Welcome back, everybody, to the Denver's Ocean podcast.
I'm here once again with Joseph Wagner.
And today we're going to talk about a subject that it may be a
little bit contentious. It's not widely accepted in the
Buddhist world, but it's something that has become
important to me and become important to Joe.
And so I think it's worth talking about.
So the subject is veganism. And you know, I know about you,
but for many years I felt like that was an extreme word.
Like vegetarians are cool because they're chill and
they're just trying to like, you know, tone it down.
But veganism was like a militant thing of like really rigid
people. And I didn't want to be rigid
because, and I still don't want to be rigid.
There's no shame or judgment coming from this at all.
But the thought that we, I watched this documentary called
Christ Spiracy, and it's by this guy, he's done several
documentaries about veganism and how, you know, his theory is
that Jesus actually may have been vegan.
I don't know about that. It's not really the important
part, but the important part was just really showing how the
dairy industry and the egg industry in some ways can be
worse than just the slaughter of animals for meat.
And so with somebody who's really trying to live the
bodhisattva life, can I feel comfortable supporting these
industries? Because the question that one
guy said that really clicked for me was he was like, is there
such a thing as vegetarianism? Because what do they do with the
dairy cow after it's done producing milk?
They slaughter it. What do they do with the male
chicks in the eggplants? They slaughter them immediately.
The, the, what do they do with the male cows?
They're immediately sold for slaughter.
So I'm supporting the same thing either way.
So it just became clear to me I had to make this sacrifice.
And I had struggled with vegetarianism and trying to be
vegan a few times for health reasons.
It can be hard. It's a sacrifice.
You have to give up some of your favorite foods.
Vegan cheese still isn't quite there.
And so, you know, I had to. But after seeing this
documentary, I was really inspired to make this leap.
And and you know, thinking about Buddhism is a path of austerity
to some degree or another. We have to we give up some
things, right? And this seemed like something
worth giving up. And I just was determined I'm
going to find a way to do it. And I've been able to do it.
And so Joe also watched this documentary and was also
inspired. So Joe, you share your feelings
about this and how you kind of came to the same thoughts as I
did. Well, thanks Damien and thanks
for want to talk about this. And I know for some of our
listeners, this is one you're either going to immediately turn
off or you're going to listen with like this kind of attitude.
I I suppose just a complete transparency, we are trying to
convince you what we're, but we're not trying to convince you
to become vegan. That's, that's not what we're
doing. What we're trying to do is
convince you to think about what you're doing in a conscious way.
That is something, what is Buddhism really about?
It's about overcoming ignorance. It's not about changing your
lifestyle. It's not about any of that
stuff. It's about overcoming ignorance.
Ignorance is our enemy, and in our world, it's much more of a
world of interconnectedness than than, you know, it was 100 years
ago or 500 years ago for that matter.
And I think this is just a topic that needs to be discussed.
I in my own life, I became a vegetarian and not a vegan many,
many years ago in 1992. I, I was studying Zen.
I was very inspired, even though I was studying with mostly with
the Korean teacher, I was very inspired by the Chinese in which
traditionally in China, if you're a Buddhist you're
vegetarian and if you're a vegetarian, you're a vegan.
They just that those are all the same thing.
They never really adopted eating dairy products very much, at
least traditionally. Now the world's all about dairy,
but previously they, they never did that.
So I lived in Taiwan soon after that, and it was super easy to
be a vegetarian, You know, in fact, there were no, no places
to get pizza. I remember one of the happiest
moments of my life was returning to the States and eating North
Beach Pizza in San Francisco, eating what I thought at the
time was the most delicious meal I ever had in my life.
After, you know, living in Taiwan for a long time where you
couldn't get cheese, all this was percolating.
And I was on the fence about whether I could become a
vegetarian. I thought, cheese, there's all
these health things, and will I be able to do this and what?
And I suddenly realized one day, I remember the moment when I
realized that I am a vegetarian at the moment, that I think I am
a vegetarian. And I it, it really transformed
my experience. And I from that moment on, I
haven't eaten meat at all, but I still ate cheese.
