Jain Guidance for Eating

When considering the ethics of food choices, I think our Jain friends have the best approach to this topic. 

Let me try to summarize.

Holding ahimsa (Sanskrit: non-injury, non-harm, non-violence) as the highest ideal, they propose - recognizing that life must consume other life to survive - that we humans (who have lots of choices) think of potential food items something like a pyramid, where the bottom includes life forms with the fewest sensory organs, and at the top, those - like us - with the most.

They suggest that to reduce the harm, pain, and suffering we may do by eating, that we eat our way up from the bottom, then stop where we are able to be healthy with our chosen diet.

With the many options available to most of us today, and factoring in the great suffering caused by the big Dairy and Egg factory methods, this parses out as Vegan.

This does not even factor in well-considered and increasingly widely held opinion that commercial animal production is one of the biggest Climate Change contributors. Scientists like Sr David Attenborough and Dr. Jane Goodall are two who speak clearly to this point.

 

May all beings be well.