last updated 1st January 2008

Kazakhstani online petition

Kazakhstani online petition

By Radha Mohan Dasa

Please visit http://www.krishnatemple.com NOW and click the link to the new petition, or go straight to the petition webpage:

http://harekrishna.epetitions.net

Please sign it soon as you can, and please tell as many people as you can about it.

Background: Workers and police arrived on 15th June at the village near Almaty, Kazakhstan, where the embattled Hare Krishna commune is based to demolish twelve more Hare Krishna-owned homes. “The houses were literally crushed into dust. By ten o’clock it was all over,” said ISKCON spokesperson Maksim Varfolomeyev.

The temple, which the devotees have been ordered to destroy, has not been touched but the devotees fear it could be the next target. Human rights activist Yevgeny Zhovtis is outraged at the continuing destruction. “The authorities are showing that they will do what they want, despite the international outrage at the earlier demolitions of Hare Krishna-owned homes.” He believes the local administration chief “doesn’t care about the political damage to Kazakhstan’s reputation – or to its desire to chair the OSCE.”

ys Radha Mohan das

November 11, 2007

On November 8, 2007, the Supervisory Panel of the Almaty Provincial Court cancelled its previous decision on the transfer of 116-acre Krishna Society farm to Mr. E. Abdykalykov. The court ruled that the land be again returned to the Kazakhstan Government.

This is the second time the court has returned the property to the government of Kazakhstan.

In April 2007, by decision of the provincial court, the property which was legally owned by the Krishna Society was transferred to the state land reserve. This decision was enacted without compensation to the Society.

On October 23, 2007 Abdykalykov presented an appeal to the provincial court to regain ownership of the property.

The panel of judges satisfied his appeal despite his right of appeal having expired twenty-two months earlier. When the land was returned to his ownership he appeared at the Krishna farm demanding the society vacate the territory within one week.

But, during the November 8th hearing, a joint protest of the decision was presented by the prosecutor of Almaty Province and supervisory appeal of the Hakimat (Governor) of  the Karasai District.

The protest was based on new evidence which stated that the disputed 116-acre property was offered, on a lease of five years, to an orphanage for a summer camp.

Abdykalykov was not present on the court hearing. The panel of judges ruled in favor of the government and transferred the land back to the land reserve of the Karasai district.

On November 10, 2007 Abdykalykov became aware of the decision. He explained that he had not been informed of the hearing and still considered himself to be the rightful owner of the property. Karasai District was represented by the Hakimat's hired advocate and Ryskul Zhunisbayeva, the Hakimat's expert on religious issues.

Ms. Zhunisbayeva was last seen leading a migration police raid at the Krishna farm in September. She has also presented inflammatory statements regarding the Krishna Society on the national television.

Her xenophobic attitude to the Krishna followers, and her presence at the hearing, only gave further evidence that the Krishna issue is not an economic dispute, as the government continues to advocate, but is motivated by bigotry against a religious minority.

The Prime Minister of Kazakhstan, Mr. Karim Masimov, has issued a directive to dismiss Karasai District Hakim BS Kutpanov on charges of corruption related to property deals. Kutpanov is the government official who illegally acted as the plaintiff in every case against the Krishna community.

"The Prime Minister ordered the dismissal of the official responsible for this tragedy, now the government must acknowledge that things have gone terribly wrong in the handling of the Krishna issue, and resolve it fairly with our community," said Shyama Gopal, Krishna spokesperson.  "For three years the government has procrastinated in fairly resolving the issue, now it is time to address it.

The land in question was properly purchased, privatized, and cultivated by the Krishna Society for eight years, and today provides food for the members, and also 30 dairy cows owned by the community.

On that property, forty Kazakh citizens still worship in their small temple, still cultivate the land, and still care for their cows. They do this despite the fact that the government has destroyed twenty-six of their homes and more than 500 members of the Krishna faith from Almaty city and province have been deprived of their place of worship.

"The Kazakh government's new claim that it plans to give children a summer camp for five years is just a smoke screen. After five years, who will camp on it next?" asked Shyama Gopal.

Read HERE how the original issue began in Kazakstan

Read HERE what the previous articles from November 2006 were

Iskcon Kazakstan
http://www.palaceofthesoul.com/news/index.php

PLEASE VISIT THIS PAGE
http://kazakhkrishna.com/en-main/

Kazakh
http://vedabase.net/kazakhstan/

Dear devotees of the Lord,

Please accept my humble obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupada.

