“The more you listen,
the more you will hear.
The more you hear,
the more and more deeply
you will understand.”
-Dilgo Kyentze
Meditation is essentially training in the practice of deep listening. The most essential indicator of success in our practice is that our wisdom and compassion deepens as our attention is tuned to deeper… and deeper levels.
In our work we often teach the discipline of Mindfulness ~ the practice of waking up, being more fully present, and observing more deeply and carefully the way things really are in our lives and our world. Mindfulness is the antidote to the habit of mindless inattention. It is the practice of “deep listening,” of “making things real” through seeing them as they truly are. As we remind our students, it requires courage to practice this discipline as the insights that awaken as we do show up to live our lives with deeper wisdom give rise not only to wisdom and to deeper compassion to guide our choices and actions, but also to often humbling recognition of the myriad of discontinuities in our beliefs, values, and ways of living which are often at odds with the new levels of insight that our deepening awareness reveals.
In that spirit we invite you to scan the notes below and to allow them to “seed” your reflective meditations. Whatever choices you make in your life our wish for you is that those choices are raised to the level of conscious where you are aware of the ripples of influence that your choices set in motion )))
There’s a lot of talk these days about “going green” and reducing your ecological footprint. In honor of Earth Day 2008, we were inspired to put together a special website to stimulate reflection regarding the preciousness of our lives and the natural systems of our home planet that support these fragile lives, and to invite our friends to consider one very important, though seldom talked about way that we can help to protect our environment and health.
In a 2006 report on Global Warming and Air Pollution, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations found that “animal agriculture contributes more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than all the cars, trucks, planes, and ships in the world combined.”
Researchers at the University of Chicago determined that simply going vegetarian is more effective in reducing global warming than driving a hybrid car! The FAO report concludes: “the livestock sector generates 65% of human-related nitrous oxide, which has 296 times the Global Warming Potential of CO2. Most of this comes from manure. And it accounts for respectively 37% of all human-induced methane (23 times as warming as CO2, which is largely produced by the digestive system of ruminants, and 64% of ammonia, which contributes significantly to acid rain.”
The Environmental Protection Agency also reports that animal waste is responsible for 80% ammonia emissions in the U.S. On factory farms it’s not just the animals who suffer from respiratory infections caused by the ammonia, according to the University of Iowa, 70% of factory farm workers are afflicted with acute bronchitis.
In our work and travels we are continually amazed by how many well meaning, environmentally concerned friends and colleagues who recycle, make efforts to conserve energy, avoid genetically modified foods, and promote social justice are still apparently relatively unaware of the impacts of their food choices on their inner health and outer world environment, or that they make choices with regards to food that are worse for the environment than driving a hummer to work every day.
In this spirit we were moved to put together this small selection of insights, information, and data to encourage and inspire some deeper reflections among our readers regarding the food choices they make and the impact of those food choices on the larger world we share.
Offered with deepest respect for Life, Joel & Michelle Levey
WisdomAtWork.com, Earth Day 2008
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Dear EarthTalk:
Vegetarians and vegans are so self-righteous about not eating meat and how meat eating is so bad for the environment. How true are these claims?
– Frank Doolittle, Sudbury, MA
There has never been a better time to go vegetarian. Mounting evidence suggests that meat-based diets are not only unhealthy, but that just about every aspect of meat production—from grazing-related loss of cropland, to the inefficiencies of feeding vast quantities of water and grain to cattle, to pollution from “factory farms”—is an environmental disaster with wide and sometimes catastrophic consequences.
There are 20 billion head of livestock on Earth, more than triple the number of people. Just about every aspect of meat production – from grazing-related loss of cropland, to water and land use, to pollution from “factory farms” – is an environmental disaster with wide and sometimes catastrophic consequences. According to the Worldwatch Institute, global livestock population has increased 60 percent since 1961, and the number of fowl being raised for food has nearly quadrupled in the same time period, from 4.2 billion to 15.7 billion.
Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.
ALBERT EINSTEIN ~ 1921 Nobel Prize Winner
The 4.8 pounds of grain fed to cattle to make one pound of beef represents a colossal waste of resources in a world teeming with hungry and malnourished people. According to Vegfam, a 10-acre farm can support 60 people growing soy, 24 people growing wheat, 10 people growing corn—but only two raising cattle.
Food First’s Frances Moore Lappé says to imagine sitting down to an eight-ounce steak. “Then imagine the room filled with 45 to 50 people with empty bowls… For the feed cost of your steak, each of their bowls could be filled with a full cup of cooked cereal grains.” Harvard nutritionist Jean Mayer says that reducing U.S. meat production 10 percent would free grain to feed 60 million people.
U.S. animal farms generate billion of tons of animal waste every year, which the Environmental Protection Agency says pollute our waterways more than all other industrial sources combined. The infamous 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill dumped 11 million gallons of oil into Prudoe Bay, but the relatively unknown 1995 New River hog waste spill in North Carolina poured 25 million gallons of excrement into the water, killing 14 million fish and closing 364,000 acres of shell fishing beds. Hog waste spills have caused the rapid spread of Pfiesteria piscicida, which has killed a billion fish in North Carolina alone.
Other than polluting water, beef production alone uses more water than is used in growing our entire fruit and vegetable crop. And over a third of all raw materials and fossil fuels consumed in the U.S. are used in animal production. Meat also increases our carbon footprints. According to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, livestock around the world contribute more greenhouse gases (mostly methane) to the atmosphere—18 percent of our total output—than emissions from all the world’s cars and trucks.
“There is no question that the choice to become a vegetarian or lower meat consumption is one of the most positive lifestyle changes a person could make in terms of reducing one’s personal impact on the environment,” says Christopher Flavin of the Worldwatch Institute. “The resource requirements and environmental degradation associated with a meat-based diet are very substantial.”
CONTACTS: Food First; UN Food and Agriculture Organization; Worldwatch Institute
E Magazine: So You’re an Environmentalist. Why Are You Still Eating Meat?
http://www.emagazine.com/view/?142&src=QSA039
Another Inconvenient Truth: Meat is a Global Warming Issue
By Dan Brook
http://www.emagazine.com/view/?3312&src=QSA039
Al Gore’s movie (and book), An Inconvenient Truth, is playing to rave reviews. His laudable project is an urgent message on the vital issue of global warming. We all must heed the call.
If we didn’t realize it already, we now know that we are overheating our planet to alarming levels with potentially catastrophic consequences. 2005 was the hottest year on record. Think of an overheated car; now imagine that on a planetary scale.
Organizations from Greenpeace to the Union of Concerned Scientists, World Bank and the Pentagon, all agree that global warming is, perhaps, the most serious threat to our imperiled planet. The Pentagon report, for example, states that climate change in the form of global warming “should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a U.S. national security concern,” higher even than terrorism.
The effects of global warming are not hypothetical: waves are already washing over islands in the South Pacific, coastal cities and low-lying countries face severe flooding, extreme weather conditions like hurricanes are intensifying, the polar ice caps and the world’s glaciers are melting, polar bears and other species are threatened with extinction, diseases are spreading more easily, crop failures are mounting. We are standing at a precipice.
There are many human activities that contribute to global warming. Among the biggest contributors are electrical generation, the use of passenger and other vehicles, over-consumption, international shipping, deforestation, smoking and militarism. (The U.S. military, for example, is the world’s biggest consumer of oil and the world’s biggest polluter.)
What many people do not know, however, is that the production of meat also significantly increases global warming. Cow farms produce millions of tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane per year, the two major greenhouse gases that together account for more than 90 percent of U.S. greenhouse emissions, substantially contributing to “global scorching.”
