ALUNA TEMPLE MAGAZINE Edition No3 'INITIATIONS' | Page 47

FOOD FOR LIFE with DAŠA LAKNER www.agniyoga.si [email protected] Dear reader. Lets' have a coffee together (and maybe a cake). I will order plant based food and hopefully so will you. But before we start our conversation let me explain that every thought I share and I think it can be benefitial… Somebody told this to me and now I pass this message forward… First thing first. As a child I was growing up with anatomy books (my mother was a surgeon) and had fun learning anatomy - how the muscles attach to the bones and I knew the names of bones by heart at the age of six. But I couldn't quite understand that my mother was trying to fix and heal the human bodies for her job, but at home we would then eat a chicken leg/wing - and doing so, destroying a living being. I didn't see much difference if the leg came from a chicken or a human - it is (was) alive and now it is dead. So I stopped eating animals as for me it was to similar with the human being. It just didn't feel right to eat something that had a consciousness. I was a vegetarian for 10 years and later became completely vegan. Like we love our cats and dogs and feel disgusted if someone eats such animals, but at the same time we can easily eat pigs and cows like they are just some inanimate objects to satisfy our needs. And the same story goes with dairy products - we know that breast-feeding is for babies to grow and we do not consume milk of other human females but we do not see a problem exploiting other animals to drink their milk that was meant and specifically designed for their babies to grow. And you are not a calf or a baby goat don't you think? The main question that triggers me is ’How can I spiritually evolve if I deny THE RIGHT TO LIVE of another living being?’ You might be thinking that a carrot is also a living being. Yes it is. But does it have a central nervous system as all animals? No. Do plants feel pain? Probably so, but to a much smaller extent than animals. I have never heard of a carrot trying to fight for its life when it was picked but I have heard (and seen) animals and people fight for their lives when facing death. 47