Tara Brach - Concern for All Beings: Plant-Based Eating

Episode Date: September 6, 2022

Concern for All Beings: Plant-Based Eating – A conversation with Tara Brach and Tricycle's editor-in-chief, James Shaheen - A vegetarian diet, while encouraged in most schools of Buddhism, isn't a requirement of the Buddhist path. But there are powerful spiritual opportunities in embracing a plant-based diet. Following a vegetarian or plant-based diet is one way to practice compassion, reduce harm, and recognize our interconnectedness with all living beings and the earth itself. So what does the dharma say about vegetarianism? How might plant-based eating support our spiritual practice? Tara and James discuss these and other important questions at the intersection of our dietary choices and spiritual path.

Good everyone and thank you for joining us. I'm Jane Shaheen, Price Coast Editor-in-in-Chief, and I'm happy to be here with you today for Concern for All Beings, Tara Brock on Plant-Based ED. We'll be leaving time for questions at the end of this hour-long session. You can ask the question by typing it into the Q&A tab at the bottom of the screen. We'll get to as many of your questions as we can. Today's Zoom session will be reported. We'll share the replay link and follow-up email. My guest today is Tara Brock. Tara is a meditation teacher, psychologist, and author of several books, including international best-selling radical acceptance, radical compassion,

and trusting the gold. Her popular weekly podcast on emotional healing and spiritual awakening is downloaded three million times of a month. Wow. Tara's teachings blend Western psychology and Eastern spiritual practices, mindful attention to our inner life, and a full compassionate engagement with our world. She is founder of the Insight Meditation Community of Washington and has been active in bringing meditation from the schools, prisons, and underserved populations. Along with Jack Whartonfield, Tara leads the mindfulness meditation teacher

certification program serving participants from 50 countries around the world. Welcome, Tara. It's a pleasure to be with you, my friend, and all of you. Thank you for choosing to come be with you. with us. It's great to see you. So Tara, I wonder if we could begin by first addressing the highly charged feel so many of us can have around our topic of plant-based eating. So I'm really glad we're starting there because I always find with this domain, it brings up so much discomfort and so many bad feelings about ourselves, you know, guilt and shame and bad feelings about

those bringing up the topics. So it feels really good just to name that it's an opportunity to really let it be a meditation, you know, feel what's coming up inside us, feel that with openness, be curious. And I just want to invite all of us to take a moment, a kind of meditative moment, and if it helps to close your eyes, to pause right now and take a few full breaths to be aware of arriving right in the moment in this breathing body and to feel the state of your heart right now. Just whatever's here. Notice. Be aware of how you're approaching this time together. Not judging whatever's here, just noticing. And to feel our shared aspiration that this time together, might serve awakening of our own hearts and minds and of an awakening and a deepening well-being

for all to feel that aspiration. Thank you. And thank you for starting there, James helps me to arrive. Yeah, me too. Thank you, Tara. So let's begin. Why plant-based? Yeah, well, on spiritual path, on the Buddhist path, there's intention behind all of of our actions. So it becomes a really powerful inquiry to look at the choices we make around eating and really sense. And this is always the inquiry is, is this serving more awakening, more freedom, more healing, or is this in some way causing suffering? So it feels important to pay attention to this whole domain of moving towards a plant-based diet because it really has an impact. There's that question, how are my choices impacting? And it impacts in a really

big way. I would say the three areas is it impacts animals. It impacts our larger body of the earth. It impacts our own bodies. And it impacts our spiritual awakening. And in a very particular way, you know, if we think of animals, it causes a lot of suffering. to eat animals and animal products. It has them living in hack crates and pens and this horror of living very unnatural, shortened lives and include a lot of pain and fears. So there's that suffering and then there's the health of the planet where most climate scientists as we know are saying that moving towards plant-based eating is a key step in reducing the impact of climate change. And then on our own health, there are many, many benefits

to going towards plant-based. And I want to just name, I should have made this clear. As we're talking today, we're not talking about eating in a strict, only plant-based way. It's the movement towards plant-based eating. And for many, it will be fully plant-based eating, that certainly is how I do it. But the movement towards helps our health. I mean, for those that this matters, it helps with weight loss, but more important in reducing the risk of heart disease and certain types of cancer, manages type 2 diabetes, a lot of health effects. And then the thing that most feels just so important for I'm imagining all of us that are gathering here is that the reason that the ethical precepts in Buddhism and really on all spiritual

paths are so central is they create this inner atmosphere that's conducive to waking up. So not killing, having a reverence for life, even acting as if we have a reverence for life actually creates a kind of receptivity. that lets us feel our connection with all life. And there's a deep conditioning to not feel connected. We are conditioned to feel separate. And so what happens is we have comparing mind and we feel there's a hierarchy

and that we're in some way above others, above other species. And as long as there's any sense of above or below, superior, inferior, as long as there's any sense of that separation, we can't realize the truth of our belonging and of our oneness and of our interdependence. And so the spiritual truths that we know are liberating are kind of blocked if we're living out of a sense of separation and if our daily choices are both expressing that separation and deepening it.