I didn't, I'd have never liked milk.
So that's never been a thing for me.
But I, I still eat cheese and I love cheese.
I haven't stopped loving cheese. And sometimes people will be
like, how did you quit eating meat?
It's so good. I was like, I never stopped
loving to eat meat. I just stopped eating it.
And I think what Damien is saying here, you know, there's
many little pieces, but Buddhism is primarily a religion of
abandoning wrong action. It's more important to abandon
wrong action than to adopt right action 'cause we're all doing so
much right action right? We live in a world where beating
people up and stealing their wallet is frowned upon.
If you do it physically, of course, if you do it at a, at a
governmental level, it's totally cool.
Just kidding, Just kidding. But it's, you know, we live in a
mostly altruistic society in terms of how we actually
interact with each other. You know, I was, I went to The
UPS Store to pick something up today, and there was a line.
And I didn't, like, see who I could overpower and take their
spot in line. I got in line like everybody
else. That's how things work.
We're already doing most of that, right?
Most of the people in the world are pretty good people, you
know, if not excellent people. But Buddhism is a path of
abandoning activities that are based on ignorance.
And I realized because of the documentary that Damien sent
that Christ piracy won. And it's the same guy who did
Cowspiracy and he did what the health and he's like been a
vegan advocate. I didn't even realize what the
movie was about when I started it.
But by the end of the movie, I realized that I was was acting
entirely out of two negative aspects of myself.
And those didn't go away 'cause I changed my my diet.
One is ignorance and the other one is, is a kind of greed.
It's a kind of delicious sucking on the deliciousness of cheese.
And I was in Italy over the summer and cheese is very
delicious. I ate a lot of it and and I
loved every single bite. But at some point on our path,
we have to see what am I doing here?
And as Damien pointed out, to my mind, if you're participating in
the meat eating industry, which includes dairy, unfortunately
then you are participating in the suffering of incredibly
large numbers of beings. And as Buddhist, that doesn't
make a lot of sense, you know? And again, this is not a
propaganda. This is not trying to force
anyone to do anything except think about what you're doing.
If you do it consciously and you are convinced that eating meat
and cheese is good, then, hey, at least you're doing it
consciously. It's just that we do think so
much unconsciously. Our lives are driven by
unconscious forces. That's why we have these bodies,
according to Buddhism, right? Because of our ignorance, being
submerged in the sea of foolishness and ridiculousness
in which we only can operate as me and you.
And I want what I want. And that is where this comes
from. I never personally had any
problem giving up meat. I've been like, of course,
occasionally you feel like it would be excellent to eat a
euro. And in fact, I had a bite of a
year. I'll tell a story just like
shaming myself here. I had a bite of a euro.
Why? Because my Tibetan guru, a
terton in the Tibetan, a high level llama, an amazing guy,
lived in The Cave 16 years, said it'd be better if you ate meat.
He said that. He says that to me every time I
see him. And so I was sitting in a
restaurant, I was with a friend and the friend had a euro.
And, and I had been talking about this and the friend said,
you know, maybe you should have a bite of this euro just to
honor the teacher. And I was like, OK, I had it.
One of the most delicious things I've ever had in my life.
You know, I, I, I'm, I was like, I, my mind stopped working and I
was like, Oh my God. And it had been, you know, 20
years since I had a bite of a euro, but I didn't go on eating
meat. Why?
Because it's wrong. They hate to say it.
The right diet is not to eat animals.
And what's funny in our society is that everybody loves animals.
You know, we love deer and we love dogs and we all have cats
and everybody agrees. And sometimes they agree.
Well, they're shovelling in the hamburgers.
It's crazy. You know, it's, it's a kind of,
it's just ignorance manifesting. So all I we decide to have this
podcast, not to try to convince you, although I think watching
that movie would be interesting for everyone.
Because most Tibetan Buddhists eat meat, because llamas eat
meat. And that's partially because of
Tibetan tradition. It's hard to be a vegetarian
traditionally in Tibet. And partially because it tastes
amazing and it's easy. Our whole world is aimed at
this. But I my final statement about
this aspect is Buddhism is about going against the grain.
