love/peace

[vegan-dragon]

Once the light goes on and you realise the food you so blithely eat actually causes massive, life-long, completely avoidable suffering to billions of animals, it’s not an easy epiphany to un-think. A supermarket never looks the same, butcher shops become very dark places. The perversity of using smiling anthropomorphized animals to advertise packages of their own body parts grows almost chilling.

Sam de Brito (via vegan-yums)

[huffpost]

LISTEN: Woman In A Wheelchair Gives Powerful Response To A Rude Question About Her Sex Life

So begins Kelsey Warren’s riveting spoken word poem called “My Body.” As a disabled woman, Warren discusses the rude stares and even ruder questions she constantly receives. 

Watch the full poem here. 

[lavendersucculents]

Tell ‘em.

[animalsandtrees]

THE SADNESS OF BEING VEGAN

by There’s an Elephant in the Room blog

You vegans

I’ve seen vegans called many derogatory words. Nothing, it seems, provokes unbridled defensiveness and rudeness in quite the same way as coming out and stating that it is wrong to cause suffering and death to the helpless and vulnerable.

Excuses and insults

It doesn’t seem that radical to me, but as soon as it’s mentioned that humans have no nutritional or other need to use other beings in any way for any purpose, out will come a barrage of well used excuses:

plants have feelings, canine teeth, what cavemen did, brain size and intelligence, we need meat to survive, my ‘personal choice’, ‘forcing your opinions on me’, the bible, eskimos, desert islands, etc.

Once these are out of the way, then come the personal insults:

‘it’s impossible to be 100% vegan’, ‘you probably step on insects every day’, ‘I bet your cleaning materials / car / PC harmed animals’, ‘what about your makeup / shoes / clothes’, ‘you’re a hypocrite’.

Then comes the ‘we’re really on the same side but you’re being extreme’ gambit:

‘I hardly eat any meat’, ‘every little bit helps’, ‘I follow this or that diet – I’m doing my bit’, ‘how dare you criticise me – sure I eat animals but I rescue <insert name of species here>, ‘the world won’t go vegan overnight so we should encourage people who try to cut down slightly on eating animals’.

Invariably there are some that choose to incite a bit of xenophobia:

‘at least here in <insert country> we treat animals humanely unlike what they do in <insert other country> – they’re all savages there’, ‘boycott <country> till they stop killing <species that we give preferential treatment to in this country>’.

In the face of all this, a vegan who maintains their stance that causing harm when we can choose not to do so is morally wrong is branded as humourless and – another favourite word – ‘judgemental’.  Yet day after day, we take the flak. Why is this, you ask? I’ve heard it said,

‘Why don’t you give it a rest?’, ‘Let people take their own time’ , ‘If you just raise awareness, then people will make kinder choices’, ‘You’re always going ON about animals.’

So why don’t we? Give it a rest, that is.  Why are we so driven? And why are some – like myself – so implacable, so uncompromising, so ‘die hard’, ‘extremist’ and several other words that reflect the discomfort of the audience.

Numbers

Touching briefly on numbers, upwards of 56 billion land animals and uncountable sea creatures are killed every year for what nonvegans regard as food. There are billions imprisoned, and enslaved so that their reproductive systems can be manipulated to provide milk and eggs. In addition to this are uncounted millions of deaths in the silk / wool / leather / fur / feather industries and in testing and vivisection. Then there are circuses, zoos and wildlife ‘parks’. The list goes on and on. Most of those who die are extremely young. If they were humans, we would look on them as infants or babies, children, adolescents. These are, of course, statistics and it’s all too easy to look on them as a mere mathematical exercise.

Individuals

However, the issue becomes less easy to sweep under the carpet when we stop thinking of numbers in general, but as a group of individuals – an unthinkably massive group. It is almost certain that with very few exceptions, each individual knew fear, pain, deprivation and suffering throughout his or her pitiful existence. If we could have looked into his or her bewildered eyes, we would have seen that he or she had hopes, needs and preferences although these were never recognised. He or she might have favourite foods, friends or pastimes but may never had the chance to experience these.