So that's a little bit maybe longer than you meant for me to go, but that's why it matters to be on that pathway towards plant-based eating. Well, thank you so much. I appreciate the long answer. You talked about a path there. And you touched on in a bit, but can you talk about your own journey to embracing a plant-based diet? Yeah, well, you know, I decided it was a good idea to be a vegetarian when I was in college and it was some idea about health and I became a full vegetarian at 21 when I moved into a spiritual community and I knew it was about non-harming. But I can't say on a visceral level I had a sense that I was caring about not creating suffering. It was just what we were doing. But then that caring grew. I remember teaching a retreat, and this was in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and we would hear in the mornings the cows lowing, you know, the crying of these cows. And as you might know,

they get the calves get taken from their mothers. It's part of the meat and dairy industry is that farmers continually impregnate the cows and separate them from the calves. And so like all mammals, there's this deep mother child attachment. And so they were crying. And for the first time I listened to these heart rendering bellows as we do our morning meditation. And it was in my body. Like I'm a mom, you know, and I have a young child. And so in the afternoon and others, we're feeling the same in the afternoon. We would do a loving kindness meditation together for the cows. But I'm sharing that, James, and with all of you, because there was this visceral sense of

this matters, these beings hurt. And then I started learning more and more about the animal industry and the ways that the day, how billions of animals are tortured daily. And so I stopped all dairy at that point. I'd been a vegetarian, but I stopped all dairy. So I was a vegetarian until I was 55. And then I was in the spiral of sickness. And a number of medical doctors,

acupuncturists said, you're not getting enough protein. You need to try red meat. So for a few years, I started experimenting with fish and red meat and so on. And it didn't make much of a difference in my health. So, and during those years, there's this real increase in alternate proteins available. So I shifted back to being a vegetarian, but I was still eating eggs. And eggs was like the hard one. But the more I learned, you know, that like, I mean, this is what really got me is that every male chick is killed in the

the egg industry, that the male chicks are killed and they're killed after they're born. And then the hens are, you know, live crammed on shelves and they got the edges, the ends of their beaks cut off all the females because the sheds are so crowded that, you know, otherwise they'd injure each other. And there's just the more I learned about the way chickens are treated, it just became, you know, I couldn't eat eggs. So eight years ago, I became fully plant-based. So that basically means that since I was 21, that's almost 50 years. I've been either a vegetarian or totally plant-based, with the exception of those years where I was experimenting to see if it would help my health.

You know, it's interesting you mentioned, you know, identifying with a fellow mammal, like the mother losing its child. And of course, Anna Follinger. mammals do feel this. For me, it was accidentally clicking on something, I believe it was on Facebook, where it was sort of this expose of agribusiness and how the animals were treated. That's when I first began to struggle with the notion

because I found that these animals suffered so much. I mean, it's suffering. And yet there would be times when I could just push that aside. I numb myself to that. Can you say something about that because I could do that again. I'm on this path myself trying my best to reach this plant-based diet, which I just about done. Can you say something about that just sort of numbing out? Or for me, numbing out, pushing aside. Thank you for asking it and me too. And here's the, you know, I don't judge people who are not plant-based or who aren't, you know, fully plant based or any of it. And I really don't. I have, you know, fellow teachers and close

friends and members of my family. I mean, I'd be in a lot of trouble because that would just create more separation, you know. The part of the reason I don't judge is because during those years, James, when I was experimenting, the first time I decided, okay, I'm going to try it. I had salmon. and I wept. I mean, I thanked the fish for giving its body to me. I mean, I was, it was like, I wept. Well, soon after that, I was just eating this and eating that, and I wasn't making any of the connections I used to be making to this is a living creature that suffered. For some reason, once I decided I was going to try out eating animal products, something shut down of that sensitivity. I just wasn't paying attention. And it wasn't until I saw there were a lot of

alternatives on the shelves and so on that I thought, wow, you know, I could go and be, you know, plant-based and then I'd feel a lot better and I hadn't even realized I wasn't feeling good about it, you know. So I share that because I think it's the way our psyches are designed, that we get habituated, that we don't go and look at something that's going to make us feel bad or disconnected with ourselves. We don't want to feel bad about ourselves. And to watch myself cut off for a few years. And this wasn't when I was like in high school. This is when I was in my mid-50s, was humbling. So it lets me know it's just part of the way our psyches work. And there's some grace in, okay, I'm ready to look more deeply and then looking more deeply.

