May 2015, was the time when I chose to live a vegan life. My recent visit to a 10-day Vipasana meditation retreat and a documentary ‘Earthlings (2005)’ played a significant role in my decision.
Starting a vegan life in Nepali society was not an easy thing to do. I was often asked why I chose to go vegan and people would not understand my answer, which usually was “because of my compassion towards animals”. My relatives criticized and picked on me in family parties and gatherings.
After living a vegan life for more than two years and studying about it, I came up with stronger reasons to continue the practice. I learned a lot from the speeches of Gary Yurofsky and documentaries like ‘Cowspiracy (2014)’, ‘Racing Extinction (2015)’, ‘Before the Flood (2016)’ and many more.
Gearing up for 'The Himalayan Vegan festival 2022'
We usually say that we are animal lovers and discourage animal cruelty, but we indirectly pay others to mutilate, torture and slaughter animals. Meat consumption is not only limited to health reasons, most choose to be non-vegetarian for the taste.
Animals should be left in nature, not brought to cities for slaughter. They should not be enslaved for milk, meat eggs, entertainment, cosmetics, fur or fun. Being a vegan is not only about diet. It’s a life style choice where we say no to everything that hurts animals.
From physiological point of view, eating plant-based diet is healthier. Just eating vegan (plant-based) diet can prevent us from 13 out of 15 kinds of dangerous diseases that can cause untimely death. Many studies have shown that vegans tend to have a lower risk of obesity, coronary heart diseases (which causes heart attack), high blood pressure, diabetes mellitus and some forms of cancer. A vegan diet helps you avoid cholesterol, saturated trans-fatty acid and animal protein.
Similarly, human body is 100 percent herbivorous. The length of our intestine is somewhere between seven to 13 times the length of our torso (our trunk). That’s the same length of all herbivorous animals on this planet. The length of meat eaters’ intestines are only three to six times their torso. They have short intestinal tracks so that they can quickly push the consumed meat.
Moreover, 65 percent of the world’s grains are set aside to feed animals that are artificially breed and enslaved for meat, egg and dairy (even fish now a days).
If we see from the environmental point of view, going vegan is the ultimate answer for all global environmental issues. There are around seven billion humans in this earth. But the number of animals enslaved in animal farms is over 70 billion.
So, I chose a vegan life for ethics, compassion, and decency, for my own health and for our common home (earth). I think the question should not be why vegan, it should be why not?
