The most beneficial habit we can implement for our spiritual progress and for the benefit of our planet is to become Vegan. Numerous studies show the enormous health and environmental benefits in human beings becoming vegan in the modern age. We recommend you watch the following 3 videos on this subject. They are: “The Game Changers“, “Forks Over Knives“, and “Earthlings“. Each video covers a different aspect of vegan living and explains the neccessity for change in modern times.

The Buddha Himself summed up the problem of meat-eating by saying: “Meat-eating is just an acquired habit. In the beginning we were not born with a desire for it. Flesh-eating people cut off their inner seed of Great Mercy. Flesh-eating people kill each other and eat each other… this life I eat you, and next life you eat me… and it always continues in this way. How can they ever get out of the Three Realms of suffering and illusion by adding more suffering through their actions?” 

The act of consuming meat and dairy is a sign of a hard and uncompassionate heart. If one wishes to make real progress on their spiritual journey, one must become pure in heart and have empathy for all living creatures. This is a fundamental requirement for true & high spiritual progress. Indeed, spiritual progress cannot be gained through the suffering of others, such as supporting the killing of animals for food, and, for cosmetic purposes.

After human beings, animals come next in the level of conscious awareness, and so feel pain just as we do. Because of this, the karmic consequences of taking their life has a very heavy burden upon one’s spiritual progress. However, as plants have a much lower level of conscious awareness, than any other life form, the karmic hindrance is that much lower, which can easily be cleared with sincere & daily spiritual practice. The fact is that animals were created, by the Supreme Lord, to live alongside us, as co-companions, and not for our food – thus they value life just like any human being. So, taking their life is not permitted by the Supreme Lord, without consequence. We call this consequence “karmic justice” or retribution. Now much has already been written about this retribution, famously known as “an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth”, or, “what goes around, comes around”, and so on – thus, we will not elaborate upon it here…