I'm going to jump in a little bit early with a question from the audience. Just because this comes up so often, I think it would be nice to address it right now. AJ Mirabedini asks, are we humans biologically and evolutionarily meant to be plant-based in our diet? Are we not like other carnivals? I believe he means omnivores. But my first response to him is there's a great movie called the Game Changersmovie.com. If you go to the Game Changersmovie.com, they address that fully. But Tara, what do you say about that?

Yeah, it's a good and natural question. And I'm not sure anybody has a great answer. There's much science that shows that our teeth are more like the teeth of animals of graze on plants than the sharp incisors of like, you know, wolves or whatever. And we could go back and forth on that. Certainly, science is now showing that we weren't meant to drink milk. I mean, that we didn't have the enzymes to break down milk and that it was during a time when there was a lot of famine and it was the most intensive form of nutrition, but then everybody

started drinking it and a lot of people had a lot of problems with it. And some adapted and evolved the enzymes to break down lactose and some didn't and still have problems. So I'm not sure we can say, well, what were we meant for? What we really know now is that it's not sustainable for our earth, for us not to go in this direction, for all, I mean, we're humans meant to destroy the earth. I don't know, but we're doing it. Do you know what I mean? And so we have to respond to where we are. And the other bit of science that you here in Game Changers is that for many, many people going towards plant-based has brought them to a level of health they never were touching before. So I'm not giving a great answer on the science

of our evolution, more of where we are now and what seems to be helpful now. Yeah, I'm not a scientist either, but we can point out that all of us start off on milk, but after a certain age, many, many people become lactose intolerance. So beyond that period, things do change. Again, that's not a statement to science. It's just an observation. The question I have is, dietary choices are so personal.

When we had a discussion about plant-based eating, you and I, I voiced my own resistance to the idea. I mentioned yogurt. I don't want to give up yogurt. I've eaten it since I was a kid, and I wanted to keep eating it. So lifelong eating habits are not an easy thing to change. change. And again, I really struggled with that. Can you say something about the process of changing

our habits? It's not only with food, it's just our habits, period. And Dharma has an excellent approach to that. What do you say about changing our habits, particularly eating about us? So it's a really, again, this is a deep inquiry because habits go deep and habits about eating are the deepest. Our attachments to food are really tied into how much we felt safe and nurtured early on. They're often surrounded by grasping and fear. You know, there's a lot of guilt and shame. Bottom line, we have huge amount of eating disorders in our society and I count myself in on that. You know, I feel like I have struggled with a kind of mild version of eating disorder for many years and not so much anymore because I just don't judge and I'm more relaxed about it.

But in the West, we use food to self-soothe. Most people consume in ways that aren't so great for them and especially when there's a lot of fear or depression, it becomes a substitute, you know. So there's a shame spiral where we feel bad about ourselves and then we eat to feel better and then we feel bad ourselves for the way we're eating and it just spirals. So how to change habits begins with a true commitment to non-judging and to self-compassion. It has to be grounded in that. I've never seen anybody change in a deep way, a healing way. out of judgment and self-hatred.

I've just never seen it. It's self-compassion. It's like getting in touch with the part of us that's attached to having the food that we want, that's attached to maybe over-consuming or whatever the choices are we don't think are great, really forgiving that, seeing under that that there's some unprocessed fear or hurt that just needs attention. So that's one piece in changing habits, have it rooted in self-compassion. The other is to have it rooted in what matters to us so that it's not that we should do something, it's because we want to, we long to.

