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re: afternoon tea

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ok i'm just gonna weigh in briefly here, and i'll start by admitting i
couldn't be bothered reading about half of what you people have written on
the subject.i don't mean any offence by this, but i find the whole subject
a tad tiring,not to mention being quite busy/lazy.

i've got 2 points though - as all buddhists realise, all existence is
suffering.admittedly we should try to reduce suffering, but the whole point
of their doctrine is based on firstly recognising that existence necessarily
entails suffering.we can reduce the suffering animals feel before we kill
and eat them, but if the whole world went vegan it wouldn't stop millions
of innocent animals suffering.even if it were phased out slowly.not to
mention that, for example, a nice juicy steak will significantly reduce my
suffering for a bit.

secondly (and i don't know if this has already been mentioned) its not
physically possible for everyone to be vegetarian, let alone vegan. i
happen to live with 2 people who were vegetarian, for pretty much the
reasons alice is always on about, but started suffering health problems and
had to go back to eating meat, albeit under protest. one found it impossible
to keep herself anywhere near a healthy weight without meat (for some reason
all the alternatives didn't seem to work as well) and the other developed,
get that DEVELOPED, not already had, an allergy to dairy, seemingly because
of the extra she was eating to compensate for the lack of meat. there are
probably other ways people can't cope either.as animals we developed as
omnivores, not herbivores.

a quick attempt at an argument to finish - all beings suffer, some more than
necessary. eating meat can help us suffer less (health benefits, simple
pleasure factor) but often involves treating animals badly.if we treat the
animals as well as possible (and here i love the french technique of
caressing the animal to calm it just before killing, on the basis that if
it stressed when it dies, the meat is tougher) then we minimise their
suffering, and also reduce ours. ergo, we should eat meat! and the guilt of
the minority that we kill is definitely an unnecessary suffering, and easily
avoidable.

incidentally, what do people think about cannibalism?theoretically speaking,
i can't really see what the big horrific problem with it is.after all, we're
just animals.

nick






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