Spiritual Pollution
Animals: Tradition - Philosophy - Religion Article from All-Creatures.org

FROM

Gracia Fay Ellwood, The Peaceable Table
June 2017

It goes without saying that the taboo against eating any flesh, in contrast to harmful taboos, is based on what is vital, life-giving; its spread is crucially important to the physical and spiritual well-being of farmed animals, of human health, and the health--perhaps the survival--of the planet’s biosphere. The wellbeing of many people in developing countries, and of wild creatures, is also involved. Since so much hangs on this, it is crucially important that we pursue it with the same respect and charity so important to working toward ending harmful taboos. The animals and the earth certainly don’t need a great surge of even stronger resistance.

Several years ago, my family and I had dinner at a pleasant Greek restaurant by the ocean. We ordered promising-looking vegan dishes and, when the waiter brought them, tucked in. I was a little puzzled by mine, which seemed to have a major ingredient that I couldn’t recognize; I thought it might be a mushroom new to me. When the waiter returned to ask how we were doing, my daughter Fay-Ellen asked “Does my dish have cheese in it?” A suspicion popped into my mind: my mouth partly full, I asked “Does my dish have meat in it?”

The answers were yes and yes. We hadn’t noticed that the two vegan dishes we had ordered had Greek names very similar to dishes centered in cheese and hamburger. The waiter had mis-heard us, and because I hadn’t (intentionally) eaten meat in decades, my memory of the taste had grown dim. With a feeling somewhere between faint queasiness and vague horror, I excused myself as best I could and disappeared into the women’s room to spit it out and flush it away. Often I say a prayer for an animal whose mutilated flesh I see, but I was too disturbed to think of it.

Barbara, a friend of mine who has been veg for an equally long time,, has even stronger reactions to such mishaps: she becomes physically sick. Such an incident happened to her on one occasion when we were dining out together with our spouses; learning from the waiter that she was eating meat, she became alarmed and anxious as well as queasy. We visualized surrounding her with healing light, and to the relief of all, she did not become sick. Another friend, Norma, who had grown up in a household that kept kosher, said that her mother would likewise become sick if she found she had inadvertently eaten something in violation.

As many of our readers who are ethically-motivated long-term vegans or vegetarians know, when we accidentally eat animal flesh, many of us feel polluted, whether slightly or deeply. The feeling is akin to guilt, yet intention, crucial to guilt, isn’t there; the violent acts that put the meat on our plates were totally against our will. It is as though we have violated a taboo, yet it is one that we ourselves helped to bring into being. It is akin to--or an expansion of--that taboo which virtually all persons and cultures accept, against eating the flesh of our human kin. That horror has an element of awe in it, as though it were somehow akin to the Holy, although it’s a polar opposite.

Our taboo has analogies; there are already taboos in our Western culture (milder than the cannibalism one) against eating certain animals, especially dogs, cats, and horses, who, as companion animals, are felt to be honorary humans. Most Westerners are shocked to hear that many Chinese eat dogs and cats (while they themselves see no problem with eating cows and chickens.)

Dogs being delivered to Chinese market

For vegans, having learned that all animals, whether furred, feathered or scaled, are also our kin, the taboo has expanded to cover all flesh. But we know that other animals are not honorary humans; rather, “living by voices we shall never hear,” they are worthy in themselves of our respect and care. They are like us, and yet not like us.

Our position is not quite the same as, say, that of Indian Brahmans, who have been part of a large vegetarian subculture for centuries. Ours is a more radical departure in that eating the “meat” of certain farmed animals not only obtains among more than 95% of the (US) population, but until recent decades has been been believed essential to human health by virtually all laypersons and professionals. Many still believe it.

What do we make of the appearance of what appears to be an essentially new taboo in the midst of a context which resists it? Taboos have often been seen as ancient, deluded ideas among primitive tribes; but all cultures have them, and some are in flux. In the history of anthropology, scholars have varied a great deal in their understanding (or incomprehension) of taboos, and more recent ones have tried to correct misunderstandings arising from their forebears’ cultural and subcultural prejudices. This is an area where all but experts should fear to tread--and my field is not anthropology but religious studies. Issues of taboo do figure in it, but are secondary in my particular area. Thus without venturing anything based on a general theory, I will restrict myself to a few elementary comments on their ethical / spiritual implications.

The central point is that taboos, in our own as well as in other cultures, must be questioned in regard to the moral impact they have on the individuals who observe them, on the sentient beings targeted by them, and (when relevant) on the earth; they should be subject to all-encompassing compassion. Some are obviously very harmful to everyone involved: those against female equality; those against interracial equality, friendship, and marriage; and those against same-gender sexual relations and marriage.

These three taboos are all in process of losing, to some extent, their earlier strength and prevalence. Compassion means that the sooner they lose their hold on society, the better. At the same time, if the people who actively oppose them show contempt toward those slow to change, much harm can be done--as painful recent developments in the US may illustrate. Without charity and respect for all, reaction may build, and delay healing change.

It goes without saying that the taboo against eating any flesh, in contrast to harmful taboos, is based on what is vital, life-giving; its spread is crucially important to the physical and spiritual well-being of farmed animals, of human health, and the health--perhaps the survival--of the planet’s biosphere. The wellbeing of many people in developing countries, and of wild creatures, is also involved. Since so much hangs on this, it is crucially important that we pursue it with the same respect and charity so important to working toward ending harmful taboos. The animals and the earth certainly don’t need a great surge of even stronger resistance.

Of course there are taboos that don’t fit into either of these extreme cases; some, such as avoiding work on the Sabbath (as they may interpret work) by Jews, are beneficial to those affected, though not often directly relevant to others; some taboos protect from infections; some, like avoiding bathroom talk in social situations, are a matter of good manners; some are morally neutral. Taboos can conflict with one another, as in the well-known dinner situation where a vegan’s unwillingness to eat animal products on the table is taken as a violation of good manners, a self-righteous insult to the company. (Advance planning can ease the situation.) Unhappily, some common-sense taboos such as avoiding those with dangerous infections can result in abandonment and even greater suffering for the sick.

We can find inspiration in the stories of great souls such as Francis of Assisi, who overcame his greatest taboo-driven fear and kissed a leper...

...and prison reformer John Howard, whose compassion enabled him to overcome the dangers of contact with typhus--a life-threatening infection for which there was then no remedy--and of potentially violent prisoners, in order to investigate and expose the prison hellholes of his day. (Howard’s story, from the May 2012 PT, is reprinted in this month’s Pioneer column.)

Compassionate love can enable us to harness the life-giving power underlying the best taboos, and strengthen us to oppose the worst ones with Grace; it can overcome the fear of suffering, degradation, and death to bring about healing for taboo victims in a wise manner. Divine love is stronger than horror, stronger than death.

Return to Animals: Tradition - Philosophy - Religion