Cow Protection – Practical Necessity for a Peaceful Society

Happy New Year! My first post of the New Year, an issue very dear to my heart, Cow Protection.

…The Srimad-Bhagavatam says the cow is an offenseless living being. It’s Krsna’s arrangement that the cow takes so little and gives so much. From her milk you can make hundreds of delicious preparations. She simply performs her service very peacefully without any bother to anyone.

Cow Protection – Practical Necessity for a Peaceful Society

(excerpted from Back to Godhead Magazine January 1976 Vol. 11, No. 1)

by Visakha-devi dasi

Speaking on the troubled condition of our modern world, the late historian Arnold Toynbee once said, “The cause of it [the world’s malady] is spiritual. We are suffering from having sold our souls to the pursuit of an objective which is both spiritually wrong and practically unobtainable. We have to reconsider our objective and change it. And until we do this, we shall not have peace, either amongst ourselves or within each of us.”

The conditions of our urbanized, technology-oriented society that prompted Dr. Toynbee’s remarks are no mystery to us. Especially in the West, and increasingly in the rest of the world, the mad quest for artificial luxuries has created a chaotic atmosphere pervaded by greed and power-seeking.

Continue reading

Vegetarian Ethics

loving-mother-cow-and-calf1

I ran across the following article on the Sampradaya Sun the sometime ago, on Vegetarian Ethics. It is a very nice collection of quotes on the importance of a vegetarian diet, and a case against animal slaughter.

“Many people consider the ethical reasons the most important of all for becoming vegetarian. The beginning of ethical vegetarianism is the knowledge that other creatures have feelings, and that their feelings are similar to ours. This knowledge encourages one to extend personal awareness to encompass the suffering of others.” (The Hare Krishna Book of Vegetarian Cooking)

“If you have men who will exclude any of God’s creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men.”  (St. Francis of Assisi)

Continue reading