The reason of this letter is to encourage you to help in any capacity the Moscow Temple in Russia. In September of 2007 the Moscow City Government donated five acres of land for devotees to build a temple for Lord Krishna. The catch is that they only have a certain amount of time to get started with the construction; otherwise, the government will take the land back.

See our APPEAL

I am very excited and happy to help the Moscow devotees with a humble donation to get this most valuable service to Srila Prabhupada done. I want to encourage you to do the same and spread the word to as many friends and family members as possible. I am sure that we will all benefit tremendously by helping make this happen for the pleasure of Srila Prabhupada and Lord Caitanya.

Please visit their website at http://www.MoscowTemple.org  and there, you will find more detailed information about this fantastic project. At the website you will find the donation page for you to help financially.

Thank you very much in advance for your enthusiasm and participation and spread the word!

Your humble servant,
Ekabhokta das
Alachua Krishna Community Member

Indo Asia News Service on 4 Dec 2007

MOSCOW: The Russian capital will soon have a second Krishna temple.

Sergei Zuyev, vice-president of the Centre of the Krishna Consciousness Societies in Russia, told a gathering of Russian Indologists on Thursday that the construction of the temple will start next year.

They were participating in a conference: "The Spiritual Problems of India: Antiquity and Modernity."

Once completed, the temple complex will have a spiritual centre, an Indian history museum, an Indo-Russian centre, art centre, a library and a vegetarian restaurant.

"We want to give as many Russians as possible access to the treasures of Indian culture, spirituality and philosophy," Zuyev said.

The International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) represents the Gaudiya Vaishnav trend in Russia, which took roots more than 20 years ago. It currently has 15,000 members, including Indian nationals living in the city.

The Vaishnav community has distributed 12 million books and 5 million free meals since its inception. It takes care of 7,500 Moscow pensioners and disabled people. The community intends to establish model farms in southern Russia that employ non-violent practices.

"We are already tilling land in five regions to show how to survive in the harsh Russian climate on a diet without meat and other products," Zuyev explained.

NEW DELHI, INDIA, December 20, 2007: The Akshardham temple in Delhi has made it to the Guinness Book of World Records for being the world's largest Hindu temple complex.

A senior official of the Guinness World Records Ltd travelled to India last week to present two world record certificates to the head of Swaminarayan Sansthan, Pramukh Swami Maharaj. Michael Witty, a senior member of the Guinness World Record Main Management Committee, presented the awards to Bochasanvasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sansthan (BAPS) under two categories: Most Hindu temples consecrated by a single person and secondly, the world's largest comprehensive Hindu temple.

"His Holiness Pramukh Swami Maharaj, internationally revered spiritual leader and head of BAPS Swaminarayan Sansthan, has created and consecrated in accordance with the Hindu rituals, a world record of 713 mandirs (temples) in five continents between April 1971 and November 2007," the Certificate said. "Amongst these, the majestic, ornately hand-carved BAPS Swaminarayan Akshardham in New Delhi, India, stands apart as the largest Hindu temple in the world," it added.

courtesy of Hinduism Today  http://www.hinduismtoday.com

CHENNAI, INDIA, December 28, 2007: Officials of the famous Meenakshi Temple in Madurai maintain that Delhi's Akshardham is smaller than at least three different temple complexes in Tamil Nadu.

"Madurai's Meenakshi Temple and the Arunachaleswarar Temple in Thiruvannamalai are definitely larger temple complexes," said B Raja, joint commissioner of the Meenakshi Temple. He pointed out that the outermost wall of the Meenakshi Temple is 260m long and 245m wide. The total area of the complex is 17 acres. This is larger than Akshardham which, press reports have indicated, is only 108m long and 96m wide, its grounds covering 2 acres.

When informed that the entire Akshardham complex was spread over 30 acres, Raja said, "A temple is a place for prayer. It is incorrect to include facilities for non-religious activities such as restaurants or boating arrangements as the Akshardham complex has, as part of a temple, just because they happen to be in the vicinity. " Raja also noted that the Thiruvannamalai Temple dedicated to Lord Siva is even larger -- at 25 acres -- than the Meenakshi Temple. "However, the built-up area in Madurai covers a wider area than Thiruvannamalai," he said. Also the main tower at Thiruvannamalai is 66m high.

