Hare Krishna

Question: If We Don't Eat Meat, Will the Animals Eat Us?

It is said that we should follow the four principles of Vaisnavas. Among these four, one is not eating meat, fish, and eggs. But in all vegetarian foods there are bacteria, so we by eating vegetables we are also doing violence to living beings. How is this different from eating non-vegetarian foods?

Secondly for the progress of life cycle human beings eat meat and fish. Otherwise won't everywhere the chicken, fish, etc ratio will be more than us and they will start eating human beings? Please clear this doubt.

From the Vedic time it is seen that Hindus were never stopped from eating non-vegetarian foods as they did hunting. Was this hunting not considered to be violence?

Hare Krishna

Answer: If We Harmonize With God, Nature Will Be Balanced

It is a fact that by eating vegetarian food we are also consuming bacteria which are also living beings. This means that eating vegetables is another form of killing just like eating meat. So what to do to avoid killing? Should we stop eating altogether and fast until death? No. What we should do instead is to subsist only on those foods which have been offered with love and devotion to Krishna. Krishna prescribes in the Bhagavad-gita that such eating of offered foodstuffs frees us from all sins and that eating unoffered foods means that we are simply consuming lumps of sin. When we offer our foods to Krishna whatever sins may be committed by consuming those foods will be counteracted by the Lord's mercy and we will be surcharged with transcendental bhakti shakti for delivering us from this material world. Krishna prescribes which foods are acceptable for being offered to him. Those foods are from the category of fruits, vegetables, dairy products, and grains. Foods from the category of meat, fish, and eggs are not allowed.

We don't have to worry about the fish and chickens growing in numbers and eating us. All we have to do is act in harmony with the instructions of Krishna. If we do so, He can easily keep nature in a perfect state of balance. The cause of all the present problems on this planet is that we are not in harmony with the laws of God. This is why nature is so much disrupted at the present time.

Although the ksatriyas (warrior class) were allowed to keep their killing skills sharp by killing the ferocious animals which threatened the sages in the forest, the Vedic culture has always prohibited the heinous sinful activity of eating meat from slaughterhouses. Sometimes we see that people abuse the Vedic scriptures by trying in a twisted way to use them as a justification for our modern day system of eating slaughterhouse meat. It was because of such abuse of the Vedic scriptures that Krishna appeared as Lord Buddha to put a stop to sinful meat eating of the Indian population.

Hare Krishna Hare Krishna

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