According to the United Nations Environment Programme’s Unit on Climate Change, “There is a strong link between human diet and methane emissions from livestock.” The 2004 State of the World is more specific regarding the link between animals raised for meat and global warming: “Belching, flatulent livestock emit 16 percent of the world’s annual production of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.”
The July 2005 issue of Physics World states: “The animals we eat emit 21 percent of all the CO2 that can be attributed to human activity.” Eating meat directly contributes to this environmentally irresponsible industry and the dire threat of global warming.
Additionally, rainforests are being cut down at an extremely rapid rate to both pasture cows and grow soybeans to feed cows. The clear-cutting of trees in the rainforest — an incredibly bio-diverse area with 90 percent of all species on Earth — not only creates more greenhouse gases through the process of destruction, but also reduces the amazing benefits that those trees provide. Rainforests have been called the “lungs of the Earth,” because they filter our air by absorbing CO2, while emitting life-supporting oxygen.
“In a nutshell,” according to the Center for International Forestry Research, “cattle ranchers are making mincemeat out of Brazil’s Amazon rainforests.”
Of course, the U.S. should join the other 163 countries in ratifying the Kyoto Protocol. Of course, we should sharply reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and shift towards renewable sources of energy. Of course, we need to stop destroying the rainforests. Of course, we need to stop the war in Iraq and drastically reduce the U.S. military budget (presently at half of the entire world’s total military spending), which would increase, not decrease, national and global security. But as we’re struggling and waiting for these and other structural changes, we need to make personal changes.
Geophysicists Gidon Eshel and Pamela Martin from the University of Chicago concluded that changing one’s eating habits from the Standard American Diet (SAD) to a vegetarian diet does more to fight global warming than switching from a gas-guzzling SUV to a fuel-efficient hybrid car. Of course, you can do both — and more! It has been said that “where the environment is concerned, eating meat is like driving a huge SUV…. Eating a vegetarian diet is like driving a mid-sized car [or a reasonable sedan, according to Eshel]. And eating a vegan diet (no dairy, no eggs) is like riding a bicycle or walking. Shifting away from SUVs and SUV-style diets, to much more energy-efficient alternatives, is key to fighting the warming trend.
Global warming is already having grave effects on our planet and we need to take action. Vegetarians help keep the planet cool in more ways than one! Paul McCartney says, “If anyone wants to save the planet, all they have to do is just stop eating meat. That’s the single most important thing you could do.” Andrea Gordon, in her article “If You Recycle, Why Are You Eating Meat?” agrees: “There is a direct relationship between eating meat and the environment. E Magazine asked the same question in its cover story, “So You’re an Environmentalist. Why Are You Still Eating Meat?” Quite simply, you can’t be a meat-eating environmentalist. Sorry folks.”
© Digital Vision
Vegetarianism is literally about life and death — for each of us individually and for all of us together. Eating animals simultaneously contributes to a multitude of tragedies: the animals’ suffering and death; the ill-health and early death of people; the unsustainable overuse of oil, water, land, topsoil, grain, labor and other vital resources; environmental destruction, including deforestation, species extinction, mono-cropping and global warming; the legitimacy of force and violence; the mis-allocation of capital, skills, land and other assets; vast inefficiencies in the economy; tremendous waste; massive inequalities in the world; the continuation of world hunger and mass starvation; the transmission and spread of dangerous diseases; and moral failure in so-called civilized societies. Vegetarianism is an antidote to all of these unnecessary tragedies.
The editors of World Watch concluded in the July/August 2004 edition that “the human appetite for animal flesh is a driving force behind virtually every major category of environmental damage now threatening the human future — deforestation, erosion, fresh water scarcity, air and water pollution, climate change, biodiversity loss, social injustice, the destabilization of communities and the spread of disease.” Lee Hall, the legal director for Friends of Animals, is more succinct: “Behind virtually every great environmental complaint there’s milk and meat.”