But even these two temple complexes are dwarfed in size when one takes into account the massive Sri Ranganthaswamy Temple complex in Srirangam near Tiruchy. "Srirangam, surrounded by the waters of river Kaveri, is a 600-acre island-town enclosed within the seven walls of the gigantic Sri Ranganathaswami Temple. There are 21 gopurams, among which the Rajagopuram is the tallest in South India at 72 metres in height, and dates to the 17th century, although it was fully completed in 1987. The temple complex measures 950 meters by 816 meters (about 190 acres) along its outer perimeter," writes Prof VS Seshadri.

"We will not challenge any results, but we are curious to know if their officials visited our large temples like Srirangam, Madurai Meenakshi, Thiruvannamalai and Thiruvarur temples before arriving at this verdict," said a senior official of the Temple Administration Department.

For information on Angkor Wat, built as a Hindu temple around 1130 CE by King Suryavarman and listed by the Guiness Book as the "Largest Religious Structure in the World," click here http://www.travelstreet.info/cambodia-angkorwat.html

courtesy of Hinduism Today  http://www.hinduismtoday.com

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/20CBA8D6-5FF0-4FA2-A4CE-80F8A2AC4D7A.htm

NEPAL, Decemeber 28, 2007: Nepal's provisional parliament has approved a motion to abolish the monarchy and declare the Himalayan country a republic. More than two-thirds of parliament voted to amend the country's interim constitution. Friday's vote ensures the king will be removed immediately after constituent assembly elections scheduled for mid-April next year. The agreement ended months of political deadlock with Nepal's Maoist movement, who had insisted on an immediate abolition of the monarchy. The government had rejected their demands saying it was against an earlier agreement to let the elected assembly decide the fate of the king.

The provisional parliament voted for Nepal, once the world's only Hindu kingdom, to become a "federal democratic republican state". Officials said King Gyanendra would continue to live in the palace without any power until the elections.

The Maoists, who signed a peace deal with the government in 2 006 following a 10-year armed campaign, had quit the interim government in a move that delayed the assembly polls set for November and created a deadlock. Krishna Bahadur Mahara, the Maoist's leader, said: "That Nepal will become a federal democratic republic [and] will be written in the constitution is not an ordinary thing. "The implementation of the decision will take place gradually. It is okay." But Shrish Shumshere Rana, a member of King Gyanendra's government, formed after he adopted direct rule in 2005, said: "They are not allowing the people to raise voice in favour of the monarchy. It is a farce."

The new government has already stripped the monarch of almost all powers including his control over the army, replaced king's picture in some currency notes by that of Mount Everest and removed the king's portraits from public buildings.

courtesy of Hinduism Today  http://www.hinduismtoday.com

Nepalese monarchy voted out
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/20CBA8D6-5FF0-4FA2-A4CE-80F8A2AC4D7A.htm

Krishna Bhadur Mahara, the leader of Nepal's Maoists  said the transition to a republic will be gradual [EPA]

Nepal's provisional parliament has approved a motion to abolish the monarchy and declare the Himalayan country a republic.

More than two-thirds of parliament voted to amend the country's interim constitution, allowing the government to abolish the centuries-old monarchy, after Nepal's political parties agreed the move earlier in the week.

Friday's vote ensures the king will be removed immediately after constituent assembly elections scheduled for mid-April next year.

The agreement ended months of political deadlock with Nepal's Maoist movement, who had insisted on an immediate abolition of the monarchy.

The government had rejected their demands saying it was against an earlier agreement to let the elected assembly decide the fate of the king.

The provisional parliament voted for Nepal, once the world's only Hindu kingdom, to become a "federal democratic republican state".

Officials said King Gyanendra would continue to live in the palace without any power until the elections.

Maoist gain

The king's portrait has been replaced on bank notes [EPA]

The Maoists, who signed a peace deal with the government in 2006 following a 10-year armed campaign, had quit the interim government in a move that delayed the assembly polls set for November and indefinitely clouded the pact.

Krishna Bahadur Mahara, the Maoist's leader, said: "That Nepal will become a federal democratic republic [and] will be written in the constitution is not an ordinary thing.

"The implementation of the decision will take place gradually. It is okay."

But Shrish Shumshere Rana, a member of King Gyanendra's government, formed after he adopted direct rule in 2005, said: "They are not allowing the people to raise voice in favour of the monarchy. It is a farce."

Fading popularity

The monarch bowed to weeks of protests to end direct rule in 2006, and handed power back to political parties.

This prompted last year's landmark deal between the government and the Maoists who ended their decade-long conflict which caused more than 13,000 deaths.

