Present With the Sentient

The young student visited a guru who lived in a forest among the animals. After joining her for a vegetarian meal, the student admitted he ate meat and even had some for breakfast that day and felt ashamed in her presence.

“There is no need for shame on this earth,” she said. “That is a destructive emotion, not a productive one.”

Still feeling uncomfortable, the student asked, “How long have you been a vegetarian?”

The guru smiled.

“At least one lifetime. You see that cow walking freely in the pasture over there, uneaten? I’ve been a vegetarian his whole life, so from his perspective I’ve been a vegetarian eternally.”

“What about in terms of our lifetime?” the student asked.

“For one who experiences a universe in a blade of grass, for one who lives purely in the moment? Always.”

The student replied, “But I am not living purely like that yet.”

The mischievous gleam in the guru’s eyes grew brighter. “Do you want to know the answer as time is measured by meat eaters, or vegetarians? Because one of those ways of eating ages one quicker because of the added hormones, ammonia, antibiotics, cancer-causing toxins, hardening blood vessels, diabetes, colon disease, and other factors.”

“Maybe you don’t know how long?” the student asked, catching on to her storytelling tactics.

“How long? As long as I lived here with the animals and knew them as fellow sentient beings. How long? Longer than my intestines measure, which is many times longer than a meat eater’s, who need to expel the meat it eats quickly before it rots, something our herbivore intestines do with some difficulty.”   

The student gazed over at the peacefully grazing cows and horses. “I think maybe the question of 'how long' is less important than ‘why.’”

“And hopefully my answers were easier to digest than your breakfast. Now pass the potatoes.”