ear to Albert Schweitzer’s challenge to civilization, thereby insuring the survival, both of his own will-to-live and the will-to-live of all other life upon this planet. Let us hope that the courageous struggle within the will-to-live to seek perfection, rather than destruction, will prevail.
Reverence for life is therefore reverence for this courageous tendency within the will-to-live. It is a soul gratifying respect for the mysterious source which makes life possible. It is the realization that other creatures have certain rights….
Here are presented the rudiments of a universal approach to ethics: to the veneration of a merciful God through a sincere reverence for all that lives.
Beginning in the lower rounds of life…, and extending to the higher rounds of life as mercy and compassion, one discovers the true, pure and uncompromised significance of the word LOVE. Any religious, philosophical, or ethical system which excludes these provisions from its doctrine is in consequence guilty of an affront to the Author of Love….
Traditional religion is at the crossroads: it can either advance as a strong humanely ethical movement exhibiting a sincere desire to cooperate in its fullest capacity with a God of peace and loving kindness, or, it can lose its integrity as a force for the good in obedience to the vindictive blood-letting God of Bible lore.
Ewing’s view that there are much higher aspects of evolution than we are taught in mainstream schools with their emphasis on the low-level interpretation of ‘the survival of the fittest’ – eat them before they eat you – is supported in the following excerpt from Gary Zukav. In his book, The Seat of the Soul, Zukav describes Spiritual Evolution. We read:
The evolution that we learned about in school is the evolution of the physical form…. “Survival of the fittest” means that the most evolved organism in a given environment is the organism that is at the top of the food chain in that environment….
We have long known that this definition of evolution is inadequate, but we have not known why. When two humans engage one another, they are, in terms of organizational complexity, equally evolved. If both have the same intelligence, yet one is small-minded, mean and selfish while the other is magnanimous and altruistic, we say that the one who is magnanimous and altruistic is the more evolved….
Our deeper understanding tells us that a truly evolved being is one that values… love more than it values the physical world…. By reflecting upon a new and expanded understanding of evolution, one that validates our deepest truths, we can see what we are evolving into, and what that means in terms of what we experience, what we value, and how we act….
The physical arena is a magnificent learning environment. It is a school within which, through experimentation, we come to understand what causes us to expand and what causes us to contract, what causes us to grow and what causes us to shrivel, what nourishes our souls and what depletes them, what works and what does not.
When the physical environment is seen only from the five-sensory point of view, physical survival appears to be the fundamental criterion of evolution…. It is from this point of view that “survival of the fittest” appears to be synonymous with evolution, and physical dominance appears to characterize advanced evolution….
Our deeper understanding leads us to another kind of power, a power that loves life in every form…. This is authentic power….
No understanding of evolution is adequate that does not have at its core that we are on a journey toward authentic power, and that authentic power is the goal of our evolutionary process and the purpose of our being….
…. Our species is evolving from one frequency range in the spectrum of nonphysical Light into another, higher range of frequency. This is the evolution of the five-sensory personality into the multisensory personality. The multisensory personality is more radiant and energetic than the five-sensory personality. It is aware of the Light of its soul, and it is able to detect, and to communicate with, forms of Life that are invisible to the five-sensory personality.
The Universe is a hierarchy that has no bottom and no top. Between the levels of the hierarchy there is an understanding that higher perceptions can be a part of, and are encouraged to be a part of, the experience of lower plane spirits as they seek to expand their own awareness.
With the excerpts from Schweitzer, Ewing, and, immediately above, Zukav, we have described an alternative understanding of evolution and the human condition.
- In the excerpts from Schweitzer, Ewing and Zukav, we are taught the following:
- It is spiritually higher – more ‘high-vibe’ and ‘highly evolved’ – to extend our circle of love to include not only all of humanity but even to other creatures.
- Once a being becomes aware of number one above, that being will soon also realize that achieving any approximation of absolute nonviolence is, at the evolutionary stage of human, not possible, as even the most saintly practitioner of Reverence for Life kills unseen bugs and otherwise does some harm to some entities (e.g. bacteria) regardless of an effort to be nonviolent.
Despite number two above, the pull of love for all life is so strong that the most spiritually evolved human beings will consciously engage in an ongoing and progressive pilgrimage into the heavenly realms of nonviolence. But we do so in the awareness that this is an ongoing, step-by-step process, AND CHALLENGE OURSELVES TO TAKE WHATEVER STEPS WE CAN AS WE ASCEND THE SPIRAL LADDER OF SPIRITUAL EVOLUTION AS HEAVENLY BEINGS.
Geofrey L. Rudd, a relatively modern philosopher of ethics and morality – born in 1909 – writes in Human Nature as It Is:
Let us consider the chain reactions of flesh eating:
- We deliberately, for purely selfish purposes (not for necessity), cut short the life cycle of another living being. We do this entirely on our own authority since there is not and cannot be any authority for such an action. At the same time we are very careful to preserve our own period of incarnation and what we call our rights and freedoms.
- In, before, and probably after, the operation of slaughter we cause fear and bewilderment, and inflict pain, on another living being. At the same time we go to considerable trouble to avoid these experiences ourselves.
- By creating and perpetuating death centers in every small community…. we induce other people to follow a degrading trade (butcher and slaughterer are derogatory terms for good reason).
No sensitive person would eat flesh if he or she had to do the skull-breaking, slaughtering, strangling, shooting, blood-letting, skinning and disemboweling, and live in the stench and among the agonized cries of the victims.
We suggest that these three aspects of flesh-eating alone show the utter selfishness bred and increased by the apparently simple choice of a dish of food.
In this chapter, we have learned that the literal meaning of Ahimsa is non-harm or, as it is usually translated, Harmlessness, or nonviolence. This Sanskrit word is used by Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, and various yogic traditions including those linked to what has been called ＆The Bible of Yoga’: The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. I also shared a sampling of other religious figures and other wise men and wise women of diverse backgrounds that all embrace a version of Ahimsa that includes vegetarianism as an essential element.
We have also learned that these religions and assorted wise-ones, advocated kindness-based spiritual compassion as the chief of several good motives for being a vegetarian (or vegan).
We have seen that these sages and wise spiritual traditions are dedicated to PROGRESSIVE IMPROVEMENT IN THE ART FORM OF AHIMSA ON THE UPWARD SPIRAL OF SPIRITUAL EVOLUTION IN SAT-CHIT-ANANDA.
We have also seen that while vegetarianism is not the only practice related to AHIMSA, it is on the list!
Let us end this chapter with an obscure, old poem that you otherwise almost certainly will never set eyes on!
Robert Buchanan (born 1841, died 1901), writes in his poem titled God Evolving:
Wherever the lamb and lion side by side
Lie down in peace,
Wherever on land or sea
Infinite Love and Mercy
Heavenly-eyed Emerge,
There stirs that God in evolution.His light is round the slaughter’d bird and beast,
As round the forehead of Man crucified –
All things that live, the greatest and the least,
Await the coming of this Lord and Guide;And every gentle deed by mortals done,
Yea every holy thought and loving breath,
Lighten poor Nature’s travail
With this Son of Compassion
Who is and shall be Lord and God of Life and Death!