The new government has already stripped the monarch of almost all powers including his control over the army, replaced king's picture in some currency notes by that of Mount Everest and removed the king's portraits from public buildings.

The responsibilities of the king, who is traditionally considered an incarnation of the Hindu god, Vishnu, have been transferred to Girija Prasad Koirala, the prime minister.

Thousands gathered for Bhutto's funeral amid growing violence across the country [Reuters]

The Pakistani government has said it has evidence al-Qaeda was responsible was for the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the former prime minister who was buried earlier on Friday.

Javed Cheema, an interior ministry spokesman, said security forces had intercepted a phone call from an al-Qaeda leader in Pakistan after Bhutto's death on Thursday.

"We have intelligence intercepts indicating that al Qaeda leader Baitullah Mehsud is behind her assassination," Cheema said.

Violence continued to grip Pakistan following Bhutto's funeral in the southern province of Sindh, with the death toll from disturbances across the country rising to 31.

Cheema also said Bhutto had died from injuries caused by hitting her head on her car's sunroof as she came under fire, rather than from gunshot wounds or shrapnel.

Benazir Bhutto has been killed in a suicide attack. What next for Pakistan?

Bhutto was reported to have been gunned down by an assassin who then blew himself up in an attack that killed a total of 16 people at the end of an election campaign rally in Rawalpindi on Thursday.

An aide to Benazir Bhutto also described the governments explanation as "a pack of lies."

"Two bullets hit her, one in the abdomen and one in the head,"  said Farooq Naik said, a senior official in her Pakistan People's Party.

"It is an irreparable loss and they are turning it into a joke with such claims. The country is heading towards civil war."

And Kamal Hyder, Al Jazeera's Pakistan correspondent, said people were asking why the car Bhutto was travelling in was not damaged by Thursday's attack.

In Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubpuNEUyj5s

Anger and grief in Pakistan

The life and times of Benazir

"A lot of people in Pakistan believe there may be some kind of conspiracy behind the assassination."

Questions have also been raised about why the scene of the attack that killed Bhutto was hosed down by the authorities soon after the blast, a move that may have destroyed valuable evidence.

Cheema also said was also behind a suicide attack on a Bhutto rally in October that left 140 dead.

Pakistani authorities say Mehsud is based in the tribal region of South Waziristan.

Grieving supporters

Hundreds of thousands of mourners gathered on Friday for the funeral in front of the mausoleum in Garhi Khuda Bakhsh, a village 5km from the Bhutto home in the small town of Naudero in Larkana district.

Bhutto talked to her supporters before
the fatal attack [AFP]

Bhutto, 54, had been hoping to lead the PPP to victory in the January 8 parliamentary election, having been prime minister twice before.

Supporters arrived by tractors, buses, cars and jeeps that were parked in dusty fields surrounding the mausoleum - a vast, marble structure.

Weeping in grief and chanting slogans against figures in the pro-government political party, they formed into hundreds of rows for the funeral prayers.

Asif Ali Zardari, Bhutto's husband, accompanied the closed coffin draped with the PPP's green, red and black tricolour as it began the 7km journey by ambulance.

Some protesters chanted defiance: "No matter how many Bhuttos you will kill, a Bhutto will emerge from each house."

Bhutto had returned to Pakistan from Dubai in October, ending more than eight years of self-imposed exile after reaching an understanding with Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistan president.

She survived a suicide-bomb attack during her homecoming procession in Karachi that left about 140 supporters dead.

Election fears

The are fears that the January 8 polls will not now go ahead after Nawaz Sharif, another opposition leader and former prime minister, said he would boycott the poll.

The PPP also said it would observe a 40-day period of mourning.

Ameen Jan, a Pakistani political analyst, told Al Jazeera that the PPP also needed to find a new leader to achieve its political goals.

"In terms of leadership contenders, there are several, including Makhdoom Amin Fahim, the vice-chairman, who, since yesterday,  became the person holding the reigns."

News Release

Click Here to view supporting materials including including a summary of Target’s PVC commitment, photos of PVC products and packaging at Target, and photos of protests at stores.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
CONTACT:
Valerie Holford, (301) 926-1298
Mike Schade, CHEJ, 212-964-3680

TARGET TO SYSTEMATICALLY REDUCE USE OF TOXIC PVC IN INFANT PRODUCTS, CHILDREN’S TOYS, SHOWER CURTAINS, PACKAGING

Target Joins Wave of Other Retailers & Companies Moving Away from PVC, a Major Source of Exposure to Lead, Phthalates and Dioxins

After a national campaign by the Center for Health, Environment and Justice (CHEJ) and a coalition of health and environmental organizations, Target has agreed to systematically reduce its use of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plastic, commonly known as vinyl.  The company is reducing PVC found in many of its owned brand products including infant products, children’s toys, shower curtains, packaging and fashion accessories.  PVC commonly contains toxic additives such as lead and phthalates and is often made in China.

