Jain Center Columbia SC 1997 05 Mahavira Swami Murti Pratistha

Author(s): Jain Center Columbia SC
Publisher: USA Jain Center Columbia SC

Page 16

VEGETARIANISM
I would like to start this article with a short story. There was, once, a rich person in a village, Mr. X who was enjoying a happy life with his wife and a son. One day, when the boy did not reach home from school at the scheduled time, Mr. X decided to go to school and find out what is wrong. As he came out of his house, he saw a man standing outside his house, who handed him a letter. The letter said that his son has been kidnapped and if he wanted his son alive, he should bring a huge ransom at a particular place. Needless to say, both his wife and he were extremely worried. After some time, Mr. X went to his younger brother, a professor, and narrated him the whole story and asked for his advise. His brother advised him that they should go to scheduled place and try to get the child back. Accordingly they went to the appointed place. When they reached there, they heard a gun shot and when they reached the place where the gun shot was heard, they found out that the child had been shot and that he was dead. Actually the boy had, somehow, slipped from the clutches of the kidnappers and had started running. When the kidnappers realized that they would not be able to catch him, they shot him. Mr. X, his wife and his brother were extremely sad and they started crying. His wife and he were cursing the GOD, as to why He punished them and took away their child. His brother, then, consoled him and told him that God has punished them for their sins. He continued "Brother, I can remind you of your sins. Don't you remember the day we were coming through a forest when you saw a baby rabbit and you caught him. I insisted that you leave him as he was very sad and so would have been its parents, but you didn't listen to me and brought it home, killed it, and ate its flesh. Don't you think it was a great sin ? Do you realize how sad its parents would have been, to find their baby missing ? You also eat non vegetarian. So directly or indirectly, you are killing so many innocent animals and seprating the young ones from their parents and creating unhappiness in their lives." Hearing this, both Mr. X and his wife realized that the God has punished them and given them the same grief, which the parents of the young ones, they ate, had experienced. That day onwards they turned into a vegeatarian and sweared that they would not eat non-veg ever.
Everyone, whether a man or an animal, likes happiness and dislikes unhappiness. Similarly everyone loves his and his loved ones life most and dislikes to be killed. It is said "If you give happiness to others, you will get it yourself. Thus it becomes very straightforward that we should live and let others live too, but the problem is many human beings think that they are superior to the animal race and that God has created animals for him to eat. This is very wrong. In His eyes everyone is same. If man is strong, it is his duty to protect the weaker ones - the animals, not to eat them. For Him both man and animal are His children. So if anyone in a household will kill animals and/or eat them, God is bound to get angry and bring curse in such a family, as we saw in the preceding story. Besides invoking the wrath of god, there are health reasons also why a man should not each non vegetarian. Now a days, many feeble animals are killed and their flesh is sold in the market. It is quite possible that the animals from which the meat has come may have been infected with so many diseases like cancer, TB, madness and
obviously these disease would be passed to the body of the person who consumes