Vegetarian or carnivore?
Suzanne
passage:
"Say: O concourse of priests and monks! Eat ye of that which God hath
made lawful unto you and do not shun meat.
(Baha'u'llah, The Summons of the Lord of Hosts, p. 80)
He took this to mean that we are supposed to eat meat. And yet there
are many passages in books like Lights of Guidance in which 'Abdu'l-
Baha says that vegetarianism is encouraged and that in the future we
won't eat meat. This has always been my understanding.
How do you understand the passage above from Baha'u'llah? Is it
forbidding humanity as a whole from shunning meat, or is there another
meaning?
All best wishes,
Suzanne
Suzanne
Okay. Nobody seems to be responding to this so I will put in my two
cents of my own understanding. I believe that the above is not so
much about an admonition to eat meat as a breaking with past
traditions. Baha'u'llah is specifically talking to priests and monks;
so religious leaders within the Catholic Faith. Catholics have
traditionally not eaten meat on Fridays. He is abrogating that law
and saying that a new day has dawn.
But as to whether we should eat meat or be vegatarians, Shoghi Effendi
said it was better to be a vegetarian is you possibly could be:
"In regard to the question as to whether people ought to kill animals
for food of not, there is no explicit statement in the Bahá'í Sacred
Scriptures (as far as I know) in favor or against it. It is certain,
however, that if man can live on a purely vegetarian diet and thus
avoid killing animals, it would be much preferable. This is, however,
a very controversial question and the Bahá'ís are free to express
their views on it."
(From a letter written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi to an individual
believer, July 9, 1931; Lights of Guidance, p. 296)
All best wishes,
Suzanne
tsuki190
From: Carl Brehmer <carl...@cableone.net>
Date: Sun, Aug 29, 2010 at 2:35 AM
Subject: Re: Vegetarian or carnivore?
To: soc-relig...@moderators.isc.org
> cents of my own understanding. I believe that the above is not so
> much about an admonition to eat meat as a breaking with past
> traditions. Baha'u'llah is specifically talking to priests and monks;
> so religious leaders within the Catholic Faith. Catholics have
> traditionally not eaten meat on Fridays. He is abrogating that law
> and saying that a new day has dawn.
>
separating dietary practices from religious practices. The priests
and monks that He was addressing were most likely shunning meat as a
religious practice, believing that doing so would bring them closer to
God. One would have thought that Christ’s statement, “Not that which
goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the
mouth, this defileth a man,” (Matt 15:11) would have put an end to the
practice of believing that human virtue is related to composition of
one’s diet. Christ was addressing a debate that was going on among
the disciples as to whether or not Christians were bound by the strict
dietary laws that had developed within the Jewish community at the
time.
The Bahá’í teachings that recommend a vegetarian diet (and there
are many,) in my view do so simply as a medical or health issue, not
as a moral vs immoral issue. That is, one should eat a vegetarian
diet because it is physically healthier to do so, not because eating a
vegetarian diet will bring you closer to God or make you morally
superior to those who eat meat. This is not the case among the
practitioners of certain traditional religions and is certainly not
the case among those vegans who view eating meat as immoral because
they believe that eating meat is a violation of "animal rights."
Bahá’u’lláh’s prohibition against “shunning” the eating of meat and
the Bahá’í teachings that allow the hunting of animals for food puts
the Faith at odds with those who believe that animals have an absolute
right not to be killed and eaten by humans. That having been said,
since there also exists Bahá’í teachings that forbid cruelty to
animals might we not assume that if one is going to kill and eat an
animal it should be done humanely?
‘Abdu’l-Bahá addresses this seeming contradiction by saying that
“in the physical realm of creation, all things are eaters and eaten.”
He said, “O thou who art voicing the praises of thy Lord! I have read
thy letter, wherein thou didst express astonishment at some of the
laws of God, such as that concerning the hunting of innocent animals,
creatures who are guilty of no wrong.
“Be thou not surprised at this. Reflect upon the inner realities
of the universe, the secret wisdoms involved, the enigmas, the inter-
relationships, the rules that govern all. For every part of the
universe is connected with every other part by ties that are very
powerful and admit of no imbalance, nor any slackening whatever. In
the physical realm of creation, all things are eaters and eaten: the
plant drinketh in the mineral, the animal doth crop and swallow down
the plant, man doth feed upon the animal, and the mineral devoureth
the body of man. Physical bodies are transferred past one barrier
after another, from one life to another, and all things are subject to
transformation and change, save only the essence of existence itself—
since it is constant and immutable, and upon it is founded the life of
every species and kind, of every contingent reality throughout the
whole of creation.
“Whensoever thou dost examine, through a microscope, the water
man drinketh, the air he doth breathe, thou wilt see that with every
breath of air, man taketh in an abundance of animal life, and with
every draught of water, he also swalloweth down a great variety of
animals. How could it ever be possible to put a stop to this process?
For all creatures are eaters and eaten, and the very fabric of life is
reared upon this fact. Were it not so, the ties that interlace all
created things within the universe would be unravelled.
“And further, whensoever a thing is destroyed, and decayeth, and
is cut off from life, it is promoted into a world that is greater than
the world it knew before. It leaveth, for example, the life of the
mineral and goeth forward into the life of the plant; then it
departeth out of the vegetable life and ascendeth into that of the
animal, following which it forsaketh the life of the animal and riseth
into the realm of human life, and this is out of the grace of thy
Lord, the Merciful, the Compassionate.
“I beg of God that He will assist thee to comprehend the
mysteries that lie at the heart of creation, and will draw away the
veil from before thine eyes and thy sister's, that the well-guarded
secret may be disclosed unto thee, and the hidden mystery be revealed
as clear as the sun at noonday; that He will aid thy sister and thy
husband to enter the Kingdom of God, and will heal thee of every ill,
whether physical or spiritual, that assaileth one in this life.”
Selections from the Writings of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, p. 137
Carl Brehmer