Target, the fifth largest U.S. retailer with $59 billion in revenues a year, is joining a growing list of dozens of companies including Wal-Mart, Microsoft, Johnson & Johnson, Nike, and Apple that are eliminating or reducing its PVC products and packaging. Wal-Mart just reached its two-year deadline to eliminate PVC from the packaging of its private brand products.

Recent reports indicate that the world stock of PVC in use contains 3.2 million tons of lead. Previous testing has detected lead in a broad range of PVC consumer products including toys, lunchboxes, baby bibs, jewelry, garden hoses, mini blinds, Christmas trees, and electronics.  In September, Clean Water Action Alliance of Massachusetts tested over 50 toys and found that one in five was contaminated with lead. Ten of the 11 leaded toys were made out of vinyl.  Wal-Mart has recalled PVC baby bibs and lunchboxes containing lead, and more recently Toys R Us recalled PVC baby bibs containing lead.

Over ninety percent of phthalates, reproductive toxicants commonly found in children’s toys, are used in the manufacture of PVC.  Last month California joined the European Union and fourteen countries in banning the use of phthalates in children’s and infant’s products. Legislation to establish a national ban in the U.S. was just introduced in Congress and six other states including NY introduced similar bills over the past year.
Target has told CHEJ it is committed to systematically reducing PVC beginning with their owned brands. In addition to addressing their owned brands, they are collaborating with a variety of vendors and will also work with other suppliers whose products are sold at Target.  The company is taking the following steps in their owned brands:
Eliminating PVC from a number of infant products and toys.   Target children’s eating utensils and lunchboxes are now PVC-free.  Target baby bibs will be PVC-free by January 2008. The company is phasing out phthalates in most of their toys by Fall 2008.  They are also eliminating phthalates in baby changing tables by January 2008.
Replacing many PVC/Vinyl shower curtains with a safer PVC-free plastic, ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA). Target expects 88% of its shower curtains to be PVC free by this coming spring. Researchers at the EPA have reported that a new vinyl shower curtain, “can cause elevated indoor air toxics concentrations…for more than a month.” Customers have repeatedly complained on Target’s website about strong chemical odors being released from vinyl shower curtains purchased at Target.
Target will be 96% PVC-free in their placemat and table linen categories by Spring 2008.
Target soft-sided coolers are now PVC-free.
Reducing PVC in packaging. Target is reducing PVC packaging in the company’s Target brand dinnerware, travel accessories, toys and sporting goods. For food packaging, Target has a requirement in place to avoid the use of PVC when possible.  In the media category (clamshells/blisters in electronics), Target is replacing the PVC clamshell with a modified paperboard/plastic packaging. For instance, iPod carrying cases sold at Target are being packaged in PVC-free packaging.  The company is also asking their vendors to reduce the amount of packaging on their products and use materials that are easily recyclable.
Target has engaged their merchandiser buyers through the development and distribution of a new Sustainable Products Guide, which includes a specific section on issues surrounding PVC.

“Since millions of toxic toys were recalled, parents are now looking for safer products for their children. Companies should ensure that customers are not rolling the dice with their families’ health in the check out aisle. Target is doing the right thing by moving away from PVC and switching to safer alternatives,” said Lois Gibbs, Executive Director of the Center for Health, Environment and Justice. Gibbs founded CHEJ after winning the nation’s first community relocation of 900 families due to a leaking toxic waste dump in Love Canal, New York.

Over the course of the campaign, CHEJ and partner organizations held over 230 press conferences, protests, and flyering events at Target stores across the country. Two events featured a 25-foot rubber ducky outside stores in CA and NY. CHEJ’s online humorous animated video “Sam Suds” was seen over 50,000 times in the first month it was released.

