vegetarianism

http://www.osho.com/Main.cfm?Area=Magazine&Language=English

Body Dharma — on health
Eating a dead animal’s flesh we are absorbing the emotions it felt as it was killed. The chemistry of emotions - neurotransmitter substances – are identical in man and beast.
Osho describes, ”all the body glands (the dying animal’s) release poisons because the animal is dying very unwillingly. And when you eat the meat; that meat carries all the poisons that the animal has released.” Bon apetit!

VEGETARIANISM



Man, naturally, should be a vegetarian, because the whole body is made for vegetarian food. Even scientists concede to the fact that the whole structure of the human body shows that man should not be a non-vegetarian. Man comes from the monkeys. Monkeys are vegetarians, absolute vegetarians. If Darwin is true then man should be a vegetarian.

Now there are ways to judge whether a certain species of animal is vegetarian or non-vegetarian: it depends on the intestine, the length of the intestine. Non-vegetarian animals have a very small intestine. Tigers, lions — they have a very small intestine, because meat is already a digested food. It does not need a long intestine to digest it. The work of digestion has been done by the animal. Now you are eating the animal’s meat. It is already digested — no long intestine is needed. Man has one of the longest intestines: that means man is a vegetarian. A long digestion is needed, and much excreta will be there which has to be thrown out.

If man is not a non-vegetarian and he goes on eating meat, the body is burdened. In the East, all the great meditators — Buddha, Mahavir — have emphasized the fact. Not because of any concept of nonviolence — that is a secondary thing — but because if you really want to move in deep meditation your body needs to be weightless, natural, flowing. Your body needs to be unloaded; and a non-vegetarian’s body is very loaded.

Just watch what happens when you eat meat: when you kill an animal what happens to the animal when he is killed? Of course, nobody wants to be killed. Life wants to prolong itself; the animal is not dying willingly. If somebody kills you, you will not die willingly. If a lion jumps on you and kills you, what will happen to your mind? The same happens when you kill a lion. Agony, fear, death, anguish, anxiety, anger, violence, sadness — all these things happen to the animal. All over his body violence, anguish, agony spreads. The whole body becomes full of toxins, poisons. All the body glands release poisons because the animal is dying very unwillingly. And then you eat the meat; that meat carries all the poisons that the animal has released. The whole energy is poisonous. Then those poisons are carried in your body.

That meat which you are eating belonged to an animal body. It had a specific purpose there. A specific type of consciousness existed in the animal’s body. You are on a higher plane than the animal’s consciousness, and when you eat the animal’s meat your body goes to the lowest plane, to the lower plane of the animal. Then there exists a gap between your consciousness and your body, and a tension arises and anxiety arises.

One should eat things which are natural, natural for you. Fruits, nuts, vegetables — eat as much as you can. The beauty is that you cannot eat more of these things than is needed. Whatsoever is natural always gives you a satisfaction, because it satiates your body, saturates you. You feel fulfilled. If some thing is unnatural it never gives you a feeling of fulfillment. Go on eating ice cream: you never feel that you are satiated. In fact the more you eat, the more you feel like eating. It is not a food. Your mind is being tricked. Now you are not eating according to the body need; you are eating just to taste it. The tongue has become the controller.

The tongue should not be the controller. It does not know anything about the stomach. It does not know anything about the body. The tongue has a specific purpose to fulfill: to taste food. Naturally, the tongue has to judge, that is the only thing, which food is for the body, for my body and which food is not for my body. It is just a watchman on the door; it is not the master, and if the watchman on the door becomes the master, then everything will be confused.

Now advertisers know well that the tongue can be tricked, the nose can be tricked. And they are not the masters. You may not be aware: much food research goes on in the world, and they say if your nose is closed completely, and your eyes closed, and then you are given an onion to eat, you cannot tell what you are eating. You cannot tell onion from apple if the nose is closed completely because half of the taste comes from the smell, is decided by the nose, and half is decided by the tongue. These two have become the controllers. Now they know: whether ice cream is nutritious or not is not the point. It can carry a flavor, it can carry some chemicals which fulfill the tongue but are not needed for the body.

Man is confused, more confused than buffaloes. You cannot convince buffaloes to eat ice cream. Try!

A natural food...and when I say natural I mean that which your body needs. The need of a tiger is different; he has to be very violent. If you eat the meat of a tiger you will be violent, but where will your violence be expressed? You have to live in human society, not in a jungle. Then you will have to suppress the violence. Then a vicious circle starts.