And that makes such a difference. Like when I, in whatever area I'm kind of playing with, when I said it as something that really is an aspiration from my heart, That's a draw. If I feel a should, I might use my type A temperament to drive myself some, but it always collapses. It's always like a binge purge thing versus really a waking up process. So the change has to come from that longing to really feel a sense of alignment with our heart, to feel a sense that our impact on ourselves and our world is an impact that we feel good about. The other thing about changing habits is I don't think we're supposed to do it alone. You know, we're pack animals and we really can benefit from Sangha, from community,

and get support, whether it's in small ways like people giving us their suggestions for, you know, what kind of food I can substitute for another food, to that deeper level of helping us to relax when we're not doing it, perfectly, you know, it's, we really need support. And then there's the much more like practical level of setting a goal that's you can go for, you know, just piece, just step by step. And this is in the shift to plant-based eating and then celebrating when you kind of are doing that, you know, honoring that, rewarding that in some good way. So that's like the whole gamut on habits, but I do want to honor that it's a deep, deep attachment that we have

to familiarity, to having certain tastes we're familiar with, to not feeling like there's a control on us. There's this fear that I'm being controlled by some idea and then that boxes us in and then we get really anxious. It's to be really compassionate with that. You know, you mentioned not doing things perfectly, and for me, that was a real challenge because I'd be doing it. And then I, you know, end up eating something that was not plant-based. And I would start kicking myself about it, basically, as if, you know, I'm not allowed to be imperfect on this. And it almost made me think, I'll forget it. But instead, it's sort of like I thought of meditation, you know, how we are,

mind is, say, on the breath, and then it wanders, and then it can come back. And it was like that. That's how I kind of corral myself. I kept coming back to this idea of my intention and why I would want to do this, want to do it rather than should. I thought that was really important. I really appreciate you sharing that, because it is like any meditation. It's like if we punished ourselves or every time our mind went into some, you know, dark corner of the room, you know, we'd be in a lot of trouble, but if we just know, oh, okay, that's what happened. Let's come back and come back with humor and with kindness. That seeds, what's next?

So thank you for that one. We have so many questions from our audience. I would like to ask another. And Tara asked if she could see the people asking the questions and we aren't set up for that, but that's something we'll keep in mind in the future. but just Tar will keep your image in her mind when she answers. Prudence Shaw wonders what you discovered about getting enough protein on a plant-based diet that was evidently missing in your first go-round.

I wonder that myself. Yeah, thanks for the question. For me, what makes it work is that I like and can eat and can digest some of the main. weight non-animal sources that include protein and satan and beans and lentils and nuts and seeds. And if you get in the habit of those foods, they work. And I know that some people have fears that they're not going to get enough. And I also know some people really believe that their health is linked to having, animal-sourced protein. And so I want to kind of pause here and say, I really honor that everybody

has their own body and mind and heart and needs to find what works for them. I have a deep belief that collectively we need to move towards plant-based eating for the sake of our world. And individually, I think we just, I really honor that we each just find out, well, what really can work for me and work, work off the best, you know, kind of science and subjective sensibilities we can. So, and the protein one, it's an experiment to find out what you like, what you digest well, and so on. So I hope that's helpful. Thank you. And Carrie Thompson asks, thank you for addressing this issue. My name is Gary Thompson, and I am director of Dharma Voices for Animals, US Centers project. And we put the link to that organization in the chat, if you're interested.

But Kerry's question, Tara, I am wondering if you can share what you think US Buddhist centers can do to expand their compassion for animals we often call food and what can recruit participants do. It's interesting, Tara mentioned this before we came on. Yeah. Yeah. Is this Terry or Kerry?

I couldn't quite catch it. Carrie. Carrie. Yeah, thank you. And a shout out for Dharma voices. If anybody is drawn to this domain, wonderful, wonderful organization. And thank you for your work. Yeah, it feels like it's one of the places we can do the most

is in our residential retreat facilities to serve a plant-based diet. And people can do it for a short amount of time and it exposes people both to the food when it's well done and also to the atmosphere creates. It says, okay, this community is dedicated to non-harming and here's how we're living it here collectively. It's like we're taking the precepts together and living it here. And of course there's always refrigerators available if somebody needs to bring something because they feel like they're not physically okay without it.

It's not rigid, but that's what the facility serves. So there is an effort that is increasing to encourage all the centers to offer plant-based diet and also the links and resources and so on that will help people if they want to explore it more in their personal lives. Thank you, Tara. So Kate asks, thank you, Tara, for your wisdom today. How may I bring attention to plant-based nutrition without it's becoming one more self-improvement type project? That's always the deal, isn't it? That things that are good and good for us end up getting kind of incorporated into our trying to be a good person and proving myself. And it's really being mindful of it, just to notice,

oh, that's what this is triggering off. It's like, it's like setting yourself to sit daily. And for most of us, it really helps to have sometime each day that we kind of formally give to ourselves to come home. It's a gift to the soul. And yet we can also turn it into a, to do that's part of our improvement regime and all we can do, it's not like, okay, don't do it. It's, oh, include that in awareness. Let that be part of the mindfulness that senses how we end up defining ourselves and trying to always be better. So again, I hope that's helpful because that's what I have to do.