On the day of Target’s 2007 annual shareholder meeting, CHEJ ran an advertisement in USA Today calling on the company to “stop ducking the truth about the dangers of PVC” and organized a protest with Ohio Citizen Action outside of Target’s shareholder meeting in Cleveland. Representatives of CHEJ, the Sierra Club, and Ohio Citizen Action attended the shareholder meeting, addressing the CEO and senior executives during the Q&A session. Petitions signed by over 10,000 Target customers were delivered to the CEO inside. To date, Target has been contacted by over 40,000 customers and concerned individuals about PVC.
Target’s mainstream investors have also expressed their concerns about PVC. A coalition of 16 institutional investors, coordinated by the As You Sow Foundation, sent Target a letter about the legal, financial, and reputational risks associated with their sale of PVC products and packaging. “We congratulate Target for taking these important steps in reducing the use of PVC”, said Michael Passoff, associate director of As You Sow. “These efforts will help protect both consumer health and shareholder value.”

Among the health effects of phthalates, found in many PVC products, are premature birth delivery, early puberty in girls, impaired sperm quality and sperm damage in men, genital defects and reduced testosterone production in boys.

“Study after study have found that chemicals in vinyl can cause health problems in children and adults," said Dr. Peter Orris, Professor and Chief of Service at the University of Illinois Medical Center Chicago. "While using PVC products, people may be exposed toxic additives like phthalates and lead and when incinerated, PVC is a major contributor to dioxin.”

The hazards of PVC are not limited to its use by consumers: it creates toxic pollution during its manufacture, harming workers and community members near PVC plants such as in Mossville, Louisiana.  When thrown away, toxic additives like lead and phthalates can leach into the ground and nearby drinking water sources. When burned in incinerators, PVC produces dioxins and furans, chemicals that can cause cancer and are considered to be among the most toxic environmental contaminants known to man.  PVC packaging can not be effectively recycled, and can contaminate an entire batch of 100,000 recyclable bottles.

In October 2005, Wal-Mart announced plans to phase out PVC packaging in its private brands by October 2007. Wal-Mart also stopped selling PVC lunch boxes and baby bibs over concerns that those products may contain lead. The company also supports an industry-wide standard to remove PVC from all products intended for kids, and is exploring PVC free materials for its buildings. Wal-Mart stated in a 2007 press kit that, “more and more studies show that PVC has toxins that can pose long-term health and environmental risks.”

Target Corporation has approximately 1,500 stores in 47 states.

###

The Center for Health, Environment and Justice (CHEJ) is a national nonprofit organization that provides organizing and technical assistance to grassroots community organizations nationwide. CHEJ was founded in 1981 by grassroots leader Lois Gibbs and was instrumental in establishing some of the first national policies critical to protecting community health, such as the Superfund Program and Right-to-Know. CHEJ’s PVC Consumer Campaign works with grassroots community, regional, statewide, and national environmental health and justice organizations from around the United States. The campaign is focused on preventing harm by shifting decision makers from producing, using and disposing of PVC consumer products and packaging and substituting it with materials that are safe for workers, communities, children and adults.

ATTENTION REPORTERS: Click Here to view supporting materials including a summary of Target’s PVC commitment, photos of PVC products and packaging at Target, and photos of protests at stores.

READ MORE on Environmental Issues HERE

Kurma Rupa das ACBSP (Vrindavan - IN): Dear Friends,

Jai Sri Gopal!

The Care for Cows facility at Raman Reti has welcomed many of you during the last few years. Those who have come to meet the residents to whom the facility is now home, know full well that a visit to CFC is an unforgettable experience. Often it is a long anticipated moment when Sponsors get to personally meet their chosen cow for the first time or a chance for long term Sponsors to reunite with their cows. CFC has offered new guests a glimpse of the plight and suffering of Vrindavan’s abandoned cows and helped them face up to the harsh reality of life for those left on the streets to fend for themselves or left for dead at the roadside, after an accident, in the Holy Dham.

The CFC facility not only provides for the needs of the cows, it is a meeting place centred on go-seva, for all who find their way here. A place, where personal interaction connects people with sacred Vrindavan cows. It is a spiritually enlightening experience that draws on the realization of how Lord Krishna spends His days - blissfully, in the company of cows.

The Care for Cows Clinic is hosted on a friend’s land in Raman Reti and we plan to purchase it to insure stability and make further improvements. The half-acre is valued at Rs. 2 crore or US $500,000.

The purchase of the land must be completed by Gaura Purnima, March 21, 2008, if we are to secure the future of CFC at this site. You will undoubtedly understand that the purchase of this land is absolutely crucial to ensure the continuity of the CFC project and the welfare of the cows who are cared for here.

