Tara Brach - Compassion Towards All: Moving toward a Plant Based Diet (2019-05-15)

Episode Date: May 17, 2019

Compassion Towards All: Moving toward a Plant Based Diet (2019-05-15) - For most of human history it's been "normal" to eat non-human animals. This is now changing. We are awakening to the massive suffering of the billions of animals killed each day for food, the horrors of the animal-food industry, and the impact it has on climate change (second only to fossil fuels.) In this short talk Tara shares her personal story of transitioning to a vegan diet, and invites listeners to investigate, without judgment, their own choices in this domain. (note: given at a special class on "Loving Life with a Plant-Based Diet." Tara was joined by guest speakers, Mark Tercek and Brenda Sanders, and hosted by Jonathan Foust. Full video available at Tara's Facebook page and soon at IMCW.org.)

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. First of all, I'm so touched and glad that you all came and I'm really curious. I have a couple of questions. How many of you came because you knew the topic? I thought it would be simpler to say it that way. I won't ask it in reverse. It's really, really a powerful thing to feel like that we're gathering together to explore

this particular topic because I think it's really hard to talk about. I've been in a lot of different groups and situations where this has been kind of a focus and it's an edgy one and I love that what we've heard so far that I love the way Brenda described where you came from. I love to feel the projects and then the passion that came out of it and that I'm going to find out because these are real animal parts from real creatures and beings like us and that that passion and then we have a Wall Street guy and the same passion and what it tells me it's really part of the human heart to care and that we're going to be finding it in all beings, waking up in all places.

And I have one in Korea kind of want to explore together that's really the big one for me, which is, what wakes us up in this area? What is it that actually motivates people to change the way they're living for the sake of each other

and all beings and this earth? like, what is it that does it? And I'm going to loop back to that and ask you that, that each of you is on a path of awakening. And I don't make any assumptions, there may be many that don't resonate with a plant-based diet for many reasons, but we're all on a path of finding out who we are as part of a larger belonging

and really learning how to live more true to that. So I'm going to come back to that question of what motivates you. And I thought I'd say one thing that doesn't motivate is guilt, right? It's so big when it comes to veganism. I do want to say that Mark brought up Greta, the 16-year-old, and she's a vegan, and she describes on one of her interviews how she guilt-tripped her parents into turning vegan. So it does work temporarily, but you have to believe in a deep way to have it really come alive. But I think that's the elephant in the room, which is that when we start talking passionately about not causing suffering to other beings and we say eating animal products causes suffering

built into that as a judgment, it seems, that therefore something that something something's wrong with you if you're not on the train going in this direction. Does that make sense? So how do we have the conversation in a really honest, transparent way and rather than playing into that, really exploring what this means to each of us and what wakes us up is my question. And if you go online and you about veganism, you see there's one repeating kind of conversation. It goes kind of like this, that the first person says to another person, hey, I had vegan ice cream. And then the second person says, do you always have to talk about being vegan? Next time, they're together. The first person says, hey, I had ice cream. And the second

person said, oh my God, I thought you were a vegan. So there's those kind that's always repeating. And then what we know is that our culture is deeply, deeply habituate. As Mark said, it's through the eons that we've been eating down the hierarchy of creatures. And we're deeply, it's very normalized that we would eat other animals. And it's not so easy to raise the question, like, how did that really happen and how does it change? And so one of Jerry Seinfeld's, this is real well known, is he says this, he says, isn't it weird that we drink milk, stuff designed to nourish baby cows? How did that happen?

Did some cattleman once say, oh man, I can't wait till them calves are done so I can get me ahead of that stuff? And you can see, you can see what's behind it. So what I thought I do is I want to share a bit about how this has you emerged as a very deep passion in my life. And I want to say a little bit about that. And in a broad way, I'm 65, I spent 45 years now, most of that 45 years as a vegetarian or a vegan.

I joined an ashram when I was 20 and it was vegetarian. It was a Hymsa, do no harm. So I just joined up and it just seemed like natural and healthy and wholesome and that was that. And it was a vegetarian for a good number of years, got really sick and I had a lot of doctors telling me, you need, you know, to eat differently. And so I probably dipped into eating meat or animal products for about five years and then realized that I didn't feel like it made a difference with my health and went back. and ever since I've been vegetarian and then the last handful of years vegan.

So one of the things that feels really alive for me is those five years, I know what it was like to then be defended against other people's judgments because I held the values but I wasn't able to do it so I felt like I had to always you know like defend myself in some way and how bad that felt. also noticed during those years different ways that I did stop paying attention to what I had been paying attention before that kept me sensitive to the fact that what I was putting in my mouth, it came from an animal, an animal that suffered. So that's a humbling thing to have gone through those years.

One of the pivotal experiences for me early on was teaching a retreat down. in the Blue Ridge and some of you may have been at it, I don't know, but so we were, we'd get up real early and do a meditation and during that morning meditation you could hear the sounds of the mother cows lowing, grieving for the calves that had just been taken from them I think a day before because you know it as many of you know that in the in the dairy industry the farmers continually are impregnating cows and the calves are removed within 24 hours. Well, like all animals, there's a really deep mother-child bond.

And I was a young mother and there was something about hearing that sound that that emotional suffering became really real. Like I could feel what was going on. And so could others in the room of course. of course, so we began each day to have a metta or a loving-kindness practice for the cows. That became part of our daily meditation. After that I started much more actively purposely exposing myself. And it became important to do so, when I say exposing myself, I mean to the horrors of the animal industry.