I mean, I have to keep on just including with kind of a kindness and a humor. Oh yeah, I'm doing that again. Yeah, it's so easy to treat ourselves like self-improvement projects. So an anonymous attendee asks, I read an article about how many billions of insects are called in vegetable farming. I think that's what he says. Your thoughts about that? I eat a plant-based diet, but that info really struck me.

I'm not hearing that so well. Can you try that again on me? Okay. he's an anonymous attendee is a plant-based eater, and he discovered that a lot of insects are killed in farming. And that really struck him despite the fact that he eats plant-based. And how do we respond to that? It's true. Insects are killed.

Insects are killed in the plowed fields. one of the great teaching stories of the Buddha has him as a young Siddhartha watching his father plowing the fields and seeing all the insects and little creatures that homes are destroyed and turned up and killed. And there's a way in which we need to hold this imperfect living, dying world with a great compassion. and know that we can't walk without in some way causing harm and just have the intention to cause the least harm, just to hold it that way in some wisdom because, you know, with every breath we're taking in creatures, you know, it's like it's just life, life ends up consuming life and so on and yet how can we be most awake in the process, most wise in the process? Okay. Another anonymous attendee said, didn't the Buddha eat meat from time to time? Did he prohibit consumption of meat for his disciples?

I don't know. I just don't know. Do you know, James? No, I, well, I know that he, you know, in the Sittos, he eats what's given to him. So if there's meat in the bowl, he eats that. On the other hand, there's a discussion about whether his final meal was pork or mushroom. It's not clear. But one thing I would say, I mean, just this is thinking in the moment, the choices we have today are very different from the choices that the ancients had 2,500 years ago. People eat that they needed to eat to live. And my feeling personally is that I do have a choice. And so I make that choice, whether people 2,500 years ago have the same choices or whether people living in parts of the the world where they can't make this choice, that's something different. There are people who probably live in places where without meat or some sort of animal product, they may not survive. It's still, of course, but I'm just talking about part of the world where we're privileged and

can make that choice. Tara, do you have any thoughts about that? only to build on that and say that every day we're making choices and a lot of them are unconscious and our intentions are not so conscious. And so it takes some courage and dedication to really slow it down and sense, well, what's behind this? Is this, am I choosing out of habit, familiarity, comfort, pleasure and pleasure is fine? And what's the impact? And as you are saying, James, it's very different now when we make a choice than when we did many centuries ago. One of the big differences is that when we choose to eat animal products, 99% of any animal product we have in the United States comes from a factory farm.

And there were not factory farms back then. And the conditions and the lives of animals and factory farms are horrific. It's like Paul McCartney said this. He said, if slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian. It's, you know, if we saw it, we wouldn't be able to participate. And I'd say for me, part of the feelings I sometimes have of urgency, part of the deep passion and caring is it is a growing sense of having concentration camp in my backyard kind of feeling. It's like a con, it's, It's like daily suffering that's going on. And I do believe that we will shift out of it.

I do believe that in the future for the sake of the earth our bodies and animals and our freedom we will. But because we're not habituated to connect the dots, because the meat we get is just doesn't look like an animal and saran wrap and we just don't connect the the dots, it's, we're not feeling like we're making a choice that has the impact that it really does. You know, there's a question here that there reminds me of a question I asked you a few days ago, Tara, I think Tara may be a pronunciation of this name. Can you talk about how to approach plant-based eating while co-parenting children who live part-time with a co-parent who isn't plant-based

the children with me. So I asked you, what do I do when someone invites me to dinner? Because, in fact, I'm a little bit shy about this because I feel like they'll think I'm scolding them. They'll think that I'm playing the virtue game. And in fact, and I don't want to inconvenience them. And likewise, this person has an issue where they're co-parenting and their children meet women with the other.

So there is very real life situations in a culture that is not. plant-based where you're up against sort of social strictures or in this case a co-parenting issue. Yeah, great question. I would separate out the one with going to people's houses with co-parenting, just the relational issue there's different. For me, when people invite me, I just made clear on plant-based, and I say, and it's very, very easy to, you know, I give, and I offer to bring things. And generally, I mean, people are kind of excited to be part of that if they're not part of it. And when they come to mind, they get jazzed by, you know, because we introduce them to kind of fun, tasty, plant-based foods.

