Eating and drinking

The man lunged forward and raised his arm; the woman cowered in fear. But suddenly a hand came out of nowhere and caught the man's arm, saving the woman from a painful blow. The violent man wrenched his arm, but the stranger's hand held on so firmly that he could not pull free. The man struck at the stranger with his hands and feet, but the stranger kept a tight grip on his arm while stepping nimbly from side to side to dodge the blows.
A crowd gradually gathered to watch. After a while someone reported it and the local police arrived, and only then did the stranger let go of the man.

The stranger who had stopped the assault on a woman in the street was Mr Hải, who lived in the meditation hall over there. Passing by that day, he had happened on the injustice and stepped in as a chivalrous man would. A friend from the stillness group named Vị walked back to the meditation hall with Mr Hải, asking as they went:

• Brother Hải, you are good at martial arts and we never knew. I see you eat so simply, yet how are you so strong?
  Mr Hải replied:
• I don't advocate simple eating, Vị. I advocate sensible eating.
• I've never heard of "sensible eating" before. What does it mean?

Mr Hải replied:

• It's a long story. At first I saw many people eating for taste, eating a lot, eating for strength, to enjoy themselves, and in the end they came down with all kinds of illnesses. I thought they had eaten more than their bodies needed, and the surplus had built up over a long time and caused disease.
  From then on I looked for a way to eat just enough for my own body's needs. I had to watch the state of my body and compare it with my food, writing it in a notebook every day. After more than a year of sensing for myself how my body responded to my daily food, I found my own level of consumption. All that year I would cut down my eating for a few meals, then increase it again, then cut down again, and in the end I found the right way of eating for myself.

Vị asked:

• Do you advocate lifelong vegetarianism?
  Mr Hải replied:
• I don't advocate lifelong vegetarianism. My view is this. Some people have a very good constitution; they are vegetarian for life, take no animal protein, and are still healthy. Such people should be vegetarian for life, so as not to be implicated in the killing of others. It is cause and effect: any meat or fish comes from painful killing. If we eat meat or fish while deliberately not thinking of the animal being killed, there is still latent cruelty in our minds. If we eat nothing that comes from painful killing, our minds are very kind and it is easy to find stillness.
  But many people have weaker constitutions and need animal protein, otherwise their bodies become frail and ill. This is especially true of people who do heavy labour or work under mental strain: they fall ill at once if they lack nutrition. In such cases we can supplement our nutrition with commercially produced, unfertilised eggs, or with milk, which counts as a source of animal protein too.
  However, some people who eat eggs all the time develop liver disease, and some who drink milk all the time develop hardening of the arteries, so they need to take animal protein from the flesh of animals. This leads to a very great ethical dispute. Taking animal protein from animal flesh is no different from people killing animals painfully and eating them, as they have done since ancient times.
  In this case I advise such people not to eat the flesh of higher animals that have a developed mind and deep feelings. Cattle, pigs, dogs, buffalo, goats and so on are all animals with a highly developed mind, and we should avoid them, because the wrongdoing is greater and so the illness that arises is also more severe.
  Lower than these are chickens, ducks, fish, shrimp and so on, whose minds are less developed than those of buffalo and cattle.
  But if we look for creatures lower still, such as snails, clams, tiny shrimp and ragworms, whose minds are extremely simple, it is better.
  Many poor students living far from their families have no protein at all in their meals and yet study hard, which is very sad. If they had an egg or a boiled snail now and then, they would be less frail. Many poor workers who eat meagre meals and work hard are very much to be pitied. If their boarding house had a few basins of mud for raising some snails, that would also improve their nutrition.
  As for me, practising qigong supports my health even though I sometimes eat only sparingly. Still, I also take fish-oil capsules to help my liver, drink some milk and eat an egg, to get proper nutrition.

Vị asked:

• What you say about sensible eating sounds very sensible. But why should we not eat the flesh of creatures with a highly developed mind?
  Mr Hải replied:
• It's like this, Vị. Everyone in the world regards eating human flesh as utterly vicious. Why? Because humans are the species with the most highly developed mind and the deepest feelings. Human conscience naturally understands that.
  So eating the flesh of other, lower species is less vicious, but it is still wrong. Eating creatures with a rudimentary mind, such as snails, clams, tiny shrimp and ragworms, is the least wrong. But even then we should not eat a lot, or more than we need, because that too causes illness.
  🍍

Every day in the world, countless animals are killed in pain to supply that day's meals for humankind. The next day the killing starts again, again in numbers beyond imagination. The karma of killing weighs heavily on the whole planet.
Those who cannot yet be vegetarian for life should at least give up the flesh of animals with a highly developed mind, eat only creatures with a rudimentary mind, and eat only a little. In this way we help lighten the karma of killing for our beloved Earth.