Ahimsa is refraining from causing pain to any living creature

Yet is here is another extension of Ahimsa from Marilyn Diamond the author of Fit For Life.

Quote

Ahimsa is a practice that we must apply to the gift of life itself. If the vegetarian diet were the healthiest then in South India, we would not see not only the largest numbers of diabetics in the world, far larger than those in the meat eating north of India, but also the shortest lifespan, with poverty factored out of this equation.
I was a strict vegetarian for 18 years and continued for nearly another ten years with few exceptions. However, my research showed me that the choice to eat animal products IS ahimsa: COMPASSION FOR ONE’S OWN LIFE AND THE VERY REAL NUTRITIONAL NEEDS OF THE HUMAN BODY. The longer you abstain, the greater will be the damage. I lived this truth and live now to warn others against what I experienced. I wish only to see a strong and vital population in this country, so that we can regain our stability, prosperity and stature. And OUR HEALTH!
Science has shown that even plants experience pain, so where do you draw the line? If you inhale air, you kill living forms of bacteria, so then, you must stop breathing to practice what you preach of ahimsa.
Peace and planetary health is not on our plates. It’s in our hearts. So let’s end the aggression that has overtaken diet and respect people’s choices for their health. I respect whatever choice you wish to make. Let freedom ring, even in diet.
Thank you for you interest, and please accept my sincere and heartfelt love,
Marilyn Diamond

[www.30bananasaday.com]

It is a very disturbing statement.

Both Marilyn and her ex husband have been eating meat for years.

It's sad that some slow readers still actually revere their Fit For Life book and actually still follow their advice in the book and not realize that even the authors don't follow their own advice anymore.

Science has shown that even plants experience pain, so where do you draw the line? If you inhale air, you kill living forms of bacteria, so then, you must stop breathing to practice what you preach of ahimsa.

Right. There's no difference, is there, between killing a plant and killing an animal.

This is what passes for deep spiritual commentary these days?

>It's sad that some slow readers still actually revere their Fit For Life book and actually still follow their advice in the book and not realize that even the authors don't follow their own advice anymore.

When I started with raw and living foods, Fit For Life was one of the first book I read. It has been a long time and I may not remember all of the content but some of the ideas outlined in the book are still true today even if the authors do not follow them. They were just common sense truths. One was that fruits will digest in about 30 minutes while a meal of bread and meat will take more than 8 hours.

Another was that 70 percent of the food intake should be fruits and vegetables, and fruits should not be mixed with other foods.... The book had a good chapter on proper food combining...

> There's no difference, is there, between killing a plant and killing an animal.

Of course there is a huge difference between killing a plant and killing an animal.

Everything in the universe has some degree of awareness but we are dealing here with degree, level of consciousness, from simple reflex to more profound level of self consciousness.

Because we have to consume life to live, we search for our food in the kingdom that is below our own human or animal kingdom.

And the plant themselves find their own food in the mineral kingdom, a kingdom below the vegetable kingdom and so on...

It is called in political circles "compassionate conservatism".

An economically this makes sense. In eating animals, you are eating more plants that you would have if you were eating plants directly. It takes many pounds of plants for an animal to produce one pound of flesh. So you let the animal eat a lot plants first before you can eat one pound of the animal. Waste of energy and compassion. Just eat the plant and make the animal your friend. You will be both happy. And plants take less time to regrow themselves, to be "born again", while animals and humans take longer time. Energy and effort in the universe should not be wasted for unnecessary pursuits.



Edited 6 time(s). Last edit at 10/20/2016 05:51AM by RawPracticalist.

I quickly peeked into their book, Fit For Life II, published sometime in the 80s, and I saw that they had fish and chicken recipes.

I never was a follower of them, but I had their book laying around. Did they even promote a vegetarian diet in the first book?

I have not read Fit For Life II but I did read many comments about it especially complaints from vegetarians on the chicken and fish recipes.

In the first publication of the book a good demonstration they made about fruits as our natural food. If I remember it was that: if you leave an apple and a rabbit in a room with a child, the child will eat the apple and play with the rabbit, he will not try to kill and eat the rabbit.

I guess in the second book they went on killing the rabbit for a meat recipe.

What damage do they think will be done if you exclude animal foods? I have heard some people say that, but no facts, no figures, no examples.