HOW WE DESCRIBE ANIMALS (AND OURSELVES)

HOW WE DESCRIBE ANIMALS (AND OUR SELVES) “Animals are trained, humans taught. Animals have fur, humans hair. Animals operate by instinct, while people are moved by plans and ideas. A newborn baby is a cub, puppy, or calf while people come into the world as babies and are soon transformed into children. An animal might […]

BUDDHA’S ADVICE ON EXERCISE AND MINDFUL EATING

Buddha pointed out that there are several benefits of exercise including: fitness increased resistance to disease good digestion increased composure “Monks, there are these five benefits of walking up & down. What five? One is fit for long journeys; one is fit for striving; one has little disease; that which is eaten, drunk, chewed, tasted, […]

HITLER WAS NOT A VEGETARIAN

Some insist Hitler was a vegetarian probably trying to make vegetarians guilty by association, but the truth is that Hitler ate meat continually thought–out his life. Now forgive me for being pedantic but one is not a vegetarian if one eats meat. Eating meat or not eating meat is the very criteria of being a […]

FOOD AS POISON: BUDDHA’S BAD ADVICE

Buddha’s advice for monks to beg for food and to accept it all is poisoning many monks because Buddha either didn’t know or didn’t care that food could heal or poison (actually, I do not really think this practice really originated from the Buddha’s advice -see note one, below.) Eating alms food in imitation of […]

METAPHYSICS OF FOOD (BEYOND NUTRITION)

Food and metaphysics might seem worlds apart since food could easily be mistaken for being just nutrition, but food has both scientific and metaphysical aspects.  Food science covers the biological, social and cultural aspects of human life, and food metaphysics tries to answer what is food and it turns out it is far more than […]

WHAT IS THE PHILOSOPHY OF FOOD?

Philosophers and yogas of all traditions have had a philosophy of food. Plato famously details an appropriate diet in his work “Republic” (Book II.) Food production, consumption and food ethics were discussed by the Stoics, Locke, Rousseau, Voltaire, Marx, and Nietzsche, and others. In the twentieth century vegetarianism, agricultural ethics, food rights, biotechnology, and gustatory […]