Time to settle scores

The great sage Gorakhnath has said: "When you don't ask you get milk when you ask you get water and when you take you draw blood". This quote clearly indicates the way mother nature takes care of us.As infants we don't know what to eat and what to abhor we just cry when hungry and in return we get mother's milk to nourish us.Even water is enough to keep us alive and see what happens when our taste buds start to drive our hunger, we eat not out of a need to survive but to satiate our senses which is impossible.In the process we keep on adding more and more karma in our eternal account by slaughtering more and more animals.In fact there's no such thing as bad or good karma.It's just that we have to pay back what we take.The recent trend of making meat production an industry is quite striking in this context.We all know that that a tonne of pulses can feed much more mouths than the same amount of beef or pork.Also the nutrients are of a much higher value in case of vegetarian sources as they come from lower levels of the food web.The input required to produce is also much less in case of pulses or peanuts as compared to pork or beef. In spite of these well known facts the developed nations are engrossed in pleasing the tongue. I am amused to see that these fast 'developing' people can't develop their tastes into more sattvic realms.Then they jump on the bandwagon of world peace. The results are pretty obvious- more hostile response from any area of the world they venture into.I believe it's the curses of the animals that were tortured and killed that are working when we see pandemics like swine flu taking shape and other disorders affecting meat eating societies.Meat generates tamas or grossness which makes the mind cling more to the senses.No wonder we see increase in animalistic behavior in people.Animals love to procreate,see where the population is heading to.Animals are very territorial,then increase in communal and border disputes is no news. One may argue that according to that logic the plants also curse us.Of course it's true plants do curse us when they are used but their curses are not so severe as the animals as animals are closer to us biologically.Absolute curb on slaughter is ofcourse a foolish notion(you can't relish bananas in the arctic).We should appreciate how efficiently people there utilise the body parts of the animal killed.Even the sinews of seals are used up as threads by the eskimos( thankfully we don't have factories there!!!).In hostile conditions like arctic the animal is killed out of need not greed.It's interesting to note that most of flu outbreaks originate from the tropics only.The scientists will intelligently assert that to favorable conditions for the pathogens in these areas.The nature's message is very clear here. In the end it all boils down to the proposition that maybe those animals owned some debt which they have paid in this life.But what about the debt that we owe them now?