My Dear Sister

I wish you and John and the kids a happy new year, and that 1994 will bring meaningful changes to your life. But I want to make this not just an empty greeting. I want to give you and your loved ones something which all the wealth in the world cannot buy, something that will ensure that you live long, healthy and happy. More than that, a gift that sustains past this present life. A gift that ensures that you will be reborn no less than a wise human being with all full healthy faculties, and not fall into the three realms of woe.

Previously, I encouraged you to stop eating meat. But your reaction was that your children need meat to grow up strong, and that you needed time to learn to cook vegetarian meals. If you think over it, those are just excuses, not to me, but to yourself. Deep in your heart, you know it is wrong to eat the flesh of those poor living creatures, but habits are hard to stop. Deep inside is your compassion which tells you eating meat is wrong. That compassion comes from your Buddha-nature, which is inherent in every living being. The Dharma has enriched you in many ways. I will try to fill in one more part. I will try to help you understand the ramifications of eating meat. There are at least five reasons why a wise person should not eat meat, namely:

1.  The Protein Myth.
2.  Good health and long life are the result of your karma.
3.  Compassion can never be considered a waste on any
　　living being.
4.  You become what you eat.
5.  Livestock are loaded with chemicals.

Meat consumption has been most conspicuous in Western countries, especially since the 1930’s when new methods of husbandry were researched and became widespread. The animal farmers, in an effort to boost up business, built up the “Protein Myth,” which states, “protein is essential for your body” and “meat is the only good source of protein.” Many people have been brainwashed by that myth.

The protein myth was the result of researches based on rats in the 1930’s. What they did not know then was that rats have a body metabolism six times faster than that of human beings. Rats’ requirement for protein is much higher than the equivalent for humans.

When humans consume excessive amounts of protein (especially animal protein), they end up with more illnesses than when they were short of protein. Today, an alarming number of women in Western countries who are past middle age are suffering from osteoporosis. It is a disease caused by a number of things, the most important of which is excess dietary protein. The protein they eat attacks the calcium in their bones. The more protein they consume, the more calcium they lose. Consequently, these women have brittle bones that break at the slightest impact, such as bumping against a car door. Osteoporosis is caused also by excessive milk consumption. In Asian countries, like China, where meat is consumed in tiny quantities, osteoporosis does not exist. Excessive animal protein also causes kidney stones. The American Institute for Cancer Research reported a strong correlation between dietary protein intake and cancer of the breast, prostate, pancreas, and colon.

The best protein sources are from vegetables and fruits. Besides, they don’t have side effects, such as cholesterol. In a nonmeat diet, without even trying to select the vegetables for any meal, any random combination of vegetables would guarantee the required protein for the human body. You can check all the facts in the book Diet for a New America by John Robbins. It also contains lots of reliable reports and references.

In the US, two thirds of the deaths are caused by these three diseases: heart disease, cancer, and stroke. Excessive meat consumption is the main cause of these three major killers. In most Asian countries where meat is consumed mostly in tiny quantities, people don’t suffer from lack of protein nor from those diseases just mentioned.

Good health and long life are not the result of eating meat. If they were, then rich people who can afford meat would be the only ones to live healthy and long lives. Western people who can afford it, and who in fact do eat more meat than others, are now predominantly the ones suffering from those dreadful diseases I mentioned. On the other hand, you see many people who don’t eat meat or who can’t afford much meat enjoying good health and living long. Eating meat does not guarantee good health and long life. Visit any hospital and you will see that the people with cancer and diseases in the heart, liver, kidney, and so on are those who eat meat.

Good health and long life come from good karma. Good karma comes from not killing, whether directly or indirectly. Good karma comes from practicing compassion, not only to human beings, but to all living beings. If one is able to feel sorry for a wounded bird or a limping horse, why is one unable to have mercy for the millions of helpless animals that are slaughtered every day for people to gobble up? The number of animals killed every single day for food around the world is more than the total number of people killed in all wars.

If one adopts the attitude that, “Oh, those animals are meant to be killed for human consumption,” then you are also saying that for your own “selfish precious life,” many other living beings should be killed for your food for your entire life span. Your body then becomes the cemetery for those animals. Is it necessary for other beings to die in order for us to have our daily meals? Is the killing absolutely essential?

