There is a name for people like me! I have forgotten what it is, but I don't think it is very complimentary. I am one of those who gawp at what the person in front of me at the supermarket is putting on the conveyor belt. (For anyone who doesn't live in Lancashire, England and may not know what "gawp" means, it is to stare at something idiotically.) I wish I didn't do this, and that I could just concentrate on my own shopping, but I can't seem to help it.
Nearly always, among the fruit and vegetables and the breakfast cereal, there are the ubiquitous pieces of a once living animal, now neatly packaged in cellophane and polystyrene, who has had his / her life taken so violently, to provide a meal for the person now standing in front of me at the checkout. At this point I always find myself wondering who this person is. He / she may be a doctor; a brilliant surgeon who has saved countless lives in their career. Or maybe an airline pilot, flying a jumbo jet with 400 lives in his skilled hands every day. Maybe this person is like myself, just an ordinary individual doing an ordinary job. The only thing that I know for certain, amid all this speculation, is that whoever the person before me is, however great, however meagre, he / she does not merit the death of a living being.
Throughout this web-site you will find poems and stories etc. that seem to be placing mankind at the bottom of the pile, and extolling the virtues of other species. I am sorry if this is how it appears because that is not the intention. In fact, it is just the opposite. What we are really trying to say is that there is no pile. There is no top of the heap or bottom. All forms of life are equal and deserve equal respect. When you come across an item on this or other sites that you find offensive, and you find yourself identifying with the behaviour described, don't take it personally. It is not you as a person who the author of the piece is attacking. It is not even mankind as a whole, it is just the particular trait that is causing so much suffering, usually through ignorance, and which can so easily be changed if you have the will and desire to change it.
And so we come to the crux of the matter. In order to have the will and the desire to change something, we must have deep conviction that it needs to be changed. I believe that the only way to develop such a conviction is through compassion. Have the courage to imagine yourself in the position of a helpless animal being led into the slaughter-house. Try to feel it's fear, try to imagine what it is thinking in the final moments of it's life before the captive bolt smashes into it's head. Nurture compassion within your being. Jack Kornfield said "the near enemy of compassion is pity. Pity appears in the guise of compassion but it's not really. Compassion is where you see another being suffering and say to yourself, gee, it hurts him like it hurts me." You don't have the right to cause the suffering and death of living beings so that you can eat their flesh, and in order for you to evolve further you have to see and accept that.
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