Welcome to the Buddhist Boot Camp Podcast. Our intention is to awaken, enlighten, enrich,
and inspire a simple and uncomplicated life.
Discover the benefits of mindful living with your host, Timber Hawkeye.
I was invited to speak in Quartzite, Arizona last week, at this year's RTR, an annual
gathering in the desert for full- and part-time van dwellers from all over the country.
I spoke, as I often do, about the importance of living in line with our core values so that
what we think, what we say, and what we do, are all in alignment. It's a way of ensuring
undisrupted inner peace. A woman raised her hand to ask the following question, for which
I didn't have a good answer at the time, but upon deeper reflection, I've reached what I
think is the core of the matter. She described her internal conflict as follows: On one hand,
she was raised on a farm with many animals; from chickens to pigs, goats, and cows, some
of whom were designated as pets, which the family never butchered nor ate,
while others were strictly raised for consumption. Even as a young girl she didn't
understand the distinction, and now, as an adult, she loves bacon, eats meat,
and doesn't think twice about a chicken salad, but she still has pet pigs, turkeys,
sheep, and so on, whom she never eats. She is struggling to make sense and peace
with simultaneously loving animals, yet eating them as well.
She sees bacon as someTHING, but Roger, her pet pig, as someONE.
As a result, she said she feels inauthentic.
I initially thought the conflict resulted from a lack of commitment to one way or the other.
To illustrate what I meant about commitment, I used the example of dating
multiple people at the same time, which is commonplace, harmless, and
perfectly acceptable. However, continuing to see other people after getting married
creates conflict, internal and otherwise, because a commitment has been made,
a vow, a promise never to do that again.
Applying this to the meat-eating/animal lover dichotomy; all I initially thought was missing
was a commitment; she has not vowed to stop eating animals,
so there was no conflict of interest, per se.
But upon further contemplation, not only has she not yet taken the step to honestly look
at ALL animals as someONE, not some THING, she struggles with the same Buddhist
invitation with which I also had difficulty for a very long time: To do no harm.
It is literally impossible for us to do no harm;
our very existence is only possible at the expense of others.
We inevitably kill living organisms every time we breathe, wash our hands, and so on.
Our life contributes to the general overpopulation problem, and we are one
more mouth to feed, one more consumer, et cetera. "Doing no harm" is not an option.
So I used to wonder Why even bother? Why even try?
But then I changed the wording from Do NO Harm to Do LESS Harm,
and now, I see every action as an opportunity to ask myself
Is the harm I'm about to cause avoidable?
And then, I practice doing less harm when I'm about to buy something, or eat something,
drink, watch, listen, read, et cetera. Every single moment is an opportunity to
contemplate ways and options that minimize the harm I cause through my choices.
Not just harm to others, but also to myself.
By now, you are probably familiar with the practice of the three gates when it comes
to mindful speech: Imagining there are three gates in your throat with a guard at each one,
like security at the airport. The guard at the first gate stops the words that you're about
to speak, and asks, "Is what you're about to say True?"
And if the words are true, they proceed to the second gate, where the guard asks,
"Is what you're about to say necessary?" And if our intention is both true and necessary,
the words proceed to the third and final gate, where the guard asks, "Is what you're about
"to say kind?" And only if what you're about to say is true, necessary, and kind,
do we say it out loud.
This practice reduces intoxicants, so to speak, and we are immediately part of the solution
by not being part of the pollution.
So to tie this back to my original point, what if we were to implement a similar filter
of sorts, not just for what comes out of our mouth, but for what goes in as well.
Prior to eating, a guard asks, "Is what you're about to eat necessary? Is what you're about
"to eat kind? To your own body and to our collective body?"
Whenever I'm hungry, I ask myself: What can I eat to satisfy my hunger
and nutritional needs, yet minimize the harm caused to myself and to others?
Not ELIMINATE the harm, mind you, MINIMIZE it. I think that what the woman eats
would change when she asks herself if it's kind, you know; it would be the missing link
between Roger the pig, and the nameless bacon, if that makes sense.
It doesn't mean she would necessarily stop completely overnight;
it's not a black-and-white issue, but it would at least get her asking, "How can I minimize
"the harm I cause when I eat?" When we develop self-respect, what we drink
or consume in any other way would also change. What we watch... what we read.
So, for everyone out there struggling to eat healthy, mindfully, and harmlessly,
I say Gentle is the way to go.
Do LESS Harm. Be mindful of what goes in and out of your mouth.
Timber Hawkeye is the bestselling author of Faithfully Religionless
and Buddhist Boot Camp.
For additional information, please visit BuddhistBootCamp.com,
where you can order autographed books to support the Prison Library Project,
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Thank you for being a Soldier of Peace in the Army of Love. 🙏🏼