Today the CFC herd numbers over 230 cows, bulls, oxen and calves. Many of whom have been treated through the CFC Clinic, made a full recovery, and will now remain under CFC’s lifetime protection. The present site, from where we run the CFC Clinic, provides accommodation for around 40 orphaned calves and 60 injured, sick and disabled cows who require ongoing medical care or special assistance; many are elderly, infirm and weak.

Raman Reti is an easily accessible location in close proximity to the Doctors and Carers, who need to attend to patients in emergencies, or be on-call, around the clock, throughout the year. It is also a site close to town for immediate access to emergency cases, and for injured and sick street cows to be transported by local means.

With your help and support, CFC has been able to develop into a worldrenowned go-sadan, extending services to the local community by providing free medical care for Outpatient cows. It has also established the only Laboratory in Vrindavan offering veterinary screening to the public, free of charge. From its humble beginnings, eight years ago, with minimal funding, it now provides food, shelter, and medical care and lifetime accommodation for abandoned cows, bulls, retired oxen and orphaned calves arriving from Vrindavan, Govardhan, Varshana and Mathura.

A Team of Volunteers who offer their talents and resources to respectfully care for the neglected cows in the Vraja Vrindavan area, Uttar Pradesh, India, runs CFC. In this year alone, CFC has provided lifetime accommodation for over 100 abandoned, injured and needy cows. The present location affords easy, safe access for Sponsors and visitors alike. CFC is a short walk or rickshaw ride from the ISKCON Temple. It is conveniently located, offering itself as a ’showpiece’ for the CFC project, which is readily accessible to prospective Donors. CFC funding relies heavily on donations in order to keep running and for this reason, its current location ensures that visitors to Vrindavan are afforded every opportunity of being aware of its existence, in that it is situated on a wellused path.

Earlier this year, as the ever-increasing herd outgrew the Raman Reti facility, a number of the healthy cows and oxen were transferred to a rented goshala at Belvan, across the Yamuna River. That facility is now full. As well as the anticipated purchase of the Raman Reti facility, CFC has also entered into negotiations for purchasing cheaper acreage plots across the Yamuna River. As these plots are in a more remote and less accessible location, they are unsuitable for use as the CFC Clinic or for regular visitors.

The goal of the purchase of this land is to secure the future for our growing number of healthy herd members. The CFC Clinic will continue to function and provide a home to the disabled and needy cows. For those of you who have been supporting CFC over the years, we wish to thank you, extend the blessing of the many cows you are helping in Vrindavan, and call upon your support once again. We are asking you to help us by giving a tax-deductible donation for the CFC Clinic Land Purchase. We work very hard to provide a much needed service for Vrindavan’s abandoned, injured and sick cows each year. This work must continue to help Krsna’s cows. We hope we can count on you all to make a generous donation of $100 or more.

If $100 is beyond your means, please do not hesitate to contribute whatever you are able, as it will be most gratefully received. If you require additional information about Care for Cows, do not hesitate to contact us. We will be happy to answer any questions you may have. Visit www. careforcows. org online or contact us directly by phone 0983 7090 024. Email kurmarupa@careforcows.org. Donate online via Pay Pal or credit card. If you are sending your donation in the form of a cheque, please make it payable to “Care for Cows”. On behalf of Vrindavan’s cows we thank you for your continued support and for your consideration.

In the service of Sri Krsna’s cows, Kurma Rupa Dasa Care for Cows in Vrindavan

View related sites for Care for Cows in Vrindavan

Meetings

I'm writing at the end of a long day. I arrived at the temple for the 7.00 am darshan this morning, and immediately went to work completing the final details of a Powerpoint presentation on "2008: The Year of the Congregation." Next year is thus designated so that we'll all put more effort into developing strategies for 'Learning, Guidance and Organisation' for our growing congregation in London and the South.

The senior managers of the temple took everything needed for long-term growth in this important area and formed a strategic planning document for it. Well, at least we completed the Vision, Mission Statements and the Key Result Areas. Our KRAs came to eight in number, so we labelled that the 'eight petals' of our lotus and head-hunted qualified devotees for those areas.

