Unforgiving Practice

This practice of meditation is causing dramatic and unanticipated disruptions in my mind and life, but I guess I mean that in a good way.

It's got to be the meditation doing this. I haven't made any other significant changes in my mental routine lately.

The most recent upheaval came a couple of days ago. I got my new copy of the New Yorker (Nov. 9) from the mailbox, went back inside, and sat down and turned first to the book reviews as I always do. My eye fell on a review of Jonathan Safran Foer's "Eating Animals."

Halfway through this article the realization came to me -- actually more like struck me between the eyes like a bullet -- that I have to become a vegan. No buts, no compromises, no vacillation, no ambiguity, no choice. I have to do it, and that's the end of it.

So of course, that's what I'll do.

This creates enormous problems. At 120 pounds I'm already seriously underweight. I now have to give up the eggs, cheese, butter, chicken meat -- all the stuff that's keeping any weight on me at all. So I'll have to get some books, including a cook book, and eat more, and learn how to do this.

The thing is, I've been aware for years of the savage cruelty dealt out to animals on factory farms and feedlots, but somehow I was able to pretend I wasn't. At the same time I went around in a state of political outrage at this country's endless wars, and over the millions now out of work because of the criminals who ran the great real-estate Ponzi scheme of the earlier part of this decade.

I had fallen into the familiar moral trap of condemning the misbehavior of others, and ignoring the evil business in which I played my willing part as an accomplice. "Why," Jesus asked, "do you see the splinter in your neighbor's eye and ignore the plank in your own?"

I wouldn't want to say that this and other recent, major shifts in my thinking are the result of words coming from God's mouth to my ear, but sometimes that's how it feels. I've never heard that booming voice coming from heaven, but at critical moments simply become aware that a sort of tectonic shift has occurred in my mind, seemingly by way of an agency not my own.

It wasn't me who decided I have to now be a vegan, but I'm the one stuck with having to live under changed conditions. Ain't life hard? And then we die.

But I guess I wouldn't have it any other way. I got up this morning, looking forward to doing my daily practice, pranayama, and meditation.

I've got about 10 eggs, a little block of cheese, and half a tub of light butter left. I'll finish those and then it's a New World. This is kind of like quitting smoking, but easier I hope.

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