It's about swimming upstream. The whole world wants us to go
this way. Or as Tolko Ojinals used to say,
it's easy for a stone to roll downhill.
In the Dharma, we're rolling the stone uphill.
That's freaking hard. And one aspect of this is taking
responsibility for ourselves and the responsibility for the fact
that I can't remember what number they said, but it was
like 50 billion animals killed every year, Some kind of number
where you're just like. And for those of our readers who
can't think about a billion, like myself, a billion is 1000
piles with a million items in each pile.
So we're talking about 57,000 piles and each one has a million
animals. It's, it's nuts.
And, and I just thought like, why not do my part?
Let's see. And you know what?
Extremely easy. I haven't missed it.
Amazing. There's, it's an easy time to be
vegan. So there's just Joe
pontificating about this, but, and also out of gratitude
because I feel much more aligned with my principles.
I love animals, you know, and I, I sometimes say I didn't become
a vegetarian because I love vegetables.
I became a vegetarian because I love animals and now I can say
that with more of a heart and that feels good.
That's me. And, you know, and, and you
could even move anywhere on the spectrum, you could think like,
I'll only buy eggs produced by small family farms, you know,
people who are just, or milk that comes from somebody who
owns a cow or two and they're naturally producing because some
of these things, it's the big factory farming makes all of it
worse, right? But then if you really want to
think, you know, on the deepest level, which is where I'm even
getting, is this kind of using sentient beings for anything
isn't really OK to really like be sucking the energy out of a
sentient being and forcing them to do my will.
And of course, people's immediate argument, and I would
have made this argument a million times in my life, don't
worry, is what are we going to do with all these cows?
And of course, it's not going to happen overnight.
But if consumption goes down over time, it will transform the
industry, right? If sales go down, then people
will start using their farms to produce different things.
Huge, huge, huge amounts of soybeans and corn and rice are
just produced to feed the animals.
We could just be eating what they're being fed.
So I think if we think about this carefully, that that
doesn't have to be this like as extreme as sometimes veganism
can sound. Also, I think that when we just
think about one of the benefits of this is that it's hard to
have much austerity in American culture in particular.
We have so much opulence and wealth and things at our
fingertips. We've talked about this on
previous episodes in the merit that we're spending on this
lifestyle by taking it down a notch with a positive motivation
to benefit all animals is producing merit and purifying
obscurations for us in in a somewhat easy way.
And it's something you do every day, couple times a day.
So if you maintain this motivation, you're really, it's
a massive practice. You're taking on a big, big
practice and you can really feel the difference.
I can feel the difference of the, the, the karmic cleanliness
of, of not doing it and the gem merit I'm generating.
I could feel better, you know, like if I was on a deserted
island and all there was was a cow, I don't think I'd kill the
cow. I don't think I actually have
that in me. I think I would just die of
starvation for real. I don't, I don't think that I
have the willingness, you know, maybe I don't know, but I feel
like I, I don't have the willingness to murder something
just so I can eat. And like you're saying, the
ignorance, the way that the American food is produced in
particular is so disconnected from the fact you're eating an
animal. It is so easy to not even
imagine there's a cow having anything to do with your
McDonald's hamburger. It just, it just doesn't seem
like, it just seems like food. And so that again, like you were
saying, Joe, that's ignorance. That's not thinking carefully
about what we're doing. And we know now everybody knows
and everybody knows about factory farming and everybody
knows about how terrible it is. This is a really powerful
practice to take on, and I think that it has great potential for
bringing benefit to beings. And I know that the the current
Karmapa is vegetarian and maybe even a vegan.
He, you know, is an advocate for all of this.
And, you know, we had Chacho Rimpoche, who was really strict
about this, and we've had Pacho Rimpoche was a vegetarian.
So it's not unheard of. I think this is really worth
considering and on on the diet aspect.
I'm a guy who lifts weights. I I want to have a fairly high
protein intake. All the research shows that tofu
is your king. It is a perfect protein.