Even if you don’t care about the pain and suffering of those animals, eating their flesh causes harm to yourself and no one else. Your health will not benefit, nor will you live any longer. In fact the opposite happens; your health will suffer. In contrast, protein from vegetables does not kill humans.

A good deed brings good results. A good thought brings good results. Constant compassion for those chickens, pigs, cows, fish, and animals ensures that you will not be reborn as one of them.

You might remember the incident when the Buddha picked up a handful of dirt and explained that the number of beings born as humans is like the dirt in his hand, whereas the number of beings born in lower realms, among animals, ghosts, and hell-beings, is like the amount of dirt in the world. Humans commit many evil deeds that cause their rebirth in these lower miserable realms. Even the average citizen who, on the surface, appears to live without evil, is actually accumulating killing karma so long as he continues eating meat and causing many innocent animals to die. With the number of animals a person eats, is it any mystery, then, why he is reborn countless times as animals before he finally gets reborn as a human again? The trouble is that, once given the break as a human, he eats animals and again gets reborn countless times as those animals. Do you now understand why humans are so woefully few compared to those reborn in the realms of suffering?

The average person believes that eating meat gives him energy and nutrition for his life force. In fact, anything you eat fills up your entire body system, whether vitamins or poison. But people forget that in eating animals, the entire animal life force also fills up your life force. The fear, anger, agony, and vengeance that fill up every cell of the animal at the moment of death will also fill up every cell of the person who eats the animal. If you consider the sum total animal flesh eaten by the average person, is there any part of his blood supply, body cells or psyche that is not contaminated by that toxic animal energy? Think it over.

At the rate people are gobbling up meat, the retribution becomes so heavy that it cannot wait until a later life; retribution manifests in this very life. The escalating diseases just mentioned suffered by meat eaters result from their individual karma. Their collective killing karma is manifested in the alarming number of murders; wars; and calamities, such as earthquakes, floods, tornadoes, accidents, and fires. People are thinking and acting like animals, killing each other for no reason in increasing numbers. Even kids kill their parents nowadays. People in greater numbers are growing up with a death wish, partly fed daily by the unnecessary abhorrent violence shown on TV. The world is obsessed with killing.

You and I are related as brother and sister in this present human life. This is nothing new. We have been related as humans countless times before. But we have been related as animals many more times than as humans. If you continue eating meat, even if you do other good karma, it is unsure how many lives you will be reborn as animals or in other painful realms before we can be reborn in the same human family again. The chances of my explaining this to you again in a future human life is like looking for a needle in the entire Ganges River. The reason I have written this long letter is because I cannot bear to have you, my beloved sister, reborn countless times as chickens or cows, only to be slaughtered over and over again.

With each passing day, as you continue eating meat, you sink deeper into samsara with that many more lives to go through in the realm of those pitiful animals. Being an animal is no fun! Believe me! Who do you think are those getting reborn as chickens and cows every day? And being killed every day? They were previously humans who ate animals without compassion. As humans they had no concern whatsoever for the fear, pain, or agony of those poor animals, and so they eventually ended up being reborn as those animals only to be eaten by others. The vicious cycle repeats itself ad infinitum. There is utmost urgency to stop causing this horror to yourself.

One who eats meat incurs more killing karma than the butcher, because one pays him to kill. It is like paying an assassin to commit the crime. Every cause definitely produces an effect. After causing their death and eating their flesh, do you really believe you can get away with it? No meat eater can ever be absolved from this killing karma.

Be realistic. It is not eating meat that makes you or your children healthy and long-lived. It is doing good deeds, being compassionate, and liberating life that guarantee you good health and a long and happy life.

When it comes to changing our bad habits, we should not wait. The best time to do good and avoid evil is NOW! If you would only make the resolve to stop eating meat this very instant, you would know how to cook vegetarian meals. You are only putting unnecessary hurdles in front of yourself by fussing over the difficulty of cooking. Besides, there are many good cookbooks available on vegetarian cooking. You teach your children to be filial by being filial yourself. You also teach them to be compassionate and respect life by not eating meat or feeding them the flesh of living beings.

This letter has taken a long time to write. But I write it with the most sincere intention. It is the best gift that a brother could give to a sister, or to anyone. It is worth your reading it over again. Today is the day to sincerely make the resolve: “I vow that from today on, and in all future lives, I will not knowingly eat the flesh of living beings or cause their death, directly or indirectly.” Amitabha.

　　　　With Metta and wishes beyond words