Vegetarianism
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To be a vegetarian, or not to be a vegetarian, that is the question. Most serious practitioners of Yoga choose to become vegetarians for two reasons principally, one is ethical, and the other one is nutritional. We shall examine these two guiding principles for adopting the vegetarian life style in this essay.
Ethical Reasons for Vegetarianism
Lets first address some of the ethical objections to eating meat. Throughout the course of human history mans ethical relationship towards each other and towards animals has undergone many changes, and in the present day, it continues to evolve. There was a point in human history when men used other men as slaves, when even cannibalism and human sacrifice was considered moral and socially acceptable conduct. Through many thousands of years of social evolution, our morality, our empathy, has developed to the extent that, at this point in history, slavery and human sacrifice have almost completely disappeared from most societies. But the problem remains that these same attitudes still exist towards the animal kingdom. Animal have not as yet been given the same psychological status as human beings, they are not thought to posses emotions or soul qualities, so using their flesh for nourishment is not even generally considered to be an ethical issue.
Yet the truth is animals do have emotions, they do feel love and hate, they rejoice, they worry, they mourn, they suffer, they posses an intellect, they learn, and they remember, so they unequivocally have souls...