Their individuality was disregarded because in order to legitimise our theft of their lives, their joy and their purpose in this world, in order to attempt to justify our brutal manipulation of their reproductive systems and our forcible destruction of their relationships as we mutilate and murder their babies, we refuse to recognise them as moral persons, as the sentient beings that science has declared them to be. We give them numbered or coded tags, punching holes in their fragile ears to attach these, or we notch their tender ears with nicks, cuts and shapes to signify our cataloguing of the walking dead as our resources. And ever the jokers, some find amusement at those who chortle that they ‘never give a name to anything I’m going to eat’.

Personhood and individuality

Part of becoming vegan is the recognition of others as sentient individuals with the right not to be commodified and regarded as resources by other sentient individuals in the absence of any morally justifiable necessity.

This quote by Joanna Lucas of the Peaceful Prairie Sanctuary eloquently encapsulates my horror and the reason for the ever-present sadness of being vegan,

‘We know things about her that no one should ever know, or want to know, about a fellow being – the sight of her flayed body, the weight of her severed thigh, the taste of her burned, bone-punctured flesh, the charred crunch of her fractured ribs, the flavor of her spilled marrow, the taste, texture and flavor of every aspect of her despair, degradation and defeat.

We know every detail of what we have forced her to be – an object to consume and excrete. What we don’t know, what we don’t want to know, is what we must know if we are to restore our own humanity: who she is.’

Which means, in essence, that every hour that ticks by, millions of helpless innocents are dying in gore and agony, whimpering and screaming in fear and horror. At this moment. Now. And now. Begging for mercy now. Billions more are facing the interminable hell that is the existence forced upon them for our selfish indulgence.

So what’s the rush?

For millions there is no time left, their only lives that they value as I do mine and you do yours, are being wrenched from them as I write, their blood spilling through gashed throats onto killing floors everywhere. No respected resting places await their last remains, only a supermarket shelf, the casual, thoughtless convenience of a soon forgotten meal, digestion and excrement. That will be the epitaph of these mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, sons and daughters.

So when you wonder why I keep going ON, it’s because no matter how much flak vegans have to take, it’s nothing compared to what the sweet and vulnerable victims of nonvegan choices are suffering, and will continue to suffer until all ears hear the vegan message.

We say we want a peaceful world, we say we hate violence, we say we hate cruelty. Great. Let’s walk the walk and live those values by taking violence off our plates, by refusing to support the culturally accepted view that might makes right.

Be vegan. Now.

[thebigelectron]

There seem to two kinds of searchers: those who seek to make their ego something other than it is, i.e. holy, happy, unselfish (as though you could make a fish unfish), and those who understand that all such attempts are just gesticulation and play-acting, that there is only one thing that can be done, which is to disidentify themselves with the ego, by realizing its unreality, and by becoming aware of their eternal identity with pure being.

Wei Wu Wei (via thebigelectron)

[21shells]

In life, what scares you? Unconsciousness. The unconsciousness that I have in my life sometimes. Other people’s unconsciousness. I don’t mean literally being asleep. I mean, unconsciousness: when you speak in a thoughtless way, when things are lowered in a petty kind of way, when you start to judge. That’s unconsciousness: when you’re not present and you start sizing someone up, it perpetuates separation. One of the purposes of aging is to break down this “otherness”, because there’s really not much that separates us. Ultimately you can almost be anybody because you can identify with their core. So, when I start seeing differences and I start forgetting that fundamentally we are all the same, that scares me, and that happens every day and when I catch myself it’s coño despiertate chico. 

[odios]

[purplebuddhaproject]

Every breath is a sacrament, an affirmation of our connection with all other living things, a renewal of our link with our ancestors and a contribution to generations yet to come.

David Suzuki (via purplebuddhaproject)

[panatmansam]

.

We all know what consciousness is. We can tell when we’re awake, when we’re thinking, when we’re pondering the universe, but can anyone really explain the nature of this perception? Or even what separates conscious thought from subconscious thought?

Historically any debate over the nature of consciousness has fallen to philosophers and religious scholars rather than scientists. However, as our understanding of the brain increases so do the number of scientists willing and able to tackle this tricky subject.

What is consciousness?

A good analogy of consciousness is explained here based on work by Giulio Tononi. Imagine the difference between the image of an apple to your brain and a digital camera. The raw image is the same whether on a camera screen or in your head. The camera treats each pixel independently and doesn’t recognise an object. Your brain, however, will combine parts of the image to identify an object, that it is an apple and that it is food. Here, the camera can be seen as ‘unconscious’ and the brain as ‘conscious’.