When you suppress violence, what happens? When you feel angry, violent, a certain poisonous energy is released, because that poison creates a situation where you can be really violent and kill somebody. The energy moves towards your hands; the energy moves towards your teeth. These are the two places from where animals become violent. Man is part of the animal kingdom.

When you are angry, energy is released — it comes to the hands and to the teeth, to the jaw — but you live in a human society and it is not always profitable to be angry. You live in a civilized world and you cannot behave like an animal. If you behave like an animal, you will have to pay too much for it — and you are not ready to pay that much. Then what do you do? You suppress the anger in the hand; you suppress the anger in your teeth — you go on smiling a false smile, and your teeth go on accumulating anger.

I have rarely come to see people with a natural jaw. It is not natural — blocked, stiff — because there is too much anger. If you press the jaw of a person, the anger can be released. Hands become ugly. They lose grace, they lose flexibility, because too much anger is suppressed there. People who have been working on deep massage, they have come to know that when you touch the hands deeply, massage the hands, the person starts becoming angry. There is no reason. You are massaging the man and suddenly he starts feeling angry. If you press the jaw, persons become angry again. They carry accumulated anger. These are the impurities in the body: they have to be released. If you don’t release them the body will remain heavy.


Yoga: The Alpha and Omega

To read more on this subject, go to Library

Copyright © 2004 Osho International Foundation


http://www.osho.com/Main.cfm?Area=Magazine&Language=English


Man is the only species whose diet is not predictable. The diet of all other animals is certain. Their basic physical needs and their nature decides what they should eat and what they should not; how much they should eat, how much they should not; when they should eat and when they should stop. But man is absolutely unpredictable, he is absolutely uncertain. Neither his nature tells him what he should eat, nor his awareness tells him how much he should eat, nor his understanding decides when he should stop eating.

As none of these qualities of man are predictable the life of man has gone in some very uncertain directions. But if there is even a little understanding �Eif man starts living with even a little intelligence, with even a little thoughtfulness, opening his eyes even a little �Ethen it is not at all difficult to change to a right diet. It is very easy; there can be nothing more easy. To understand right diet we can divide it into two parts.

The first thing: what should a man eat and what should he not eat?

Man’s body is made of chemical elements. The whole process of the body is very chemical. If alcohol is put into a man, then his body will be affected by the chemical �Eit will become intoxicated, unconscious. Howsoever healthy, howsoever peaceful the man may be, the chemistry of the intoxication will affect his body. Howsoever saintly a man may be, if he is given poison then he will die.

Any food which takes man into any kind of unconsciousness, any kind of excitement, any kind of extremity, any kind of disturbance, is harmful. And the deepest, ultimate harm is when these things start reaching the navel.

Perhaps you are not aware that in naturopathy all over the world, mud packs, vegetarian food, light food, water-soaked cloth strips and tub baths are used to heal the body. But no naturopath has yet understood the point that the effects of water-soaked cloth strips, mud packs, or tub baths, on the body are not so much because of their special qualities but because of how they affect the navel center. And the navel center then affects the rest of the body. All these things �Ethe mud, the water, the tub bath �Eaffect the dormant energy in the navel center and when this energy arises, health starts arising in the person’s life.

But naturopathy is still not aware of this. Naturopathy thinks that perhaps these beneficial effects are coming from the mud packs or the tub baths or the wet strips on the stomach! They do have benefits, but the real benefits are coming from the awakening of energy in the dormant centers of the navel.

If the navel center is mistreated, if a wrong diet, wrong food is used, then slowly, slowly the navel center becomes dormant and its energy becomes weaker. Slowly, slowly that center starts falling asleep. Finally it almost goes to sleep. Then we don’t even notice it as any center.

Then we notice only two centers: one is the brain where thoughts are constantly moving, and the other is a little bit of the heart where emotions are moving. Deeper than this we have no contact with anything. So, the lighter the food is, the less it creates heaviness on the body, the more valuable and significant it will be for the beginning of your inner journey.

For a right diet the first thing to remember is that it should not create excitement, it should not be intoxicating, it should not be heavy. After eating rightly you should not feel heaviness and drowsiness. But perhaps all of us feel heaviness and drowsiness after our meals �Ethen we should know that we are eating wrongly.

Some people get sick because they do not get enough food and some people get sick because they get too much food. Some people die of hunger and some people die of overeating. And the number of people dying of overeating has always been more than the people dying of hunger. Very few people die of hunger. Even if a man wants to remain hungry there is no possibility of him dying for at least three months. Any person can live without food for three months. But if a man overeats for three months then there is no possibility of his survival.