Global warming may be the most serious global social problem threatening life on Earth. We need to fight global warming on the governmental and corporate levels, and we also need to fight global warming on the everyday and personal levels. We need to fight global warming with our forks! In the enduring and powerful words of Mahatma Gandhi, “You must be the change you wish to see in this world.”
Global warming, as Al Gore so powerfully shows, is “an inconvenient truth.” The fact that the production of meat significantly contributes to global warming is another inconvenient truth. Now we know.
DAN BROOK is a writer, activist and instructor of sociology at San Jose State University and author of Modern Revolution (University Press of America, 2005). He welcomes comments via Brook@california.com.
PETA TO AL GORE:
YOU CAN’T BE A MEAT-EATING ENVIRONMENTALIST
Tue Mar 06 2007 17:08:05 ET
http://www.drudgereport.com/flash2.htm
The Most ‘Inconvenient Truth’: According to U.N.
Animals Raised for Food Generate More Greenhouse Gases Than All Cars and Trucks Combined
Norfolk, Va. — This morning, PETA sent a letter to former vice president Al Gore explaining to him that the best way to fight global warming is to go vegetarian and offering to cook him faux “fried chicken” as an introduction to meat-free meals. In its letter, PETA points out that Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth—which starkly outlines the potentially catastrophic effects of global warming and just won the Academy Award for “Best Documentary”—has failed to address the fact that the meat industry is the largest contributor to greenhouse-gas emissions.
In the letter, PETA points out the following:
· The effect that our meat addiction is having on the climate is truly staggering. In fact, in its recent report “Livestock’s Long Shadow—Environmental Issues and Options,” the United Nations determined that raising animals for food generates more greenhouse gases than all the cars and trucks in the world combined.
Researchers at the University of Chicago have determined that switching to a vegan diet is more effective in countering global warming than switching from a standard American car to a Toyota Prius.
PETA also reminds Gore that his critics love to question whether he practices what he preaches and suggests that by going vegetarian, he could cut down on his contribution to global warming and silence his critics at the same time.
“The single best thing that any of us can do to for our health, for animals, and for the environment is to go vegetarian,” says PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk. “The best and easiest way for Mr. Gore to show his critics that he’s truly committed to fighting global warming is to kick his meat habit immediately.”
Inspiring Perspectives from the World’s Great Wisdom Traditions:
“Animals, too, are God’s creatures, and even if they do not have the same direct relation to God that man has, they are creatures of his will, creatures we must respect as companions in creation….Certainly, a sort of industrial use of creatures, so that geese are fed in such a way as to produce as large a liver as possible, or hens live so packed together that they become just caricatures of birds, this degrading of living creatures to a commodity seems to me in fact to contradict the relationship of mutuality that comes across in the Bible.”
— Pope Benedict XVI (See: http://www.goveg.com/f-popebenedictxvi.asp
Christian Vegan is Not an Oxymoron http://joyfulvegan.wordpress.com/?s=christian+vegan
Inspiring article on food choices from the Dalai Lama and other great teachers
http://www.chinghai.org.tw/eng/news/160/vg6.htm
April 5, 2005, the Dalai Lama made the following statement before an assembly of Tibetan leaders: “Lately I have turned to a vegetarian diet. Today’s youth, particularly the ones who have come from Tibet and have a refugee status must inculcate these principles for their own development and to have peace of mind. The message from mahakaruna [Sanskrit: ‘great compassion’] has clearly asked us to follow and preach love and compassion for all living beings.” The Dalai Lama’s noble action is an inspiration to people around the world and is especially admirable because he changed his diet at the age of seventy. Actually, he had wished to be vegetarian from an early age but was hindered by the curious beliefs of his personal physicians.
Full text:
Vegetarian Awakening in the Himalayas
By the Florida News Group, USA
(Originally in English)
In recent years many influential Tibetans have become vegetarians and have been encouraging others to do so as well. The following is a brief account of their activities.
