(after 3 years as a strict vegetarian, Fr. Mario Mazzoleni, a priest
of Vatican Radio, who has
left for God spoke
of a desire for meat.)
I would be a hypocrite if I led the reader to believe that I was
strong enough to be perfectly faithful to my Lenten resolution. There
was a time when I started to meditate with the Transcendental
Meditation technique. The TM instructors assured me that being a
vegetarian was a stress I still needed to overcome, and that's why the
problem of eating meat kept surfacing in my mind. I hadn't yet
completely
resolved my desire for meat - they told me- and so the repressed
desire was floating to the surface. It is a fact that the minute
I would sit down to meditate, the most succulent meals would pass in
front of my mind, full of fragrant roasted chickens and various
sausages. What to do? If I was going to ruin all my meditations
for a roast chicken, it would be better to eliminate the problem
by facing it head on. And so after 3 years of strict vegetarianism, I
decided to get rid of the desire once and for all by satiating myself
with a meat dinner. After all, I told myself to quiet my sense
of guilt, "It isn't a crime to eat meat, and I can't say that because
I'm vegetarian I'm better than many people who are carnivorous."
It was almost a traumatic experience. I remembered an analogous
experience of Gandhi's that he recounted in his autobiography.
Convinced by a friend that India could be liberated only by the grit
of someone who ate meat, he hid himself on a river bank to consume
some barbecued baby goat meat, and the next night he could
feel bleating in his chest. Instead of enjoying the coveted snack
in peace, the minute this little faithbreaker set his teeth into
the cruel repast* (* a reference to Dante's Inferno.. in which
meat is described as a cruel repast in XXXIII.1)
he was himself bitten by remorse and anxiety. I kept seeing the
animal alive in front of me, and this inhibited the desire that was so
enticing when it was simply mental.
I immediately noticed some other effects, physical as well as psychic.
My intestines held that food much longer than they kept vegetables,
and my sense of smell, made sensitive by several years of
vegetarianism,
was able to detect the odor of the cooked animal on my skin. It was
a disagreeable sensation. As for my psyche, I noticed that my
mind, which during my 3 year "Lent" was no longer seriously
agitated by unwanted thoughts, suffered a set back from that
carne-vale (meat festival); polluting throughts started to enter
again in triumph. It was a lesson. As always it is experience more
than words that has the greater power of persuasion.
The decision to adopt a vegetarian diet was motivated also by a
religious
factor. I knew that I was going to a sacred place.
quoted from Don Mario Mazzoleni's book, published by Leela Press
of Faber, Virginia USA
--- End forwarded message ---
ling is an over 20,000
year old Sanskrit word
for God who stands
at the intersection of
the form and formless