It has tons of leucine, which is the one that triggers most
muscle protein synthesis. It's inexpensive and all of the
studies show that it increases your longevity.
All the scares about estrogen and stuff like that were proven
wrong. You can go look it up, ask
ChatGPT, it'll clarify everything for you.
But you know, eating tofu and tempeh is an easy way to hit
your protein goals. I'm telling you, you can do it.
And that's what I've done. I eat tofu or tempeh every
single day and that fills all my gaps and my stomach can handle
it because I can't eat beans, which is what the reason I
always had a hard time going vegetarian is I was, I can't eat
beans without farting my brains out.
And, and I also want to have compassion for my wife.
And so I have tried to find a diet that is compassionate for
my wife and for animals. And so by eating a lot of tofu
and tempeh, I've met all my protein goals and do a protein
powder made out of pea protein and I'm good.
So it can be done. And then I know it can be hard
and like I said, I'm not judging.
We've only been doing this for a short period of time, so we both
were on the other side of just being vegetarian not very long
ago, and I was eating meat not long before that.
So I want you to know it doesn't come from any place of
judgement, but just this is, I think, a beautiful thing and an
amazing thing and something that we can really benefit from
considering. I think beautifully said and all
all true. And, you know, in China, which
has had a Dharma culture for a lot longer than even Tibet, you
know, since like almost the 1st century, the there are many
levels of practitioners of all kinds of Dharma.
Now, I don't know what the situation is right now.
We're talking Primo, but it was not uncommon for people to say,
like, I'm a vegetarian on Tuesdays.
And that's perfectly fine. When they said vegetarian, they
also meant vegan because no animal products.
But that's something that everyone can do once a month,
once every six months, only on Thanksgiving.
Whatever. You can tell the sacrifice has
benefit. There's real merit in that.
It doesn't have to be every meal.
It doesn't have to be every day. It doesn't have to be at all, as
long as we're totally conscious. To me it's, I mean, if you read
the life stories of so many masters and it wasn't just
Potro, I mean it was Shabkar, so many masters.
There are very, it's very frequently kept on Nacho.
There are very frequent periods where they were practicing a lot
of Bodhi Chita and they suddenly had this awakening that they
couldn't eat meat and they gave up eating meat.
And, and that is a hard thing to do in Tibet, very rare odds and
Paylor and Pache as a vegetarian, it's very rare.
It was a true sacrifice. It's not much of A sacrifice
now. It's easy.
I met a guy yesterday who said he's been vegan since 1995.
I was like, wow, he was a great big guy too.
Not a skinny. Like you think you're going to
fade away? That's just baloney.
Like look at Damien. He can manifest me.
He's tough. The The thing is, he said, he
said back then it was really hard.
It's a lot easier now. And it really is.
I mean, my God, our local grocery, which is in a not the
most opulent neighborhood, has vegan cheese and even vegan
chocolate chip cookies, which are, I found out, unfortunately,
quite delicious. So it's very, it's very easy.
So it's not, there are fewer and fewer reasons not to consider
this. And even if you consider just
once a month, one day a month, you know, we want to, we want to
have our cake and eat it too. I get that.
But it works better if you are more conscious about it.
And something that I use in many contexts that fits.
Here is a quote from Terence McKenna, the the psychedelic
philosopher. He said, he said you got to have
a plan. If you don't have a plan, you
become part of somebody else's plan.
And this is a very powerful thing to remember.
It fits in many areas. We have to have a plan with our
diet right now. Protein is the thing, right?
This was not the thing five years ago.
Now it's like everybody's talking protein, protein.
You got protein snacks, you got protein cereal.
It's like everywhere. I'm not convinced that that is
not a. Piece of propaganda from the
meat eating industry. I, I think they feel under
attack and I would feel under attack too.
And we hold no animosity toward them.
But it's good to have a plan. It doesn't mean your plan needs
to be being vegan, but it needs to be being conscious.