Dalai Lama
On April 5, 2005, the Dalai Lama made the following statement before an assembly of Tibetan leaders: “Lately I have turned to a vegetarian diet. Today’s youth, particularly the ones who have come from Tibet and have a refugee status must inculcate these principles for their own development and to have peace of mind. The message from mahakaruna [Sanskrit: ‘great compassion’] has clearly asked us to follow and preach love and compassion for all living beings.” The Dalai Lama’s noble action is an inspiration to people around the world and is especially admirable because he changed his diet at the age of seventy. Actually, he had wished to be vegetarian from an early age but was hindered by the curious beliefs of his personal physicians.
Nowadays, however, Tibetan doctors increasingly recognize the benefits of vegetarianism, including Dr. Tenzin Tsephal, Director of Tibetan Medicine in one of the main Tibetan expatriate settlements, who states, “It is not necessary for [the Dalai Lama] to eat meat. I would never prescribe someone to start eating meat again. The Tibetan doctors who do so are a bit old-fashioned and aren’t aware [of] or open to the alternatives to eating meat. I think all Tibetans can and should stop eating meat.”
In 2004, Kentucky Fried Chicken announced plans to open chicken restaurants in Tibet, and in response the Dalai Lama issued the following public appeal: “On behalf of my friends at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), I am writing to ask that KFC abandon its plan to open restaurants in Tibet because your corporation’s support for cruelty and mass slaughter violate Tibetan values.” Thereafter, the KFC management abandoned its plans.
Before this event, the Dalai Lama had conducted many other vegetarian campaigns. For example, in 1993, he asked restaurants in Dharamsala, India, home of the world’s largest Tibetan exile community, to become vegetarian so that Tibetans could experience delicious vegetarian food and learn how to stop eating meat. As a result, several local residents became vegetarian, and because of these restaurants vegetarian foods such as tofu have become known to the Tibetan public.
Another Tibetan Vegetarian Pioneer
Another true vegetarian hero from Tibet is the monk Geshe Thupten Phelgye, who, after practicing in retreat for several years, founded the Universal Compassion Movement, (www.universalcompassion.org) in 1998. The Movement promotes vegetarianism and compassion for all sentient beings through various means, including distributing vegetarian flyers around Dharamsala.
In 1999, Phelgye was elected president of the International Gelug Society, which represents the major monastic tradition in Tibet, and managed to pass a resolution that all residents of Gelug monasteries and nunneries become vegetarian. The following year, the Gelug monks elected him their representative in the Tibetan Parliament In-Exile in Dharamsala, where he proposed a historic law declaring 2004 the Tibetan Vegetarian Year, during which all Tibetans would be required to be vegetarian. The Parliament subsequently passed the law, whereby vegetarianism was encouraged but not enforced, bringing vegetarianism to the forefront of Tibetans’ minds. This ruling may be considered the greatest such law since the Ashokan Edict of 200 B.C., which established vegetarianism in India.
The New Generation of Tibetan Vegetarian Advocates
In a 2004 Times of Tibet editorial, Bhuchung K. Tsering, director of the International Campaign for Tibet in Washington, D.C., discussed the new trend toward vegetarianism among Tibetans as follows:
The issue of meat eating has been a matter of public discussion in the Tibetan community in recent times. A subtle change in the Tibetan people’s mindset has taken place [as] comparatively younger Tibetans are opting for a vegetarian diet today. Even among the older generation there are efforts to change the age-old meat-eating habit.
One of the most dynamic of the young Tibetan vegetarian advocates is Rapsel Tsariwa, founder of Tibetan Volunteers for Animals. In early 2005, with the help of two friends and the financial assistance of the Dalai Lama, Mr. Tsariwa launched the “All India Vegetarian Tour,” during which he has traveled to remote Tibetan communities across India delivering speeches and showing documentary films about vegetarianism. During the Tour, many Tibetans and Western Buddhists have turned to vegetarianism on the spot, with 700 committing to a vegetarian diet by signing a document. In addition, Mr. Tsariwa launched Semchen, the first official vegetarian magazine in both the English and Tibetan languages. When someone recently suggested he take a break, he responded, “Time is running out; we have to save the animals now.”
