Re: Vegetarianism - encouragement

quote from Meditation Handbook at:
http://home.att.net/~meditation/MeditationHandbook.html


     "It is essential to maintain a nutritionally adequate diet
without becoming a food fanatic.  Most people find that a
semi-vegetarian diet supplemented with dairy products and eggs is
generally best for meditation, but not essential.  If you have a
medical problem like hypoglycemia, you may have to eat meat just to
survive.  Even the Atkins high fat, high protein diet is perfectly
compatible with meditation.

     Food should not be made the fundamental basis of your spiritual
practice.  Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian yet his diet did not save his
soul or make him nonviolent.  Most Tibetan lamas and Asian Zen monks
eat meat, so obviously meat consumption is not a serious obstacle to
cosmic consciousness.  There is no scientific evidence to suggest that
a vegetarian diet extends lifespan or improves health.  To the
contrary, nations with the highest longevity rates, such as Japan,
Sweden, and Australia, are all populated by avid meat eaters.
Fasting is a waste of time and will weaken you physically.  Like
taking LSD, fasting creates strangely entertaining short term
experiences but produces no long term benefits and can cause permanent
neurological damage.  When you fast your body literally feeds upon
itself.  If your brain needs protein for repair work, your body will
be directed to eat away its own own muscles, or worse, your own
peripheral nerve cells.  People fast because their heads feel
cluttered with thoughts and they hope planned starvation will purify
their minds.  The human body is made of mud, water and dirt, so the
idea of a perfect, spiritually purified physical body is misguided. 
The way to end the cluttered feeling is to change the way your brain
and energy body functions, and this can only be accomplished through
meditation techniques."

Christopher Calder
http://home.att.net/~meditation/
 - home page