Our wrong attitudes towards food are becoming dangerous for us. They are proving to be very costly. They have taken us to a point where we are somehow just alive. Our food does not seem to create health in us, it seems to create sickness. It is a surprising situation when food starts making us sick. It is as if the sun rising in the morning creates darkness. This would be an equally surprising and strange thing to happen. But all the physicians in the world are of the opinion that most of the diseases of man are because of his wrong diet.

So the first thing is that every person should be very aware and conscious about his eating. And I am saying this especially for the meditator. It is necessary for a meditator to remain aware what he eats, how much he eats, and what its effects are on his body. If a man experiments for a few months with awareness, he will certainly find out which is the right food for him, which food gives him tranquility, peace and health. There are no real difficulties but because we do not pay any attention to food, we are never able to discover the right food.

Everybody is in a state of schizophrenia, more or less; the differences are only of degrees. Everybody is split because the exploiters, both religious and political, have depended on this strategy: divide the man, don’t allow man integrity, and he will remain a slave. A house divided against itself is bound to be weak. So you have been taught to fight with the body; that is the root strategy of division, of dividing you. “Fight the body, the body is your enemy. It is the body that is dragging you towards hell. Fight, dagger in hand! Fight day and night! Fight for lives together! Only then, one day, will you be able to win over it. And unless you are victorious over your body, you are not going to enter into the world of God.”

For centuries this nonsense has been taught to people. The result is that everybody is divided, everybody is against his body. And if you are against your body, you are bound for trouble. You will fight with your body, and you and your body are one energy. The body is the visible soul, and the soul is the invisible body. The body and soul are not divided anywhere, they are parts of each other, they are parts of one whole.

You have to accept the body, you have to love the body, you have to respect the body, you have to be grateful to your body. Only then will you attain to a certain kind of integrity, a crystallization will happen; otherwise you will remain troubled. And the body will not leave you so easily; even after hundreds of lives the fight will be there. You cannot defeat the body.

I am not saying that the body cannot be won over, mind you, but you cannot defeat the body. You cannot defeat it by being inimical towards it. You can win over it by being friendly, by being loving, by being respectful, by trusting it. That’s exactly my approach: the body is the temple, you are the deity of the temple. The temple protects you, shelters you against rain, against wind, against heat. It is in your service! Why should you fight? It is as stupid as the driver fighting the car. If the driver fights with his car, what is going to happen? He will destroy the car and he will destroy himself in fighting with it. The car is a beautiful vehicle, it can take you on the farthest journeys.

The body is the most complex mechanism in existence. It is simply marvelous! — and blessed are those who marvel. Begin the feeling of wonder with your own body, because that is the closest to you. The closest nature has approached to you, the closest the divine has come to you, is through the body. In your body is the water of the oceans, in your body is the fire of the stars and the suns, in your body is the air, your body is made of earth. Your body represents the whole existence, all the elements. And what a transformation! What a metamorphosis! Look at the earth and then look at your body — what a transformation, and you have never marveled about it! Dust has become divine; what greater mystery is possible? What greater miracles are you waiting for? And you see the miracle happening every day. Out of the mud comes the lotus...and out of the dust has arisen our beautiful body. Such a complex mechanism, running so smoothly...no noise. And it is really complicated.

Scientists have made very complicated machines, but nothing to be compared with the body. Even the most sophisticated computer is just a toy compared to the inner mechanism of the body. And you have been taught to fight with it. That creates a split, that keeps you troubled, that keeps you in a constant civil war. Because you fight with yourself — which is utterly stupid — your life becomes less and less one of intelligence and more and more one of stupidity. And then you want great transformations; you want jealousies to drop and you want anger to disappear and you want no greed in you.

It is impossible! With such misunderstanding from the very beginning, how can you create the space where transformations happen, where anger becomes compassion, where hate becomes love, where greed becomes sharing, where sex becomes samadhi? How can you hope, how can you expect such great transformations, with such a troubled state?

The fundamental thing is to drop the split, to become one. Be one, and then all else is possible; even the impossible is possible.

The way is very simple and direct. Even a child can understand it. It is as simple as two plus two equals four, or even more simple. It is as simple as the song of a bird, as simple as a rose flower — simple and beautiful, simple and of tremendous grandeur. But only an untroubled mind can understand it, only an untroubled mind has the capacity to see it; otherwise you will live in greed and you will live in anger, and you will live in jealousies and possessiveness, and you will live in hatred. You can pretend, you can become a saint on the surface, but you will remain a sinner deep down. And the greatest sin is to divide yourself.

