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purpose of this conference will be fulfilled if at the end of it. even a handful of men and women decide to become vegetarians.“
He shared his feelings on the vegetarian way of life from a variety of points of view: spiritual growth, morality, health, aesthetics, and ecology. He said, “Food is for the sustenance of life. Our diet should be such that the body remains clean, the senses retain their ability to perceive what is aesthetic, the mind is at peace and the soul is not hindered in its pursuit of the sublime. Hence he who wishes to attain spiritual sublimity must take food which is pure and untainted with blood. It is the food we take that sustains the body and it is the body that houses the mind and the mind which gives form to our thoughts. If the body is sustained by meat and other food which are the product of violence and bloodshed, how can you expect your mind to generate thoughts which are pure and noble?”
He pointed out, “Man is Nature's eldest son. Is it not the duty of the eldest child to protect his younger brothers? Man is forever civilizing himself and improving upon Nature, and so, even if he finds animals killing each other, it is his duty to prevent it as far as possible, or at least, not add to it.” Moreover, the animals which man takes for food are themselves vegetarians, and extraordinarily strong as well.
Gurudev related meat-eating to war. “As long as there is this streak of cruelty and violence in man, so long will the world be troubled by wars and revolutions. Today one would kill an animal for food. Tomorrow the same person would kill a human being for land or money or power. Once one has started killing, where will be the end of it? How can man stop inflicting pain on his fellow men if he does not first learn to be kind towards his dumb fellow creatures? The path which leads from savagery to true civilization is the path of tenderness and compassion for all life.*
*George Bernard Shaw shared this point of view. When he was asked why he refused to eat at a banquet in his honor, he answered, “I am a human being, and not a graveyard for dead animals." He wrote the following poem "On War."
"We are the living graves of murdered beasts,
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