One other point. And this is one almost nobody considers, even the vegetarians, only if you are rising up to a higher level of spiritual understanding where you think about this.
What about the karma? Karma, how does that work karmically between meat eating and vegetarianism? In case you don’t know what karma is, I’ll give you a very brief introduction.
Karma is a material law that we are controlled by. The law of action. Whether we believe the law or not, it doesn’t matter, it still controls us. It describes it in the Bible in a certain way, “As you sow, so shall you reap.” That’s also been called the law of cause and effect, “Everything you do, comes back on you.”
When we are in human bodies, we are responsible for our actions, knowingly or unknowingly. I’m responsible for everything I do.
So if I perform activity which affects the life of another living entity (any living entity: humans, animals, plants…), if I affect their life in a negative way: I cause them pain, suffering, hardship, death – I’m responsible for that. So I will be punished for that. Coming back to me in the future will be pain, suffering, hardship, death. It’s the way it works; bad karma. Bad action – bad result, bad karma.
But if I affect the life of another living entity in a positive way, I make their material life somehow a little better: feed a hungry person, help an injured animal, do charity work, etc. – that’s a good thing and I will be rewarded for that in the future: good things come back to me.
So this is going on all the time. We are always under the influence of our karma.
When we kill animals to eat them, we create a lot of karma, huge. And that’s not only the guy, who pulls the trigger, cuts the throat. That’s just the beginning of the people involved. It includes those who kill the animal, transport the animal, cook the meat, serve the meat, or eat the meat. All are involved in this karma.
So when we eat meat, we increase our karma dramatically. If you had any idea, you wouldn’t believe it. It’s too much to tell you how much, but it’s a lot, I’ll say that. More than you want to know about.
And I will also add that killing cows creates the most karma. This is God’s arrangement, you can’t change that.
Cows are considered one of our 7 mothers. Her position in relation to humans is to provide us with milk. Our birth mother provides us with milk when we are babies. The cow provides us with milk for our life.
To kill your mother – heavy karma. The karma for killing cows is immense.
Yet throughout the world the number one meat is considered cow’s meat, steaks. Cows are bred not to give milk but to have juicy, tender meat. The karma for that is huge. Nobody thinks about this.
Eating vegetables: much, much, much less karma, but still – some karma. So even a vegetarian is also creating karma by his eating, but much less. But actually when we follow this bhakti yoga system, then there is a solution to that. I’ll tell you about that at the end. Don’t let me forget, it’s important.