Another inspiring young Tibetan is Tenzin Kunga Luding, who became a vegetarian at the age of ten after hearing about the suffering of cows used for meat. With his father’s help, he founded Tibetans for a Vegetarian Society (T4VS). Tenzin spends much of his time rescuing stray animals and hopes to purchase land in Delhi for an animal rescue and rehabilitation center.
The main mission of T4VS is to spread vegetarianism “by every possible means.” Tenzin has conceived a variety of ingenious ways to reach people, using pamphlets, stickers, posters, news articles and VCDs. T4VS is currently developing a website, www.t4vs.com, and producing a new VCD featuring footage of respected high lamas discussing vegetarianism, all with Tenzin’s own money and a small cash donation from the private office of the Dalai Lama. With regard to the Dalai Lama’s contribution, Tenzin said proudly, “His Holiness is the first Dalai Lama who is the Patron-in-Chief of the first Tibetan vegetarian and vegan organization. This is a landmark in our Tibetan history.”
Also, in recognition of Tibetan Vegetarian Year, T4VS recently held a rock music tour, which in Tenzin’s words was designed “to propagate love and compassion toward all, including meat-eaters. Vegetarians, non-vegetarians, Buddhist and non-Buddhists—everyone is welcome to join and support us.” This positive attitude, which is reflective of the entire T4VS tour, has attracted many non-vegetarians. Now Tenzin looks forward to working with other groups to promote the vegetarian lifestyle.
The Barefoot Yogi
Ninety-three year old yogi Chatral Rinpoche, a meditation master of the Nyingma school, Tibet’s oldest Buddhist tradition, has spent much of his life living alone in caves and wandering barefoot in the Himalayas. Regarding vegetarianism among his peers Chatral says, “[In] my experience I have come across many lamas in Kham, Amdo—all parts of Tibet—who don’t eat meat.” And to promote the vegetarian lifestyle the lama wrote On Flesh Eating, in which he states, “Knowing all the faults of meat and alcohol, I have made a commitment to give up meat and alcohol. I have also declared this moral to all my monasteries. Therefore, anyone who listens to me is requested not to break this Dharmic moral.”
And with respect to the myth that Tibetan Buddhists can transform the meat of animals they are about to eat into energy to liberate the animals and thus reach higher levels of enlightenment, he says:
With supernatural power gained through certain meditations, it is true there are some who can revive animals from the dead and help them reach higher rebirth or enlightenment by consuming small amounts of their flesh. But this is not done for sustenance, only for the purpose of helping that animal. I personally do not have that power and because of that I never eat meat. I would be committing sin and getting negative karma. I don’t pretend as if I have some powers and eat meat. I just avoid it altogether.
A Present-Day Milarepa
Drubwang Rinpoche, a meditation master from the Kagyu lineage of Milarepa, also spent many years in retreat and now teaches people to live a pure vegetarian life and meditate on holy names. At one retreat conducted by Lama Drubwang, seventy people vowed to become vegetarians, and after he visited several villages in Ladakh the residents promised to close their meat markets for one day a week. Regarding the basis for becoming vegetarian Drubwang states, “If one has strong determination, one [will] avoid doing evil deeds at all costs and under any circumstances. We certainly face difficulties in becoming full vegetarians. However, when such obstacles arise, we should remember how every sentient being had at one point or another been our parents.”
Conclusion
The cases of the noble Tibetan vegetarians discussed above reveal that humankind’s consciousness has indeed been uplifted. These righteous individuals are wisely changing a thousand-year long tradition, thus demonstrating that the Vegetarian Era is imminent.