At age 10, I remember falling sick, and I was down for a prolonged time. My body became quite weak and my skin color started to turn ashen. Penicillin had just become available in India, and I remember having a severe allergic reaction to it.
My mother, worried for my health, begged me to start eating eggs. I refused because I had been a vegetarian since age four. She even tried to sneak eggs into my milk, but I refused to drink it and told her that if she persisted then I would even give up milk. She started to cry and promised me she would never try that again.
I remained a vegetarian until I was 16 years old. After a long, drawn-out discussion within myself, I made the decision to start eating meat. That decision does not seem logical, but it seemed like the correct thing for me to do at that time. Looking back, I had no idea that in the near future I would be going to the United States and, by eating meat again, I might be preparing myself for some foods in my new home. Indeed, it would have been a great hardship for me, as well as for my hosts, if I were to have been a vegetarian in the U. S. during the 1950s and ’60s. Meat in the United States was easy to obtain and relatively inexpensive. So, I became an avid carnivore. Steaks and barbeque ribs became my favorite foods. I would willingly travel 50 miles to have a nice hot plate of BBQ ribs!
In the summer of 1979, I was tucking my son Keir into bed when he told me that he’d been invited by a friend to go hunting with his family, but he had turned down the invitation.
“Why?” I inquired.
“I told him my father says, ‘Thou shall not kill.’ ”
“And, what did your friend say?” I asked.
“You have to kill to eat, don’t you?” Keir’s friend had answered. Keir was merely relaying the information, not asking for my advice, so the subject was dropped.
However, I asked myself, “Do I have to kill to eat?”
The answer was obviously “no.” But then the question arose: why was I participating in killing, if that was not necessary? Why was I not practicing what I believed?
A story from my childhood surfaced. A woman who had traveled a long distance with her son to see Buddha, said, “Venerable Buddha, my son eats too much salt, would you please cure him of that habit?”
Buddha asked the woman to come back in 30 days. Upon her return, the woman again was asked to come back in another 30 days. The third time she made the long trek back with her son, Buddha simply laid his hands on the child’s head and said, “You should not eat too much salt.” The child looked at Buddha and nodded his head in agreement.
“What?!” said the mother, furiously. “If that is all you had to do, why did you make me come back three times? You could have said this much to him the very first time!” she shouted angrily.
Buddha said, “When you brought him the first time, I realized that I also eat too much salt. So, I could not ask him to do what I myself do not do. I thought I might be able to change my habits in 30 days, but I was not able to do so, and had to request an extension. In these 60 days, I was able to change my habit and can thus talk to the child.”
This story was still fresh in my mind as I left for London, Kentucky the next day. On my return trip, I picked up a couple of barefoot hitchhikers with long hair and beards. They were dressed in full-length, off-white robes of thick, heavy, hand-spun material. They carried no possessions. They told me they were “Jesus freaks.”
They had been arrested in a small town for having slept in a church, whose doors were somehow left open. The minister insisted that the police arrest them. However, after a couple of days, the police let them go because the jail was not equipped to feed vegetarians. They had not eaten for two days.
They were gentle fellows, articulate and strong in their beliefs, but did not try to convert me. They held that Jesus was a vegetarian and strongly believed in the righteousness of their views.
“Are you a vegetarian?” one of them asked.
Whizzing by at 80 mph on busy I-75 in my small, black, rented car, I was focused on the road and not paying enough attention to their question. I heard myself say, “Yes.” Immediately, I regretted saying that and wondered where in the world that answer had come from. I wanted to take it back and tell them I was not really a vegetarian, but I was not interested in further engaging with their views.
When we reached the town where I was to drop them off, I bought them a vegetarian meal and we parted ways. As I left them, I questioned why I had told them I was a vegetarian. No answer came. Somehow, the answer was unimportant.
Without making a conscious decision, I had once again become a vegetarian.
I drove to the airport and flew home. When I arrived, and without much thinking involved, I told my wife Treva that I had become a vegetarian. She didn’t ask why, but simply said, “I hope you will not discontinue eating eggs, or I will not be able to bake for you.” Since that time, many moons ago, I have not had a desire for, nor eaten meat.
Those two gentle, young men will never know the impact our brief encounter had on me.
balbirmathur.com 