That's for sure, 'cause as Buddhists, our goal is to end
some sorrow for all beings. And how can we do that when
we're shoveling in, you know, something that is directly from
the suffering of an animal? And I have one more thought I
want to share. After I watched that movie and I
started to contemplate, you know, what it means that we are
killing for food. 50 million, sorry, 50 billion beings every
year. That is not necessary.
I've been vegetarian forever. It is not necessary to eat meat
to live. Thoreau knew this, right?
This was every way. Everybody's known this.
I wonder if this doesn't have to do with the continual absurdity
of our world, the inability of our world to really progress.
You know, we're having the same kind of wars.
We're having the same kind of struggles.
We're having the same kind of like down with women, down with,
you know, people who aren't the same colors as craziness as
we've had for literally thousands of years.
We are technologically magicians, and yet kind of
culturally we're almost the same.
I wondered if it didn't have to do with this, this, that we are
literally feeding on suffering. It's quite interesting thought,
you know, I don't know if it's right, I have no idea, but it
has to be contributing to the sameness, you know, the sameness
of our, of our interaction with the world.
I think it's worth contemplating, especially as
Buddhists, but other people who aren't Buddhists watch this.
And I think it's just worth being conscious about what you
do. You know, the more conscious you
are, the more you have autonomy, which is what we really want,
power in our lives, power to make decisions.
And if we're not making decisions, we're just
unconsciously eating whatever is served to us, like we're in a
prison, which we're not. Then aren't we under the power
of someone else? We're part of somebody elses
plan and their plan is to extract money from us primarily.
That doesn't seem good. You know what I mean?
So that these thoughts percolated up in my mind and
it's really true. It does make you feel light.
The vegan diet makes you feel physically light.
It makes you feel mentally light, makes you feel
emotionally light, makes you feel spiritually light.
And that's good. You know, I still, I'm doing
more exercise than I've ever done.
You know, I'm lifting weights and going to yoga every day.
I'm like doing a lot of exercise hasn't seemed to impact me.
My weight didn't decrease. You know, I have this tendency
to get skinny. I'm not getting skinny.
So something must be working. Yeah, Two things I wanted to
share. One is you may be familiar with
this influencer, Brian Johnson. He's the guy who wants to live
forever. He like, takes blood from his
son and all of this. But he, you know, he's trying to
live this like meticulously studied diet, but he's also
vegan and and people have asked him all the time, like, you
know, a wiry vegan. And he said the vegan part is
just a choice. He said, I'm trying to move
humanity into the future. And I think a future being would
be more compassionate and would choose veganism.
So he said, even though I think you could do this longevity
diet, as with me, I'm choosing to do it vegan.
So that I thought was cool and it made me respect him, which I
thought it was kind of a weirdo, but then I thought that and I
was like, that's a great thought.
And and it also shows that's possible for you to be a vegan
and have Immaculate longevity markers, which is what he's
doing on himself. So that's a good point.
The other thing that hit me in this movie, this conspiracy
movie, there is this thing that has happened in history.
Part of the shift from the ancient primitive traditions to
the modern world religions has been from one of animal
sacrifice. Human sacrifice before.
Yes, and. Human sacrifice.
And and then to ego sacrifice, right to to sacrificing yourself
in your own wants and needs on the bat for the benefit of
others. When you watch this movie, you
couldn't help but get the feeling that there is still this
mass ritualistic slaughter of animals going on.
Then it may not be directly literally kind of offering to a
deity, but I think it is. It is like an offering of of
death to these samsaric energies, whatever you want to
call those things, but clearly a demon, right?
Like what feeds on that? What feeds on the mass death of
animals and of course, corporate greed and all of this is all
tied together. And so that that was the thing
that really hit me on this deep level when I watched that movie,
that there's it's almost like a a very worldwide spiritual
culture that eating meat and having a meat industry is like
if the world was one religion. And that's the main activity is
this like murder of massive numbers of animals.
That's pretty wild. And it shows that we are pretty
far behind, you know, pretty far removed from the Star Trek kind
of future, you know, much more stuck in the Star Wars endless
ups and downs thing, you know, and and so really paints that
picture. So if you have time to watch
this documentary, it was free last time I checked.
