Posted on March 24, 2015 by shantanup
Veganism and its lesser form of vegetarianism is a holy sacrifice that we make to live harmoniously with Nature (https://shantanup.wordpress.com/2014/08/02/why-the-world-should-tend-towards-veganism/), which I feel sure is what pleases God. It is a sattvic way of living. But it is not always possible to do so when trying to live dharmically. One might be forced in some circumstances to consume animal products. And dharma is more important than any rules and regulations on specific bits of ones conduct.
When one eats meat, one must do so without attachment that it is being relished for taste or for attaining an extremely fit (muscular) body. One treats eating is just the means for survival. We give up our sensual pleasures in the process of living dharmically instead. Emotions and desires go out of the window. Dharma is attained by balancing all aspects of living when conflicting issues arise to decide the righteous path forward in terms of fulfilling one’s duties and responsibilities. This is the process of determining dharma through the truth path. If one is forced to eat animal products because without it one might starve or disrupt some other aspect of living, like doing ones duties to ones family, one has to go through the process of selecting animal products that are more environmentally sustainable, such as consuming honey, milk, eggs, fish, chicken, mutton, beef in decreasing order of environmental sustainability (that is, being more harmful to Nature), and therefore in decreasing order of dharma given that ahimsa is the highest dharma. Doing the right thing in fulfilling ones dharma is all one can do and we leave the rest to God to decide whether one has lived ethically.
This basis for dharma means that one is not banning things in ones life just to please God so as to get his blessing, one is simply doing the best that one can in the circumstances that one finds oneself in ones personal life. This kind of thinking assumes that God has never given any kind of code of conduct on the consumption of livestock products which if not followed will lead to eternal damnation. One decides for oneself if one is living harmoniously with Nature. We make our own rules. That rule can change from day to day in the situations that we find ourselves. It determines the truth path to dharma.
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