The greatest sin is not committed against others, it is always committed against yourself. This is a state of suicide, creating this division between your body and yourself. Condemning the body you can become only a hypocrite, you can only live a life of pretensions.

Osho: The Way of the Buddha: The Dhammapada



Respect the body, respect the mind, so that they respect you. Create a friendliness. They are yours; don’t be antagonistic. All the old traditions teach you to be antagonistic to the body and the mind; they create enmity, and through enmity you cannot move into meditation. Then the mind will disturb you more when you are meditating than at any other time. Then the body will become restless...more in meditation than at any other time. It will take revenge, it won’t allow you to sit silently. It will create so many problems for you.

If you have tried to sit silently for a few minutes you will know. Imaginary things will start happening. You will think that some ant is creeping on your leg, and when you look there is no ant. Strange.... When you were sitting with closed eyes you felt absolutely that it was there, creeping, coming, coming, coming...and when you open your eyes there is no ant, nothing. It was just the body playing tricks with you.

You have been playing tricks with the body. You have been deceiving the body in many ways, so now the body is deceiving you. When the body wants to go to sleep you force it to sit in a cinema hall. The body says, “Okay. When the right opportunity arises I will see to it.” So when you sit in meditation the body starts creating problems for you. Suddenly you start feeling your back needs scratching...and you are surprised because it never happens ordinarily.

One woman brought for me a plastic hand with a battery attached to it, to scratch your back. I said, “But why have you brought this to me?”

She said, “You must be sitting in meditation.... Whenever I sit in meditation the only problem is my back starts...I feel so much like I have to scratch it, and I cannot reach it. So I have purchased this hand. This is very handy! You put it on and it can scratch anywhere. So I was just thinking that you must be sitting in meditation...you will need this!”

I said, “I never sit in meditation. I am in meditation, so I don’t need to sit. Whatsoever I am doing I am in meditation. If my back needs scratching I will scratch it meditatively. What is wrong in scratching your own back? You are not scratching somebody else’s back.”

Just take care of the body and the body will repay you tremendously. Take care of your mind and the mind will be helpful. Create friendship, and meditation comes easily. Rather than trying to understand... because understanding is not possible before meditation, only misunderstanding.

A man walked into a pub one night and sat down at the bar to drink a beer. While he was engaged in conversation with the man on the stool beside him, a monkey clambered down one of the bar posts, stopped at his glass and pissed in his beer. The man noticed it too late.

“Hey!” he exclaimed. “Did you see that? That monkey just pissed in my beer!”

“Well, no use tellin’ me about it,” said his neighbor. “Tell the barkeeper — he owns this place.”

The man called the barkeeper over. “Hey!” he said. “Do you know that while I was talking with this gentleman a monkey came over and pissed in my beer?”

“Nothin’ to do with me,” said the landlord. “Go and have a word with the pianist over there — it is his monkey!”

The man walked over with his pint mug, tapped the pianist on the shoulder and said, “Hey, do you know your monkey has just pissed in my beer?”

“No,” said the pianist, “but if you sing the words, I will play it.”

©†ƒ……•™¼‡_Original_Message_¾€š½ž¢«»¬ï°©

http://www.osho.com/Main.cfm?Area=Magazine&Language=English

Body Dharma — on health
Eating a dead animal’s flesh we are absorbing the emotions it felt as it was killed. The chemistry of emotions - neurotransmitter substances – are identical in man and beast.
Osho describes, ”all the body glands (the dying animal’s) release poisons because the animal is dying very unwillingly. And when you eat the meat; that meat carries all the poisons that the animal has released.” Bon apetit!

VEGETARIANISM



Man, naturally, should be a vegetarian, because the whole body is made for vegetarian food. Even scientists concede to the fact that the whole structure of the human body shows that man should not be a non-vegetarian. Man comes from the monkeys. Monkeys are vegetarians, absolute vegetarians. If Darwin is true then man should be a vegetarian.

Now there are ways to judge whether a certain species of animal is vegetarian or non-vegetarian: it depends on the intestine, the length of the intestine. Non-vegetarian animals have a very small intestine. Tigers, lions — they have a very small intestine, because meat is already a digested food. It does not need a long intestine to digest it. The work of digestion has been done by the animal. Now you are eating the animal’s meat. It is already digested — no long intestine is needed. Man has one of the longest intestines: that means man is a vegetarian. A long digestion is needed, and much excreta will be there which has to be thrown out.

