रामराज काहूँ नहीं व्यापा

तुलसीदास दिल्ली जा रहा था | एक भगत ने टिकिट ले दिया जो पहले दर्जे में बैठा था | बगल में एक संसद सदस्य थे | उन्होंने चमचों द्वारा पहनायीं गयीं मालाएं उतारीं और पसीना पोंछते हुए बोले - बड़ी मुसीबत है | लोग मुझे इतना चाहते हैं कि तंग हो जाता हूँ |

तुलसी ने कहा - आदमी को सुखी रहने के लिए दो चीजें जरुरी हैं - भ्रम और मूर्खता | वे दोनों आपमें हैं, इसलिए आप खूब सुखी हैं |

- हरिशंकर परसाई (1984-85 में पाक्षिक 'सारिका' में 'तुलसीदास' के नाम से स्तंभ लिखते थे)

The moral basis of vegetarianism

Gandhi addressed the London Vegetarian Society on 20th Nov 1931 on the moral basis of being a vegetarian. In the address he says:

I do not know whether, nowadays, you have those debates, but I used at that time to attend debates that were held between vegetarians and vegetarians and between vegetarians and non-vegetarians. I remember one such debate, between Dr. Densmore and the late Dr. T. R. Allinson. Then vegetarians had a habit of talking of nothing but food and nothing but disease. I feel that that is the worst way of going about the business. I notice also that it is those persons who become vegetarians because they are suffering from some disease or other—that is, from purely the health point of view—it is those persons who largely fall back. I discovered that for remaining staunch to vegetarianism a man requires a moral basis. 

For me that was a great discovery in my search after truth. At an early age, in the course of my experiments, I found that a selfish basis would not serve the purpose of taking a man higher and higher along the paths of evolution. What was required. was an altruistic purpose. I found also that health was by no means the monopoly of vegetarians. I found many people having no bias one way or the other and that non-vegetarians were able to show, generally speaking, good health. I found also that several vegetarians found it impossible to remain vegetarians because they had made food a fetish and because they thought that by becoming vegetarians they could eat as much lentil, haricot, beans and cheese as they liked. Of course those people could not possibly keep their health.

Observing along these lines, I saw that a man should eat sparingly and now and then fast. No man or woman really ate sparingly or consumed just that quantity which the body requires and no more. We easily fall to prey to the temptations of the palate, and therefore when a thing tastes delicious we do not mind taking a morsel or two more. But you cannot keep health under those circumstances. Therefore I discovered that in order to keep health, no matter what you ate, it was necessary to cut down the quantity of your food, and reduce the number of meals. Become moderate; err on the side of less, rather than on the side of more. When I invite friends to share their meals with me I never press them to take anything except only what they require. On the contrary, I tell them not to take a thing if they do not want it. 

(Source: http://www.sophia-project.org/uploads/1/3/9/5/13955288/gandhi_vegetarianism.pdf)

Jitendra T Desai compiled all his thoughts on vegetarianism in a book first published in 1959.

Moral basis of vegetarianism

--
ps