[continued from previous message]   
      
   Similarly, if one compares Buddhism with Judaism and Christianity, one tends   
   to find a deeper spiritual philosophy and a more humane way of life in   
   Buddhism as opposed to Judaism and Christianity. Perhaps this is due to the   
   fact that both Moses and Jesus,   
    despite their royal connections, were ultimately poor men (a refugee and a   
   carpenter's son), who sought to establish a mundane kingdom along with any of   
   their apparently more secondary spiritual goals. Nevertheless, even Buddhism   
   with its more sublime    
   outlook still has certain inconsistencies; and there is perhaps no greater   
   paradox in any religion than the one which causes a Buddhist monk to stop   
   walking in order to reach down and remove a snail from out of harm's way,   
   while simultaneously eating a    
   ham sandwich. [300] Even Buddha himself, who was in many ways the epitome of   
   harmlessness, died from eating rotten pork – a fate no self-respecting Jewish   
   soldier could ever imagine for herself or himself.   
      
   Animal and Plant Rights   
   What goes through one's mind each time one helps or takes help from an animal   
   today which one knows one may be eating tomorrow? [301] The Jews have a   
   proverb: “A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast: but the tender   
   mercies of the wicked are    
   cruel.” [302] And indeed, to some extent one does find a degree of compassion   
   for animals in the Jewish religion. A Jewish butcher must slaughter an animal   
   in a particular way that, the Jews say, causes the least pain and suffering to   
   the victim. Enter    
   the house of a Jew, and one generally finds that s/he takes care to feed the   
   domestic animals before sitting down for her or his own meal. But then, search   
   a little more deeply and one can discover that much of this mercy is given   
   with a selfish    
   motivation at root. According to Mosaic law, one may rob a bird's nest of its   
   eggs, or its young, but one cannot take from the nest while the mother of   
   those eggs or chicks is there, or is looking on. Why not? “That it may be well   
   with thee, and that    
   thou mayest prolong thy days.” [303] Occasionally the selfish motive is based   
   on superstition; [304] and, from time to time, there may also be a hint of   
   real compassion. [305] Yet, even when one finds this pity, it is based on the   
   corrupt psychological    
   foundation of a self-righteous superiority complex. [306] No matter what the   
   circumstance, an animal really had or has no right to live its own life,   
   having been created, so we are told, to serve human beings. [307] Let any   
   animal misbehave toward a    
   human being, and invariably it was “off with its head”. [308]   
      
   Indeed, animals served a very crude function in the life of the early Jews,   
   for almost continuously they were sacrificed on the altar of an apparently   
   bloodthirsty God. A priest could not be consecrated without first killing the   
   proper helpless animals    
   and sprinkling their blood on the altar, his clothes, his right ear, his right   
   thumb, and his right big toe. [309] There were peace offerings and burnt   
   offerings, sin offerings and trespass offerings, offerings for the   
   purification of women after birth    
   and even offerings for any irregularity in a woman's menstruation. [310] In   
   all of these cases and more, innocent animals were sacrificed. If animals were   
   not offered up, then plants were designated. And, for all of these primitive   
   rituals, the only    
   certain consequence was that priests always had more than enough of the   
   richest and most coveted food to eat.   
      
   But, let me point out once again – if Judaism was bad, Christianity was much   
   worse. Whatever healthy or humanitarian dietary restrictions the Jews   
   maintained were quickly discarded, perhaps on the basis of Jesus' ludicrous   
   remark that “there is nothing    
   from without a man, that entering into him can defile him”. [311] Where there   
   were many instances recorded in the Old Testament of Jewish consideration for   
   the needs of their animals, [312] one cannot find even one example of the same   
   in the New    
   Testament. Rather one finds in the New Testament only the type of unwarranted   
   and hypocritical cruelty which Jesus exhibited toward the ordinary fig tree,   
   which had the extraordinary misfortune to be growing along Jesus' pathway on   
   one of his off days. [   
   313] All in all, whatever sort of love may be at the root of Christianity, or   
   may be the result of Christian teachings, that love was and is surely not a   
   love for animals or plants.   
      
   The sad fact is that none of the Judaeo-Christian preceptors and teachers ever   
   really thought of animals and plants as living creatures, with certain   
   existential rights comparable to those of human beings. [314] Neither John the   
   Baptist eating his    
   locusts dipped in honey, [315] nor Jesus eating his broiled fish, [316] seem   
   to have seriously considered that those insects and those fish also have a   
   vital life force throbbing within them, and that they also cherish their   
   existence in the same way as    
   do human beings. Perhaps human beings can understand the value of life, while   
   other living creatures do not or cannot delve so deeply into the matter of   
   meaning or value, but this relative lack of intelligent thought is really the   
   only difference. Do not    
   the cattle and sheep which are led to the slaughter house seem always to sense   
   their imminent destruction and assume a mournful air? [317] Do not the fish   
   which have been carelessly tossed into the fisherman's bucket and mercilessly   
   left there to die    
   from suffocation always flap about in a desperate effort to escape their   
   unfortunate lot? Does not a dog cry when it feels physical or mental pain?   
      
   Not only human beings, but also animals and even plants enjoy a tender   
   community life. Scientists have recently begun to study the emotional world of   
   plants, and have been able to discern a negative response when plants are   
   approached by humans with    
   intent to do them harm. Some types of music enhance the growth of some plants,   
   while other types of music impair their growth. Human beings are, no doubt,   
   more evolved than animals and plants, but that higher state of evolution   
   demands from us a larger    
   spirit of benevolent concern for the welfare of our younger sisters and   
   brothers. If we may expect some degree of assistance or service from animals   
   and plants, then they, the animals and plants, have a right to expect a   
   reasonable care on our part for    
   their basic needs and for their protection.   
      
   It is a law of nature that life feeds on life and so, to maintain our human   
   existence, we must consume various forms of living creatures. The air around   
   us has countless microorganisms which are being destroyed with every breath we   
   take. The sensible and    
   humane approach must be to follow a course of choosing our food from those   
   creatures which are least evolved. If one can live conveniently on fruits,   
   vegetables, dairy products and the like, where then is the necessity to take   
   the life of a cow, a sheep,    
   a chicken or a fish?   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)