https://youtu.be/HknoMBZ2DcE
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@climatemigrant
watts was so spiritually connected that he was even being careful not to hurt the feelings of the plants around him
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> Vegetarianism, for example, is no solution. Years ago the Indian botanist Sir Jagadis Bose measured the pain reactions of plants to cutting and pulling. To say that plants don’t really know that they are in pain is only to say that they can’t put it into words. When I pointed this out to a strictly vegetarian Buddhist, the famous Reginald H. Blyth, who wrote Zen in English Literature, he said, “Yes, I know that. But when we kill vegetables they don’t scream so loud.” In other words, he was just being easy on his own feelings. Buddhist and Hindu monks have carried the attitude of ahimsa, or harmlessness, to the extreme of keeping their eyes on the ground when walking—not to avoid the temptations of lovely women, but to avoid trampling on beetles, snails, or worms that might lie in the path. Yet this is at root an evasion, a ritual gesture of reverence for life which in no way alters the fact that we live by killing.
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> “If a chicken has been killed, and it is not cooked properly, that chicken has died in vain.” The very least I can do for a creature that has died for me is to honor it, not with an empty ritual, but by cooking it to perfection and relishing it to the full. Any animal that becomes me should enjoy itself as me.#ahimsa #alanwatts #buddhism #veganism #vegetarianism #animals #chicken #plantshavefeelingstoo
