For some time now I have been studying the Hare Krishna Vaishnav (worship of Lord Vishnu) tradition thanks to the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON). One thing confused me about this for some time. Vegetarianism is one of their precepts, as it seems to be for most yoga traditions. One might believe that all of the heroes of the Vaishnav tradition were vegetarian, but when Arjuna first met Lord Shiva, both of them had just shot the same boar with their arrows. If Arjuna was vegetarian, what was he doing shooting a boar? I asked several Vaishnavas this question and got the same lame answer several times: “Warriors had to hunt to practise their fighting skills.” What kind of warrior shoots at helpless victims that are either a) unaware of the warrior’s presence due to being stalked or b) running away in fear? Nobody thought to tell me that the boar had attacked Arjuna and he was acting in self-defence. In my mind, such an explanation would have been more justifiable. A priest, who knew me well, finally gave me a more honest answer. He told me that Vaishnav warriors were permitted to eat meat!
Hunters nowadays seem to be frowned upon, even by people who hypocritically eat meat. I was watching a documentary on bears the other day, and a family of hunters were interviewed on their bear hunting habits.At first, my eyes rolled, but then they served up a bear burger, and I though, “fair enough.” Perhaps fox hunting would not be so bad if the hunters had to eat the foxes they caught, and put their skins to good use for the manufacture of shoes etc. Hunting seems like a much more humane use of animals to me than battery farming, which looks far more horrific. I am allergic to most dairy products. This worried me as ISKCON seems to me to value dairy very highly in the diet. I asked the priest (mentioned above) whether my dairy allergy was an indication of my demonic nature, and he told me it was not. He said it was an indication of the demonic nature of today’s dairy industry. I have seen animals beaten, shocked with electricity, force fed and castrated without anaesthetic. Is hunting really worse than this?
Last time I was in Sri Lanka cattle were roaming the streets. At the time I gave this no thought, but having read about
www.ahimsamilk.org I have realised this was because few people in this Buddhist-Hindu country were willing to kill cattle that did not produce milk. My grandmother had a cow in her back garden, and it gave us fresh milk daily. I never thought about what happened to its calf, and to this day, I still have no idea, as my grandmother and father passed away before I had a chance to ask them. On reflection, I think use of dairy products today may be less humane than eating hunted meat! The problem is, if I wanted to eat meat for vitamin B12, haem and calcium, I would have no idea where to find hunted meat. I am pretty sure most if not all of the meat served up in supermarkets is farmed, if not battery farmed. Ahimsa milk appears to offer an ethical alternative to those that can afford it, but as I cannot, I think I will stick to a mostly vegan diet instead.
V