So that hasn't had a ripple. And I don't feel scolding. I'm not scolding. I'm just being who I am. and assuming that they'll participate with me for this little bit. It's different with co-parenting. And I think we have to just respect that the relational dynamic is such that people have to, people have to come together.

I mean, if it's somebody being very, very adamant and demanding about their way, that can affect the quality of the relationship for the children and so on. So there's a lot more factors. I think that it's the parent that is plant-based, eats plant-based, and it's just a model of that and teaches and educates from that, and hopefully they can find their way to something that serves. And I know many, many people in that situation, by the way, and they just have to work it out. You know, Tara, we don't typically get this many questions at these premium events, but we're getting tons of questions. So just to summarize many of them, people are asking questions like that. How do I do this? I mean, and it's a question really that I ask you, like how the heck am I supposed to make this happen? Because it does feel like a bigger challenge than that's turning out to be for me. But it says an earlier question we have that I haven't read yet was for those who are interested in pursuing this path that may have difficulty. Oh, no, no, that's not the one. What's your guidance for people who have, for health or other reasons, that's not the question either. Anyway, where do we find guidance for

this? What do you buy in terms of resources, habits, and support? Okay, so there is a very, very fast-growing plant-based world. I mean, there is a lot to plug into. And there really is a sense as you do that you're going to find people that are on the same track, you know, either a little more fully plant-based or less, but it doesn't matter. There's a shared heart sense that this is a direction that's healthy. And we need each other. And together we can do it. We really can. The world is changing. And there are so many good resources now. I give three that are going to be, are posted on chat that you can look at. So take advantage of the links because they'll give you everything from menus and nutritional guidance to restaurants to how to do it in a healthy way.

And, you know, for instance, I'll just as an example, people that are doing only plant-based foods need to be aware there's certain nutrients that they are not going to get so directly that they need to make sure they get. And that includes iron and calcium and vitamin B12. I mean, I take B12 every day as a supplement. And you can also get it through plant milks and stoy and cereal. But the point is that you just have to make sure you get the supplement you get. And bottom line, plant-based doesn't mean that you're eating healthy if you're eating processed foods and sugar. So it's really, it's really our whole health that we're looking at. at. But what I found is that most people have certain things they're attached to that they need

support in making the shift from. You know, like James, you and I explored yogurt and, you know, I introduced you to my favorite yogurt, which is this cashew-based yogurt made by forager. It's just, it's really, really good. It's the creamy, yummy yogurt. For eggs, many people have found that Just Eggs, the product Just Eggs, it's got the same amount of protein, and it's a really very versatile substitute. Plant milks, there are so many good plant milks that I don't actually find many people that are struggling, shifting to the plant milks. They're just so good. And then there's this growing amount of, you know, plant-based meat products that simulate chicken and beef, whether or not you believe it should be simulated, they are filling tasty and good.

So it doesn't have to be all at once. And it's an experiment. And the industry is growing so fast. I mean, the science around it in terms of being able to produce really healthy, nutritional, plant-based foods is growing. So the most basic thing I'd say is plug in somewhere to some sense of another person, our community. In Washington, we have a asanga that is plant-based oriented. In our teacher training, we have one. It helps to have friends that you are kind of cheering each other on.

Thank you, Tara. You know, Rita Eagle asks, she apologizes for coming late. She says, is Tara vegan? Is James vegan or vegetarian? Well, Tara, yes, is vegan? And I'm on my way there. I'm almost there under Tara's sage guide meets. I began changing my mind about this. And I can say one thing that really helped me is your lack of judgment. I did not feel scolded or I did not feel that you're coming from a superior place. So that was extremely helpful. I'm always careful not to sound scolding myself.

I'll say one thing, you know, that movie that I mentioned, the Game Changers movie, they talk about how marketers began to teach to associate meat eating with virility. And like any man in the country, I felt like, oh, somehow or another eating meat is the virile thing to do. But of course, they addressed that issue head on, so it's very interesting if you want to watch it. But I thought of Tom Brady's vegan, I guess I guess.