If man is not a non-vegetarian and he goes on eating meat, the body is burdened. In the East, all the great meditators — Buddha, Mahavir — have emphasized the fact. Not because of any concept of nonviolence — that is a secondary thing — but because if you really want to move in deep meditation your body needs to be weightless, natural, flowing. Your body needs to be unloaded; and a non-vegetarian’s body is very loaded.

Just watch what happens when you eat meat: when you kill an animal what happens to the animal when he is killed? Of course, nobody wants to be killed. Life wants to prolong itself; the animal is not dying willingly. If somebody kills you, you will not die willingly. If a lion jumps on you and kills you, what will happen to your mind? The same happens when you kill a lion. Agony, fear, death, anguish, anxiety, anger, violence, sadness — all these things happen to the animal. All over his body violence, anguish, agony spreads. The whole body becomes full of toxins, poisons. All the body glands release poisons because the animal is dying very unwillingly. And then you eat the meat; that meat carries all the poisons that the animal has released. The whole energy is poisonous. Then those poisons are carried in your body.

That meat which you are eating belonged to an animal body. It had a specific purpose there. A specific type of consciousness existed in the animal’s body. You are on a higher plane than the animal’s consciousness, and when you eat the animal’s meat your body goes to the lowest plane, to the lower plane of the animal. Then there exists a gap between your consciousness and your body, and a tension arises and anxiety arises.

One should eat things which are natural, natural for you. Fruits, nuts, vegetables — eat as much as you can. The beauty is that you cannot eat more of these things than is needed. Whatsoever is natural always gives you a satisfaction, because it satiates your body, saturates you. You feel fulfilled. If some thing is unnatural it never gives you a feeling of fulfillment. Go on eating ice cream: you never feel that you are satiated. In fact the more you eat, the more you feel like eating. It is not a food. Your mind is being tricked. Now you are not eating according to the body need; you are eating just to taste it. The tongue has become the controller.

The tongue should not be the controller. It does not know anything about the stomach. It does not know anything about the body. The tongue has a specific purpose to fulfill: to taste food. Naturally, the tongue has to judge, that is the only thing, which food is for the body, for my body and which food is not for my body. It is just a watchman on the door; it is not the master, and if the watchman on the door becomes the master, then everything will be confused.

Now advertisers know well that the tongue can be tricked, the nose can be tricked. And they are not the masters. You may not be aware: much food research goes on in the world, and they say if your nose is closed completely, and your eyes closed, and then you are given an onion to eat, you cannot tell what you are eating. You cannot tell onion from apple if the nose is closed completely because half of the taste comes from the smell, is decided by the nose, and half is decided by the tongue. These two have become the controllers. Now they know: whether ice cream is nutritious or not is not the point. It can carry a flavor, it can carry some chemicals which fulfill the tongue but are not needed for the body.

Man is confused, more confused than buffaloes. You cannot convince buffaloes to eat ice cream. Try!

A natural food...and when I say natural I mean that which your body needs. The need of a tiger is different; he has to be very violent. If you eat the meat of a tiger you will be violent, but where will your violence be expressed? You have to live in human society, not in a jungle. Then you will have to suppress the violence. Then a vicious circle starts.

When you suppress violence, what happens? When you feel angry, violent, a certain poisonous energy is released, because that poison creates a situation where you can be really violent and kill somebody. The energy moves towards your hands; the energy moves towards your teeth. These are the two places from where animals become violent. Man is part of the animal kingdom.

When you are angry, energy is released — it comes to the hands and to the teeth, to the jaw — but you live in a human society and it is not always profitable to be angry. You live in a civilized world and you cannot behave like an animal. If you behave like an animal, you will have to pay too much for it — and you are not ready to pay that much. Then what do you do? You suppress the anger in the hand; you suppress the anger in your teeth — you go on smiling a false smile, and your teeth go on accumulating anger.

I have rarely come to see people with a natural jaw. It is not natural — blocked, stiff — because there is too much anger. If you press the jaw of a person, the anger can be released. Hands become ugly. They lose grace, they lose flexibility, because too much anger is suppressed there. People who have been working on deep massage, they have come to know that when you touch the hands deeply, massage the hands, the person starts becoming angry. There is no reason. You are massaging the man and suddenly he starts feeling angry. If you press the jaw, persons become angry again. They carry accumulated anger. These are the impurities in the body: they have to be released. If you don’t release them the body will remain heavy.


Yoga: The Alpha and Omega

To read more on this subject, go to Library

Copyright © 2004 Osho International Foundation Tweet