You can watch it on his website and we can try and put the link
in here. But I really think it's worth
watching and considering that that on some kind of deep
energetic level, something like that is also happening.
That that wouldn't. Feed these big demons of greed
and selfishness that that might be part.
Of it. Well said.
Yeah, it's all fits together, right?
It all fits together. It's very interesting.
You know what is perpetuating the same kind of energy in our
world? Well, maybe it is actual
sacrifice. Nobody looks at it that way.
It's not like at the temple in Jerusalem where they killed like
a million animals every day or some crazy thing.
I just learned that like, but not like that.
But for our health, I'm important.
This is exactly the enemy of the Dharma.
It is the exact wrong view. So here we are practicing and
we're thinking, oh, may all beings be saved.
And. And yeah, I want another piece
of that chicken. It's kind of nuts, you know,
it's sort of funny. And I'm a participant, you know,
it's I'm a participant too. It's not like we're saying we're
way better than yeah, it's not like that.
We're trying. We're seeing.
And so far it's paying out, it's paying off, it's cheaper, it's
easy, it tastes great, you feel good and it's good for
longevity. It has a lot of benefits.
Very interesting, you know, so we throw it out there around
this, you know, New Year because hey, everybody gets a chance.
We get a chance to improve ourselves.
And what is Buddhism accept about taking responsibility for
oneself. You know, that's the main thing.
So I thank you for listening. It's it's very interesting for
me. My mind's getting blown.
This is new to me too. Yeah, yeah, I think that
there's, there's so much value in just considering this.
And yeah, like one of my teachers took a Yeshi Rinpoche.
He told me, you know, if you're going to eat meat, only eat it
like once a day or once a week or so.
You know, there's all kinds of infinite ways that you can start
to move in this direction. And like even the word vegan I
kind of uncomfortable with because sometimes somebody gives
me a cookie and I just eat it because, you know, I don't know,
and they're giving me a cookie. So like vegans, the.
Ain't. Right.
Like I'm not going to like, no, there might be egg in that or
there might be, you know, so it's like there's no perfection.
Perfectionism, when we let that be the enemy of the good is a
big, big danger. It's just like point the boat in
the right direction, you know, just aim towards the least harm
possible. Of course, there's no
perfection. Of course, small animals get
killed in the production and agriculture.
All of this, yes, yes, yes, and yes.
But we're just going to aim the boat and do our best.
And, and to me, this is a worthwhile sacrifice that we can
make that really can help us on our path and really help the
world on so many levels. Climate change, all these
things, you know, there's there's massive number of
benefits. So just consider it just from
us, you know, we kind of reluctantly passed this on.
You know, I felt as weird about that word as you probably do.
You know, it's like, it's uncomfortable because we have
this idea of like kind of evangelistic vegans, right,
pouring blood on celebrities or whatever.
And so we're not doing that. We're just open the dialogue and
consider it and. Broaden your mind, right?
What does he say in the matrix? Expand your mind.
That's what the Buddha said. That's all we're saying here.
Yep, Yep. Just consider it, examine it and
don't and and expose yourself. This was big for me too.
Watch those videos you don't want to watch.
Yeah, like nobody wants to see that stuff.
But why not look? At it.
Yeah, yeah. But it sucks because, you know,
it's wrong. It's obvious.
It's. So it's illegal to post
slaughterhouse videos online. Illegal.
Why? Because it will hurt the meat
industry. That's very weird.
You know, isn't that being part of somebody else's plan in the
worst possible way? It's kind of weird, you know?
Totally. Well, thank you so much for
listening. I hope this inspires you.
Let us know in the comments if it has inspired you if you
decide to give it a try or or maybe just do it part of the
time or something like that, any of those things, put it in the
comments, let us know. We really appreciate it.
And as always, I appreciate you listening and liking or
subscribing or sharing this with your friends.
All those things. We really appreciate all of you.
It really helps this show keep going, inspire Joe and I to keep
doing it and come together for you.
So thank you so much and we'll see you next time.
Thank you.