From IIM Ahmedabad To Happiness

Author(s): Vijay K Jain
Publisher: Vikalp Printers

Page 69

THE HYGIENE OF FOOD
neighbour, corrected their wrong belief. There are many people, at least in India, who would not eat non-vegetarian food during religious ceremonies and on particular days (say, Tuesdays); proof enough that in the core of their hearts they feel it to be immoral to eat such food. Why not have the courage to shun such food on all occasions and on all days?
No wise man who has understood the laws of nature will ever think of eating meat. We would cry out immediately if a pin pricked us; but we have no thought for the extreme agony which we inflict on another soul, of a poor animal, when tearing off its flesh from its limbs, as if it has no right even to its own body. When man understands that every little departure from the strict code of morality goes to stamp our features with ugliness and misery and renders our system sensitive to infection and onslaught of disease-bearing germs and also to shorten life, he will at once give up animal diet.
As the scriptures teach us, difficult it is to obtain the human form; having obtained it, difficult it is to be born in the best environment for speedy progress; having been born even in the most suitable environment, difficult it is to acquire the truth; and having acquired it, difficult it is to put it into practice. Ignorant, indeed, is he who having obtained the human birth squanders away his time in the pursuits of the pleasures of the world, which can never obtain for the soul the bliss which it is hankering after.
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