Be A Vegetarian Hero!


Spoken by Supreme Master Ching Hai, LBNU Stanton, California, U.S.A. May 19, 1991 (originally in English)

Q: What are some of the spiritual benefits that we can get from being a vegetarian?

Image IntroM: Spiritual benefits! I'm glad you ask in this manner because that means you only concentrate or care about spiritual benefits. Most people would care for health, diet and figure, when they talk about the vegetarian diet.

The spiritual aspect of a vegetarian diet is very clear, on violence, "Thou shall not kill." When God said to us, "Thou shall not kill," Hes did not say "human beings." Hes said "all beings." Didn't Hes say that Hes made all animals to befriend us, to be helpers to us? And didn't Hes put all the animals in our care? Hes said, "Take care of them, rule over them." And when you rule over your subjects, do you kill your subjects, eat them, and become the king only, no one else is there? (Laughter)

So now you understand when God says that we must do it, there is no need to question Hirm. Hes says very clearly, but who understands God, except God? We have to become God in order to understand Hirm. I invite you to be Godlike again, be your Self, be no one else. To meditate on God doesn't mean you worship God; it means you become God. You realize that you and God are one. "I and my Father are one." Didn't Jesus say so? And if He says that He and His Father are one, we and His Father are also one because we are also the children of God. He said that what He does, we can do even better. So we might be even better than God, who knows? Why worship God when we don't know anything about God? Why in such blind faith? We must know first what we worship, just like you must know who the girl's that you're going to marry before you marry her. Nowadays, it's modern. We don't marry by blind dates anymore, so why should we worship God in all blind faith? We have the right to demand God to appear, to make Hirmself known to us. We have the right to choose which God we like to follow.

So now you see, it is very clear in the Bible that we should be vegetarian. By all scientific reasons, we should be vegetarian. By all health reasons, we should be again vegetarian. By all economical reasons, we should be vegetarian. By all compassionate reasons, we should be vegetarian. By saving the world in spirit, we should be vegetarian. It is stated in some research that if the people in western America would eat vegetarian once a week, we could save sixteen million people every year. So be a hero, be vegetarian. By all reasons, (all laugh, and clap) even if you don't follow me, you don't practice the same Method, please be a vegetarian for your own sake, for the sake of the world.

"But why vegetarian?" you would ask me. Vegetarian is just because the God inside us wants it. Killing is against our principle of not wanting to be killed. We ourselves don't want to be killed. Or we ourselves don't want our things stolen, for example. Now if we do that to another person, it means we are against ourselves and that makes us suffer. Everything that you do against yourself makes you suffer. You cannot beat yourself. You shouldn't starve yourself, for example. Same thing, we should not kill, because that is against the principle of life. That makes us suffer, so we don't do it. It doesn't mean we limit ourselves in that way. Our life will not be limited in this body, but extended to the life of the animals and all kinds of beings. That makes us grander, greater, happier and limitless.