By Jeffrey M. Freedman
Being vegan is about more than what I do or do not eat.
For me, it is a prayer, a petition asking why animals and people suffer
greatly in a Universe created by a benevolent and loving G-d. This
question led me to a lifestyle that is focused primarily on abstaining
from the consumption or use of anything that comes from or contains
animals or animal products.
Veganism is a corollary of ahimsa, the universal
principle of compassionate, nonviolent living, the a priori maxim of
Judeo-Christian ethics and Eastern spiritual philosophies. Mohandas
Gandhi said "The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be
measured by the way its animals are treated."
Veganism, for me, is not so much about dietary
abstinence as it is about spiritual sustenance; spiritual sustenance
that fills the dark and empty spaces I feel lost in when I witness
animal and human suffering, or anything that is an affront to what is
Holy or good in the world. It is a lifestyle imperative that flows from
my love of animals and reverence for life.
It wasn't until I got to university, on my own for the
first time, that I realized there was a disconnect between what I felt
in my heart (love for animals) and what I was putting in my body
(corpses of animals), and that my spiritual life would have to mediate
between and reconcile the two. It did. I stopped eating meat and chicken
and—after I realized fish are not plants with gills—seafood went too.
Becoming vegetarian made me feel I was doing something to lessen the
suffering of animals (or that at least I wasn't contributing to it). I
was making a statement about what my conscience could not live with and
what my body could live without, but it also felt like an
inadequate-human response to a spiritual dilemma.
Why G-d's creation suffers, and how and when this
suffering will cease is a question that has always tormented me—a
mystery only G-d has the answer to. But I couldn't even bring myself to
ask this question knowing that what I ate, what I wore, what I did,
contributed to suffering in this world. For me, to be able to fully
explore the question of suffering, I had to give up the products and
by-products that can't be produced without causing suffering to
animals—including meat, eggs, milk, fur, leather, wool, down, and
cosmetics or chemical products tested on animals. (I include circuses,
zoos, and all other institutions that confine or exploit animals in this
list). To the extent they don't cause suffering, in any way, I consider
consuming, wearing or watching them acceptable.
This ethical standard I try to live by is predicated on
Albert Schweitzer's "Reverence for Life," my desire to decrease, or at
least not contribute to, the suffering of any sentient being; and the
interrelatedness and common origin of all life on Earth. If she, he, or
it suffers, I suffer. What constitutes suffering, as far as I understand
it and the way most Buddhist's define it, is that everything/everyone
wants to live and nothing/no one wants to feel pain. Anything that
causes pain or death causes suffering. But eradicating all animal
products from my diet, my clothes, and every aspect of my life is also,
ironically, a statement about my powerlessness in the face of the
world's suffering. I have had to admit that what I don't eat isn't going
to have a major impact on the violence and the suffering of the
innocents in the world; that it would take more than my abstinence from
eating animals to bring about a state of ahimsa to the world. Veganism,
for me, is asking G-d to do what I am incapable of doing myself.
I read something in the news recently about the ongoing
abduction and breaking of baby elephants in Thailand. They are taken
from their mothers, tied by their feet so they can't move, beaten with
sharp instruments on their head till they bleed, and kept awake by loud
noise, sometimes for days. This torture goes on until they either go mad
or become docile enough to perform in circuses and tourist attractions.
Two blocks from where I live and work an injured pigeon
has been cowering under a store ledge trying to avoid the prowling cats,
blinding snow, wind, and other urban predators. Hundreds of people have
passed by and ignored him the way they ignored the mangled pigeon I
found during one of last summer's most unbearably hot and humid days. He
was attacked by a cat, couldn't fly, hobbled on one leg, looked
unbearably sad and worn out. When I take these animals to the local
wildlife rehabilitation center I am as much pained by the broken-hearted
indifference of the other people who saw their suffering and did nothing
as I am by the suffering itself.
For anyone sensitive to the suffering of animals and
people who cannot defend or fend for themselves, these are the things
that rend the heart and are a call to action and prayer. They are a call
to action because to do nothing is to court helplessness and depression
and defeat. They are a call to prayer because in an imperfect world,
suffering, which is a symptom of separation from the Divine or the whole
of creation, must exist. Prayer then becomes the last refuge of those
who suffer greatly as a result of bearing witness to great suffering.
I realize this is somewhat of a spiritual-evolutionary
leap; that I am, to a certain extent, intervening in the process of
natural selection and survival of the fittest in my desire to pre-empt
or lessen the severity of suffering in the 'animal kingdom.' People are
always reminding me that, in nature, the big fish eat the little fish,
we all prey on and consume some thing or someone, that it's a
dog-eat-dog world. I know all that. I know it. But a fundamental
principle of evolution is that those who adapt to the environment most
efficiently increase their odds of survival. The predatory, polluting,
war-mongering behavior of humanity has pushed us—and unfortunately most
other life forms—perilously close to extinction. So is it too much of a
stretch to posit that reverence for life, eating as low down on the food
chain as possible and a desire to preserve that which sustains life
(e.g. lakes, rivers, streams, forests, the ozone), may be a last-ditch
attempt by the evolutionary, self-preserving wiring in us, if not the
entire life-force of the planet, to move us further from the precipice
of extinction?
We have polluted, consumed, caged, corrupted,
deracinated, tortured, and tormented just about every form of creation
on Earth. I think ahimsa and veganism are both a symbolic and a very
real way to reverse this trend. Disregarding the sanctity of life and
the planet with impunity has given us a world that is rife with
violence, war, pestilence, starvation and poison in our air, water, and
food. Being vegan is a way of becoming conscious of our actions and
their consequences. It is a way of giving thought to the pain,
suffering, and terror that occurs as a result of turning a living,
breathing, feeling animal into the meat we put inside ourselves or in
front of our children; a way of considering the global consequences of
deracinating another forest, poisoning another river, depleting more of
the ozone, feeding cattle on arable land that could be used to eradicate
world hunger.
Like a fast at Yom Kippur or Christian Lent, I am trying
to make myself ready to petition G-d to rid the world of suffering and
violence that I can't personally eradicate or change in any lasting or
globally significant way. I am asking Him to do something about the baby
elephants and the wounded pigeons and the broken hearts of the world.