I don't plan to return to the NFL anytime soon. But anyway, there are all sorts of myths around eating meat, too, that we grew up with. I wonder if you can address that at all. are at Cincts. Yeah, it's, the myths are so much about that it's normal, it's healthy, we need it. We see trucks with pictures of happy cows on it, so we don't, you know, it's everybody's happy with it, that there's myths that, you know, this is what my people eat, my, my, my culture,

you know, there's a, there's a lot of questions that the plant-based movement, movement's elitist, you know, that it's insensitive to the difficulties of low-income people in terms of accessing protein substitutes. But it's really interesting to me that nowhere has the vegan diet, plant-based, fully plant-based diet taken off more than in the African-American community. I mean, according to Pew Research Center survey, 8% of black Americans are strict vegans or vegetarians compared to just 3% of the population. And if you do it well, it can be cheaper to be plant-based. And I think of often how the cost of illness due to addiction to sugar and processed food is the real problem that the food industry has addicted us to sugar and

processed food and that that's what's most available in low-income neighborhoods and the schools and institutions. So that's the real problem. It's not one of elitism. It's capitalism, the food industry trying to make a profit and the need for education. I did an event a few years ago with Brenda Sanders, who's the founder of the Vegan Soul Fest in Baltimore. She was such an inspiration because it was all about food justice, really, that the movement for marginalized communities to gain more access to healthy foods. And that's really the hope because the illness that comes from not eating in that way takes a horrific toll.

So I just tossed out a lot of stuff, but that's another one of the myths that it's cheaper to eat meat, but it's only cheaper if you're eating. I really processed food, sugar-based, you know, and you're, you know, spending a lot on, you know, the most expensive alternate products. There's more and more available that's not so expensive. Okay. Edith Zimmerman asks, I hope this isn't too woo-woo, but are plants living beings? Hi, Edith, yeah. It's not. And it's a lot like the question about injuring insects, the plants are totally living beings. I don't know if with a less complex nervous system that there may be less pain, but humans have to consume and can we consume in the way that creates the least injury? And it seems in too. and also science-based that overall there's the least injury if we're plant-based versus eating mammals and fish. Somebody mentions, I'm sorry, I don't have the name in front of me, that say they have their own cow and raise their own chickens and they're milking the cow and eating the eggs.

Is that different? Is that different sort of thing that we're talking about? You happen to know apparently from somebody who's raising chickens that if you take their eggs, they stimulate them to continue to produce more. So what do you say about that? Yeah, well, there's certainly ways of sourcing that are way less harmful than others. There's no question about it. The only problem is, as I mentioned, 99% of,

of what's available in the United States is sourced in factory farms. And I think the percentage isn't like 92% worldwide. So it makes it the rare exception. And also the people I know that are raising chickens are still raising chickens that were purchased or gotten where the males are killed. I mean, you can't be a viable industry selling hens and not have the males killed. still, I mean, that may change, but so you're still participating on some level, but of course, there are better and worse ways to source, no question.

Okay, there are two related questions we're getting near the close of our hour. An anonymous person writes, my sister works at a no-kill pet shelter and deeply cares about animals, but she happily eats meat daily. How can this speak? How do I reach her with this message about plant-based eating? and the related question, if asked, most people will not support the suffering of animals. Yet we are conditioned to separate the animal from the food we eat. We eat a steak or a filet, not a cow.

Are we at odds to ourselves or in some kind of denial? We're simply not willing to see beyond our habitual ways. I see those as somewhat related. Yeah, yeah. Now, these are really, I'm appreciating these questions. There's no question in my mind that our hearts, open with compassion when we directly take in the suffering. And it may be that the suffering of animals that are shelters different than the kind of suffering from the animals that we eat. So the

question is, are we willing to look more closely, as Paul McCartney was indicating, through the glass walls? And it really for me wasn't until I started finding out what it was like, you know, really, finding out, and I want to share an example of what touched me, if that's okay. This is a short essay I'm going to read. It was written by Dr. Joanne Kong from the University of Richmond, and it's a story of an animal in a factory farm. And you might just imagine and visualize in your mind what she says. And this is a story of a sow. Okay, my entire life, I am kept in a metal gestation crate in half darkness on a grated concrete floor. I can't even turn around. Confined and unable to engage in any of my natural behaviors, I suffer depression, frustration,

and neurotic behavior, sometimes screaming and biting at bars that surround me. My limbs are swollen, I have open wounds, and I'm lying in my own escreatment. After giving birth from being forcibly impregnated, my babies are taken away from me, and I'm slaughtered at the age of only three to five years old. We pigs, like other animals in factory farms, are supposed to be able to be able to be to be stunned into unconsciousness before being killed, but many of us are still alive. As we were hoisted upside down, our throat slit and we were lowered into boiling water to remove our hair. But did you know I have a sense of self just like you? I am more intelligent than a dog or a cat

and even a three-year-old child. I'm a highly social creature, intuitive and emotional, just like you. I have memories. I can recognize myself in a mirror just like you. I love you. I love a social creature, intuitive, and emotional, just like you. I love a to play even computer games just like you. I care for my young with a bond that is as strong as any human mother, even singing to my babies during nursing. I am not something. I am someone. I am not pork. I am not bacon. I am a living, feeling being just like you. So I share this because it helps me to feel my heart when I share it, that each being loves life. wants to live, some in a more complex cognitive way, some less. But each living being does love and want to live.