The bigger the better?

This example works as a simple analogy of how the brain processes information, but doesn’t explain the heightened consciousness of a human in comparison to say a mouse. Some people believe that brain size is linked with consciousness. A human brain contains roughly 86 billion neurons whereas a mouse brain contains only 75 million (over a thousand times less). A person might then argue that it is because our brains are bigger and contain more nerve cells that we can form more complex thoughts. While this may hold to a certain extent, it still doesn’t really explain how consciousness arises.

To explain why brain size isn’t the only thing that matters, we need to consider our brain in terms of the different structures/areas it consists of and not just as a single entity. The human cerebellum at the base of the brain contains roughly 70 billion neurons, whereas the cerebral cortex at the top of the brain contains roughly 16 billion. If you cut off a bit of your cerebellum (don’t try this at home) then you may walk a bit lopsided, but you would still be able to form conscious thoughts. If however, you decided to cut off a bit of your cortex, the outer-most folds of the brain, your conscious thought would be severely diminished and your life drastically impacted. So it seems that the number of brain cells we have doesn’t necessarily relate to conscious thought.

(excerpt - click the link for the complete article)

[sweetoothgirl]

Homemade Elderberry Syrup

[recreationalwitchcraft]

While elderberry has many magical uses, consider using this syrup for blessings or protection from negative energy.

[purplebuddhaproject]

Before a dream is realized, the Soul of the World tests everything that was learned along the way. It does this not because it is evil, but so that we can, in addition to realizing our dreams, master the lessons we’ve learned as we’ve moved toward that dream. That’s the point at which most people give up. It’s the point at which, as we say in the language of the desert, one ‘dies of thirst just when the palm trees have appeared on the horizon.

Paulo Coelho (via purplebuddhaproject)

[panatmansam]

Godfearing and Destiny

Worship began as a means of appeasing a deity. The early Gods were cruel. They brought sickness, famine and defeat in war if not properly satisfied. What satisfied them was blood. Sacrifice of humans and animals. Yahweh demanded the torture and murder of his own “son”. The priests were intermediaries between these gods and the people. They used this “fear of God” as a means of political and social control. What all powerful deity would care if the priests burned the right goat or recited the proper words of praise and submission? This wasn’t for the God. It was a way for people to feel that they had some means of control over the vagaries of fate. In reality all of these Gods were just names given to fate. Blind chance. Destiny if you will. None of us likes to acknowledge that we are powerless in the face of destiny, but, we are.

So, we see the main problem people have with a theistic God is confusing such a God with fate. If something bad happens God is punishing us and if something good happens then God is rewarding us. This quickly falls apart though as we come to realize that even the most pious believer however meek and mild still suffers misfortune. So, an infant gets cancer and dies, There is no explanation for this in a theistic sense. Likewise for prayer. If you pray for something to happen and it does then your prayers were answered. If you pray for something and it doesn’t happen then you were unworthy.

To see God as a gift giver or a punisher is to limit God. Our destiny is a combination of our past choices and the choices of others with whom we interact. You cannot control the choices of others but you can control your own choices and to this extent you have some control over your personal destiny. Prayer has a purpose but it goes way beyond this “punish/reward” vision of God, Prayers are focused consciousness. One is humble in prayer. This then is the true purpose of prayer. Right thinking means right action. Right action means harmony with the universe. Harmony with universe means a peaceful mind and an elevated spirit. ๑ Samsaran ๑

[arpeggia]

Daehyun Kim - Attached 착着, 2014, pigment liner and marker on a paper, 29.7 × 42 cm (top); Detached 탈脫, 2014, pigment liner and marker on a paper, 29.7 × 42 cm (bottom)

See more Daehyun Kim posts here.

[ohjessmarie]

Cassandra Arden

[mmatangi]

[a-polo-nia]

matah datha // meta data

m.i.a 2015

[thecalminside]

Awareness is like the sun. When it shines on things, they are transformed.

Thich Nhat Hanh (via thecalminside)

[vegan-yums]

Portobello mushroom bruschetta with white bean hummus / Recipe

[motherofhermes]

If you expect any benefits from your search, material, mental or spiritual, you have missed the point. Truth gives no advantage. It gives no higher status, no power over others; all you get is truth and freedom from the false.

Nisargadatta Maharaj (via motherofhermes)