And it felt like I had to do it on purpose because it's hidden from us. So you have to look. Like you have to choose to look and it's not masochistic. It's like this is a reality. It felt like I started sensing like we have this concentration camp in our backyard and yet we're just, it's pretty hidden, you just don't know. So I'd started really looking and so I would read about eggs and read about how there is no way to, for any of the eggs, no matter if they say free range, whatever,

in the grocery stores, in order for the egg industry to go on, when a male chick is born, it's crushed immediately. And that's all over the world. They're trying to find ways to change that, but unless you're raising your own chickens, even then you have to get your chickens from somewhere and people raising chickens kill the males because they're just not economically viable.

So learning that, I stopped eating eggs. And that was probably the hardest, by the way, just sharing as a person that's made the transition. Eggs was the hardest to do, but I didn't feel like I could keep on participating. So I exposed myself. I would watch these videos about pigs and see, watch them herded from the holding pen into the slaughterhouse and, you know, the electric prods and the beatings and so. they get put into boiling water and a lot of them aren't unconscious yet because it just doesn't work always the prod. So it's horrible and I'm saying it out loud because that's what I

expose myself to and then I would watch and then I'd sometimes have this thought of my dog Katie and I'd imagine her in this holding pen and terrified because pigs are really intelligent and they're very relational and they can feel the horror of when others are being killed. So it got into my body more and more and that's where the passion grew out of, the sense of these are fellow beings that are precious and they're being tormented regularly, like billions a day, are being killed. So this question came up. how do people start caring about suffering?

What will make people care? Is this big question to me? And I was talking about it with Jonathan. He reminded me of a movie that we had both seen years ago, and I'm wondering how many of you saw powder? Can I see by hands? Saw the movie powder? Few, a sprinkling.

Okay, so it's a fantasy drama about a young guy with this incredible sensitivity. He's got these paranormal powers. And at one point, he and a group of other young people are out on a camping trip. And they hear a shot and they find this local deputy who had been part of accompanying the group had just shot a deer. And he was standing over this dying deer. And powder's enraged.

He's just this very sensitive being. So he's really enraged. And he kneels down to put his hand on the deer's neck. And the deputy's really angry, so he's trying to grab powder and pull him away. But in the moment of touching powder, there's this transmission of the dying feelings, the fear and the pain that the deer is going through, so that the deputy all of a sudden starts crying uncontrollably because he is feeling what the deer is feeling. And as the movie goes, he gets rid of all of all of his own.

guns and he can never eat meat again. So these hearts are waking up in us. I do believe consciousness is waking up. I believe that compassion's waking up, that the way we're evolving is in these widening circles that we actually have increasing capacity to pay attention to the suffering, not just of our friends and family, but of more and more beings. And I think that's really happening. And I feel like future generations will look back. They'll look back and in some way have that same horror that we feel when we sense humans being tortured or that many of us would feel

or when we think about concentration camps, the same horror that many of us, us feel when we think of the deletes in India, I was just reading an article about them and just how horrific the oppression is of them throughout that society. Or we think about the violence against African Americans now and through generations of slavery. Or we think about the sexual oppression of women. I think when we move on in time, we're going to look back at humans having animals be their

food and the suffering of it with the horror. I think that's going to happen that we are waking up in that way. But the big question for us because here we are, we're the ones. And so when I started with this, what motivates us in our own lives, whatever the step is that helps to serve the healing of our earth, wherever you are in your path, you know, what helps and what motivates you or what inspires you and in this case towards moving towards plant-based eating. And what I'd like to ask, I'm going to kind of do a hand raise here just to get a feeling since this is a genuine question. So I'm going to name a few things that

many people find as the inspiration for them and just ask you to raise your hand of this is one of them for you. So you're allowed to raise your hand more than once. on this. Okay? So the first one is part of what inspires you as in your own being sensing the realness of animal suffering. How many for that? Okay.

How many is it because you're aware that the animal industry is the second largest contribution to global warming beyond fossil fuels? Okay. Thank you. How many is it because you sense in terms of the world? of your own health that plant-based eating is... Okay, so we're getting a lot of... A lot of you are raising your hands more than once, it's good.

I'm curious how many is it that it's actually getting more... The options are getting more available, that you can actually find healthy alternatives, like the Impossible Burgers, now at Burger King. Can I see by that, the alternatives? Okay. So what I'm thinking, what I'd like to do is, you to do a reflection. So you might close your eyes. Take some moments to let yourself

arrive fully here and that might mean for you taking a few nice long full breaths, inhaling deeply, filling the lungs, exhaling slowly so you can feel the release of the breath letting go, letting go, and then inhaling again nice deep in breath. and a slow out breath, letting go, letting go. And once again, nice deep, full in breath and a slow out breath. And as the breath resumes in its natural rhythm, just feel the quality of presence that's here. Taking a few moments to let yourself imagine the world that we want to live in, where there really is a true respect and care and valuing of all living beings.

Just imagine, let yourself glimmer to that. Where we sense all beings as part of our heart, where we really want to live on behalf of and for the sake of the healing of all beings. us and how we treat those of difference, those that in the past were of a different cast or color or sexual orientation or gender identity, ability, just imagine a world where there's really respect and justice and care and imagining in particular our relationship with other non-human living beings, sensing the possibility of what seems to be really happening, which is a collective movement towards compassion-based eating, plant-based eating, and imagining for yourself in your

own life, today, tomorrow, what the challenges are for you in moving more fully in this direction, just real honestly, what are the challenges? Part of waking up is just that courage to be honest with ourselves? What are the challenges? And what would support you? What is it that would help you or support you as you refine the way you walk on this beloved planet? Refine the way that you live in relationship with other beings? What would help? And then Gary Lawless puts it this way. He says, when the animals come to us asking for our help, Will we know what they are saying? When the plants speak to us in their delicate, beautiful language, will we be able to answer them?

When the planet herself sings to us in our dreams, will we be able to wake ourselves and act? For more talks and meditations, and to learn about my schedule or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com.