Thought for today

"Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared." - Buddha

Famous Vegetarians

Here's a list of famous vegetarians in India & abroad of then and now. Have a look.

India

Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel (First Home Minister of India) (vegan)
P.V. Narasimha Rao (Prime Minister of India (1991-1996))
Mahatma Gandhi (vegan)
Amitabh Bachchan (actor)
Madhuri Dixit (actor)
John Abraham (actor)
Shahid Kapur (actor)
APJ Abdul Kalam (President - current)
Milind Soman (actor / model)

Indian Film Industry's list of hottest vegetarians

Abroad

George Bernard Shaw - Playwright
Henry Ford - ford motor company
Jude Law - actor
Leo Tolstoy - Russian writer
Leonardo da Vinci - artist
Natalie Portman - Actress
Paul McCartney - Singer/ Activist
Orlando Bloom - actor
Richard Gere - Actor
Ralph Waldo Emerson - Poet
Shania Twain - singer(vegan)
Steve Jobs - Apple Computers
Vincent Van Gogh - Painter
Yehudi Menuhin - violinist
Albert Einstein - scientist
Anne Hathaway - actress
Benjamin Franklin - scientist
Bille Jean King - Tennis champion
Bryan Adams - Musician
Dustin Hoffman - Actor
Martin Luther King

This list is only for representation as there are many many more famous personalities who are vegetarians. Some of them I know and some i don't.

"Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet." - Albert Einstein 1879-1955 Physicist, Nobel Prize winner 1921

Do you call yourself an "EGGITARIAN"?

I have heard many people say that they are vegetarians but eat eggs or eggitarians. i was also one of them. I remember as a 12 year old in school, i had gone to my Bengali friend's house to spend the day. She was having an omelet for snacks & offered it to me too. At that time i was quite impressionable and also curious about its taste. So i took a mouthful but before i could chew it down something within me forced me to puke it out. I don't know what that was.

Then as a grown up a few years back i again tasted egg in its form with different seasonings and didn't mind the taste. I didn't know the facts then. I thought that the eggs we take are infertile & wouldn't have lead to a chick anyways. I used to have eggs in desserts, biscuits (any unseen form) without being mindful and i must admit that i do that now also, though less frequently. (after all i too am a slave to my tongue) But after reading this book "Vegetarianism - for your body, your mind, your soul and your planet" by Swami Chidanand Saraswati; my thinking has changed.

The book says, an egg is a chicken about to be born. The condition of egg-laying hen is as despicable as that of chickens as mentioned in the previous article. Naturally in situations like this the hens become frustrated, anxious, panicked. So they peck each other. In order to prevent this, their beaks are cut off which frequently prevents hens from being able to eat. They also have their toes and claws cut off so that these do not become stuck in metal wires of their crates. these crates are piled high on top of each other. In this way they can't more even an inch. Plus when they excrete, it just falls down the crates. The cages are never cleaned.

If the egg production decreases, the hens are forced into molting. i.e. they are starved till they lost weight and feathers for 14 days & no water for 3 days. Those who survive receive a temporary boost up in their egg laying capacity.

Again some eggs have to be hatched to continue the process. Half of then turn out to be roosters which are smothered & mixed in chicken feed. More chicks are killed this way every year in the USA than there are people in the entire country.

Please understand

"Every particle of factual evidence supports the contention that the higher mammalian vertebrates experience pain sensations as acute as our own...their nervous systems are almost identical to ours and their reactions to pain are remarkably similar" - Richard Serjeant, the Spectrum of Pain.

Thought for today

If you have one eye on yesterday and one eye on tomorrow, you're going to be cockeyed today.

Note:- Isn't it true :-) i read it in the paper the other day & thought should post it.

Vegetarianism

"Teaching a child not to step on a caterpillar is as valuable to the child as it is to the caterpillar."

The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated. - Mahatma Gandhi

"The life of an animal in a factory farm is characterized by acute deprivation, stress and disease. Hundreds of millions of animals are forced to live in cages or crates barely larger then their own bodies. Unable to groom, stretch their legs, or even turn around, the victims of factory farms exist in a relentless state of distress." - Humane Farming Association

One of the most important guiding principles of a moral life is ahimsa or nonviolence. There is hardly anything more violent than taking the life of another for our pleasure. If we can't give life to others (except procreation), we don't have any right to take it. And we are not living in jungles, where survival itself is a big question. Even more violent than their day of death are the numerous days of the lives of these animals which are raised distinctly differently than our pets.

There are innumerable reasons of choosing a vegetarian diet. They range from better health, care of the environment, conservation of resources, spiritual benefits etc etc. Will be creating a whole section of articles under this label but for today let's first start by looking at how chickens are treated?

Chickens have natural territory and space needs that are unmet in chicken "farms". They are packed together as closely as possible such that they can't even move. The department of agriculture recommends that they should have a minimum of 2 square feet in which to live (how horrendous), but the biggest companies provide a more 0.55 sq feet.

Imagine yourself in an elevator, which is so crowded that you cannot even turn around. All the people in the elevator are confused and scared. They do not realize there is no way out. So they cry and bite & kick attempting to free themselves. Imagine still that the elevator is titled so that everyone falls to one side and it is nearly impossible to move back up. The ceiling is so low that your head is pushed down to your shoulders. There is no way to straighten. Also the terror does not end when someone comes to open the door, your life does.

The chickens raised to be eaten are fed extraordinary and unnaturally large amounts of food in order to put on extra weight. In today's chicken farms, most of the chickens are so obese by 6 weeks that they can't even walk, and most of them have a disease called leucosis (chicken cancer)

So think of all this the next time you sit to have chicken........

Thought for today!!

If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live. - Lin Yutang (1895 -1976)

King of Pigeons Pose

Quite a challenging asana and as you can see in the picture above, I need a lot of improvement. The back leg has to be flat on the floor, pelvis more forward and arched and a better back bend. A little more flexibility in the shoulders to be able to push the arms back is also required. The pose should be attempted only after a good asana workout. You'll feel a tremendous compression in the lower back especially on one side, so the muscles and ligaments have to be strong & supple to bear that. Follow it up with child's pose for sometime to relax the body.

For more on this you may read articles one & two on Yoga Journal or refer "Light on Yoga" by BKS Iyengar.