| | I put this in here, as I see it as a moral thing. Not all Buddhists are vegetarian, and not all see the need to be, and that is fine. I have no problems with people eating whatever they want to eat, as long as it is legal! So please no "oh you don't need to be vegetarian" or "you MUST be vegetarian" comments please.
I am a vegetarian. I became veggie when I was 6 for moral reasons, and I eventually realised those feelings and morals were in line with Buddhism, and I took refuge when I was around 13. So I've been a veggie for 22 years now. I'm a Kagyu Buddhist, and H.H Karmapa says that Kagyu Buddhists should be vegetarian if they can. That's all fine.
However, I've started to have really, REALLY strong cravings for meat recently. It's so bad I even dream about eating meat and cooking up amazingly drool-worthy feasts of meat, and loving them. It's making me feel really, really guilty. I don't want to eat meat; I don't think it's fair on the animals because they don't get the choice. If a cow could turn round to me and tell me it was happy with the life it had had, and it was happy to be killed and for me to eat it, then fine, I'd be honoured to eat it. But they can't.
I know the first thing is to rule out any medical issues. I have just been in hospital, and had emergency surgery. They thought I had appendicitis and went in to remove my appendix, but it turned out my appendix was fine, and they found some deposits and nodules that they said means I probably have endometriosis. This is a really, really bad thing because it seriously affects one of my other medical conditions which already has me in a wheelchair, but that's a whole different conversation. So I know my health is bad at the moment; I'm recovering from surgery. But I started getting these cravings before the surgery anyway, and endometriosis wouldn't cause any issues with needing meat I don't think. They did a lot of blood work when I was in hospital as I was feeling very dizzy and faint a lot, so they checked to see if I was anemic as I'd bled a LOT in the week up to going into hospital, but they said my blood work was all fine, so I'm not anemic. It's not that simple. It's also not as simple as having just turned veggie and craving what you miss. I've been veggie for 22 years... so my body / brain can't just be missing what I had recently.
Now I have a lot of medical conditions, and I'm part worried that it's not wise to be a vegetarian since I'm so ill. I know it is perfectly possible to get every bit of nutrition the body needs from a vegetarian diet, so that's not a problem, but my body has odd nutritional needs. I go through protein cravings every now and then and find myself eating a lot of quorn (a mycoprotein that's made up to be like meat - fake meat kind of thing, it's not soya or gluten, but is similar in that they make 'chicken' pieces, etc. It's in the UK so I don't know if non-UK based people will know about it). I can't eat lots of grains or legumes to get my protein when I have those cravings though. It HAS to be the quorn - the closest thing I can find to meat. So I guess I've had this problem before, it's just really, really strong now, and I'm craving meat specifically, and dreaming about it. I have bowel issues so I have foods I can't have, and I seem to need weird things. Eating a balanced diet doesn't really work - I end up needing lots of one thing or another, so I kind of lurch between things a lot. It's all cravings, and I've been listening to my body and going with them because I thought my body was needing those things. But why would it NEED meat? I can get protein, iron, B vitamins from other sources. Everything I find in meat I can get elsewhere, and without the cholesterol.
So I've started to wonder if it's a trick of samsara, trying to test me, make me give up my principles. It's hard; it's on my mind 24/7, I've tried everything; reading H.H Karmapa's words about vegetarianism, reading other leading Tibetan Lamas words about vegetarianism for inspiration. I've taken the Bodhisattva vow which means I can't eat meat, even if H.H Karmapa hadn't said it, so I reinforce that to myself. I don't understand why I have these cravings now.
I've read recently that doctors have reccomended to people with my main medical condition, not to be vegetarians, but I'm skeptical about that. I will be talking about this with my gp, and I might ask him to write to my consultant in London (I have to go to London to see a specialist because my condition is rare), to find out diet reccomendations for my condition because I've never asked before, and I know I need more of certain things, like calcium and possibly magnesium and vitamin K. If a doctor told me I had to eat meat, that wouldn't be a problem; Buddhism is full of 'rules', but they're more guidelines, and health is one thing that is to come first and I've always been told that ill people are exempt from fasting, and other rules that may affect them, so it would not cause me a crisis of faith if I was told specifically to eat meat, and I would say prayers for each meal and thank the animals it came from. So that would be ok, but I'd rather not revert to meat eating unless I absolutely have to.
I don't really know what I'm asking here... has anyone else had problems like this? Was it a samsaric bump to get over? How did you get past it?
Djon Ma
Nicola |