And I think of Albert Schweitzer. He said, I am life that wants to live in the midst of life that wants to live. And there's something for me when I sense, you know, the sow, the cow, the fish, the cow, cows, calves, you know, when I sense a tree, when I sense any living being and some way I say, you're my friend, you know, you want to live, I want to live, that in me everything wants to protect that being. I'm here on Cape Cod and I see the seagulls and I sense you're my friends and I see the crabs that they're eating and you're my friends and it doesn't mean that hurt doesn't go on. It just means there's a connection that we can feel where we don't want to participate any more than just is necessary in being alive.

It's a kind of feeling, a friendliness of interconnection where when we feel it, we can never feel alone. We really are kind of a pal of the world, I think it was a sand, not sure, one poet said, pal of the world, Walt Whitman. So I'm bringing, I know we're closing soon and I'm bringing this in. I'm bringing this in because where we started, James, you asked me, why does this matter? If we want to feel our belonging, you know, there's never been a time I don't think on earth that the separation is so strong and the sense of hostility is so strong and disconnected from mistrusting disconnected from each other from the earth. This is the day-to-day choosing that

helps open us to the reality of our belonging. And it helps us be part of the healing of our world. And it helps us in a very deep, deep way, to know the truth of who we are beyond that separation, beyond that separate self. So I appreciate that kind of question about, you know, are plants living creatures? And, you know, yes, all beings are living, feeling creatures wanting to live. And we do our best to cause the least harm, to feel the sacredness and feel a reverence for all of them. Thank you so much, Tara. We're out of time for questions. Tara, would you like to close with any further reflection or meditation?

I would love to have us take some moments to pause. And I want to, before I say anything in a kind of little guided and just say, I'm really grateful for each of you who are listening and really trust that this process of just asking our own hearts, what do I care about? How does this moment or this choice serve that? We'll keep us waking up. That's all. No judgment. Just that simplicity. And you might do that right now as you quiet. Just take a moment as we open to feel your breath, maybe let your attention go within. notice what's in your heart right now. Just breathe with that.

And if you notice any areas of vulnerability, you might put your hand on your heart. Just feel you're attending to the life inside, the life that loves life, that wants to live. Our fear is life, loving life, wanting to live. Our excitement is life, loving life, wanting to live. just to feel that intimate connection with your life inside, offering whatever prayer of care you'd like to yourself in this moment, and then widening it, widening that heart space

to sense those who are here, those in different parts of their journey, just feeling all of us included, the belonging to all of us, so that as we widen further, we sense that we do hold all species in our hearts, all forms of life, and just to sense what it would mean to really know we are friends. We belong with the trees and the cows and the fish and the birds and each other. The preciousness of knowing that belonging, that non-separation, that open and loving presence. So we close by just simply feeling our prayer for the world, sense whatever resonates right now, feeling that collective prayer,

that all beings everywhere, feel held in loving kindness, filled with loving kindness, know that loving awareness as their very essence, and that we live from loving presence, that we help bring more, peace, more justice, more understanding, and more love to our world. Namaste and thank you. Thank you, James. Thank you, all of you who are part of this. Blessings. Thank you so much, Tara. And again,

those who ask for guidance, we have placed links in the chat, including Tara's own site, which provides resources that you might find useful to. So thank you again, Tara, for being with us today. And thank you everyone for joining the conversation. I'm sorry we couldn't answer all your questions. There are just so many, and we appreciate that. If you'd like to make a donation to Pricycle to support our free and low-cost offerings, the link is in the chat.

If you'd like again to learn more about Tara, her books, and the resources she offers, we've placed a link in the chat for that too. We've also posted a link to our next event, mastering the art of haiku, a workshop with poet, author, and editor of the Chrysicle Monthly Haiku Challenge, Park Strand. We hope to see you all again soon. And once again, much, much gratitude to you, Tara. Thank you.