[Advaita-l] Vegetarianism

[rajaramvenk at gmail.com]

I am a member of PETA, Vegetarian Society and Vegan Society (though not a Vegan). In our campaigns, we de-link vegetarianism from religion. It is linked to health, animal rights and conservation of environments. The simplest answer you can give your friend is that "Plants do not have a nervous system and hence don't feel pain like animals do. Even if they suffer, it is not as much as animals. In our pursuit of pleasures, we should at least reduce pain to other lives. We can't live on air and water". 

If he wants religious arguments for vegetarianism, it will be complex. He may argue that brahmins did yajnas. Unless he likes religion and philosophy, he may not find the discussion interesting.  
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-----Original Message-----
From: abhishek sm <abhishek046 at gmail.com>
Sender: advaita-l-bounces at lists.advaita-vedanta.org
Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2012 20:11:21 
To: A discussion group for Advaita Vedanta<advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org>
Reply-To: A discussion group for Advaita Vedanta
	<advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org>
Subject: [Advaita-l] Vegetarianism

Pranams to all list members,

I know this is a bit out of context but i need opinions of learned list
members.

Brahmins always consume vegetarian food and refute from consumption of
meat,etc on the grounds of ahimsa.
I was recently questioned by a friend-"If killing animals is a sin and is
himsa then what about killing of plants? Don't we cut the plant to get
rice?"
I was unable to give a satisfactory answer to this question. Hope our list
members could give me some valuable opinions.

Regards,
Abhishek Madhyastha
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