Catholic Priest, Follower of Baba
After 3 years as a strict vegetarian, Fr. Mario Mazzoleni, author of "A Catholic Priest Encounters Sai Baba", UN SACERDOTE INCONTRA SAI BABA, speaks of a desire for meat.
I would be a hypocrite if I led the reader to believe that I was strong enough to be perfectly faithful to my Lenten resolution. ..I hadn't yet completely resolved my desire for meat - and so the repressed desire was floating to the surface. It is a fact that the minute I would sit down to meditate, the most succulent meals would pass in front of my mind, full of fragrant roasted chickens and various sausages. What to do? If I was going to ruin all my meditations for a roast chicken, it would be better to eliminate the problem by facing it head on. And so after 3 years of strict vegetarianism, I decided to get rid of the desire once and for all by satiating myself with a meat dinner. After all, I told myself to quiet my sense of guilt, "It isn't a crime to eat meat, and I can't say that because I'm vegetarian I'm better than many people who are carnivorous." It was almost a traumatic experience. I remembered an analogous experience of Gandhi's that he recounted in his autobiography. Convinced by a friend that India could be liberated only by the grit of someone who ate meat, he hid himself on a river bank to consume some barbecued baby goat meat, and the next night he could feel bleating in his chest. Instead of enjoying the coveted snack in peace, the minute this little faithbreaker set his teeth into the cruel repast* (* a reference to Dante's Inferno.. in which meat is described as a cruel repast in XXXIII.1) he was himself bitten by remorse and anxiety. I kept seeing the animal alive in front of me, and this inhibited the desire that was so enticing when it was simply mental. I immediately noticed some other effects, physical as well as psychic. My intestines held that food much longer than they kept vegetables,and my sense of smell, made sensitive by several years of vegetarianism, was able to detect the odor of the cooked animal on my skin. It was a disagreeable sensation. As for my psyche, I noticed that my mind, which during my 3 year "Lent" was no longer seriously agitated by unwanted thoughts, suffered a set back from that carne-vale (meat festival); polluting throughts started to enter again in triumph."(the trioxypurine or uric acid in meat is more addictive thanthe dioxypurine in coffee)
http://catholicveg.blogspot.com
I would be a hypocrite if I led the reader to believe that I was strong enough to be perfectly faithful to my Lenten resolution. ..I hadn't yet completely resolved my desire for meat - and so the repressed desire was floating to the surface. It is a fact that the minute I would sit down to meditate, the most succulent meals would pass in front of my mind, full of fragrant roasted chickens and various sausages. What to do? If I was going to ruin all my meditations for a roast chicken, it would be better to eliminate the problem by facing it head on. And so after 3 years of strict vegetarianism, I decided to get rid of the desire once and for all by satiating myself with a meat dinner. After all, I told myself to quiet my sense of guilt, "It isn't a crime to eat meat, and I can't say that because I'm vegetarian I'm better than many people who are carnivorous." It was almost a traumatic experience. I remembered an analogous experience of Gandhi's that he recounted in his autobiography. Convinced by a friend that India could be liberated only by the grit of someone who ate meat, he hid himself on a river bank to consume some barbecued baby goat meat, and the next night he could feel bleating in his chest. Instead of enjoying the coveted snack in peace, the minute this little faithbreaker set his teeth into the cruel repast* (* a reference to Dante's Inferno.. in which meat is described as a cruel repast in XXXIII.1) he was himself bitten by remorse and anxiety. I kept seeing the animal alive in front of me, and this inhibited the desire that was so enticing when it was simply mental. I immediately noticed some other effects, physical as well as psychic. My intestines held that food much longer than they kept vegetables,and my sense of smell, made sensitive by several years of vegetarianism, was able to detect the odor of the cooked animal on my skin. It was a disagreeable sensation. As for my psyche, I noticed that my mind, which during my 3 year "Lent" was no longer seriously agitated by unwanted thoughts, suffered a set back from that carne-vale (meat festival); polluting throughts started to enter again in triumph."(the trioxypurine or uric acid in meat is more addictive thanthe dioxypurine in coffee)
http://catholicveg.blogspot.com
posted by Ahimsa Network at 18.7.05
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