Included in this online-book:
Devotees deceived, then cow secretly killed on Krishna temple farm http://namahatta.org/en/node/6030
Cow Killed at Hare Krishna Temple: Day One  http://namahatta.org/en/node/6058
The Madness of Modern Morality  http://namahatta.org/en/node/6062
Day Two  http://namahatta.org/en/node/6065
Day Three  http://namahatta.org/en/node/6070
Day Four: Hindu Leaders Plan the Next Move  http://namahatta.org/en/node/6074
Everything on one page http://namahatta.org/en/book/export/html/6030
General Content

His Grace Sarvabhauma Prabhu just returned from a very successful preaching tour of Pakistan. Usually we can’t really report about this type of preaching, but due to the nature of this tour, it was already highly publicized in the media and the authorities in Pakistan were also closely monitoring, so it is no secret.

By Deena Bandhu dasa ACBSP (Vrindavan - IN)

Previously when Sarvabhauma was living in Pakistan, he was regularly invited along with all the ISKCON devotees to preach at the ashram of one famous saint. Now that saint is no more, but his son Sant Yudhisthir Lal left Pakistan and established an ashram in Raipur, India. He has also continued to invite Sarvabhauma and the devotees to come and explain Bhagavad Gita to his congregation. This relationship has been going on for about 25 years.

Sant Yudhisthir Lal was taking a pilgrimage to Pakistan for the opening of the first Krishna Temple in Pakistan since Partition. So he invited Sarvabhauma to join with them for their Shadani Tirtha Yatra in Scinda, especially for this historic temple opening in Ghotki, in the province of Scinda. There were 74 pilgrims headed by the Sant and they left by train on the 22nd of October. They were travelling under a special Pilgrimage Protocol agreement between India and Pakistan.

At the Wagha Border they were received by Government officials from the Evacu Trust Board, a body in Pakistan that oversees all Hindu Temples, headed by Saheed Ragab Ali. All the media were present along with hundreds of hindu devotees. They garlanded the Sant and Sarvabhauma and the media persons interviewed them. Prasad was then taken by all the pilgrims in a pandal arranged at the train platform itself.

Without any of the ordinary customs and immigration botherations they boarded the train for Lahore and reached on Ekadasi evening. They had satsang in the Gurudwara in Lahore where ekadasi prasada was also distributed.

Early morning they boarded a train reaching in the evening for a 3 day program at the Shadani Darbar and there was a huge pandal with 3-4 thousand people were attending. There every night Sarvabhauma spoke on the Bhagavad Gita and many of our ISKCON devotees from the nearby town of Larkhana did kirtan. And all appreciated Sarvabhuama’s lecture and they enthusiastically took part in the kirtan.

Then traveling in several vehicles, they visited three different towns having programs along the way with thousands of people receiving them and taking part in the kirtans. For our security and for their inteligence the government had hundreds of agents making videos and taking pictures of every thing they did. Even many of these agents told Sarvabhuama that they appreciated things that he said. In this was our preaching was going beyond just the people and places where we were, but going to all the different government officers and they were having to hear our preaching.

Reaching Ghotki, the site of the temple, they found people from 40 towns in Scinda gathered together along with many important saints to witness the establishment of the first Krishna Temple to be built in Pakistan after Partition.

In his address, Sarvabhauma explained that the establishing a temple is like making a hospital for treating the perverted consciousness of the individuals to bring it to Krishna Consciousness. This temple is the embasssy of the Spiritual World. It is not surprising that every town and village includes Pakistan also, and Mahaprabhu’s mercy is manifesting here, only time was separating. Everyone is saying that this is a very unique event that no one has seen in his life, as many muslims had also come for this event, so the conclusion is that Krishna is the uniting force to bring us all together.

Next morning they reached a small island in the River Indus (Sindhu) where there was an ashram called Sadhu Bela. After 25 years he saw much development there and there was a beautiful of diorama of Radha Krishna’s Jhulan Yatra.

He was sitting in the program held there with the head of the Evacu Board Retired General Zulifqar. He’s originally born in Rohtak in Haryana, but moved to Pakistan at Partition. He was very excited when Sarvabhauma said that he had just been doing preaching programs in Rohtak the week before the pilgrimage. The General asked, “Ganga and Yamuna are sacred rivers for the Hindus, what about the Sindhu?” Then Sarvabhuama chanted the mantra where it mentions Sindhu and he was delighted to know that.

Since these programs were being broadcast on TV, radio, and in the newspapers, old friends watching the programs began to call Sarvabhauma to have programs in their homes and temples in Karachi like the year before. Last year he did 18 days program of one chapter of Bhagavad Gita a day and last a day huge pandal where 3,000 people attended. This was in the posh Clifton area of Karachi, so it was attended by the high class Hindu industrialists and professionals. They had been very impressed that no one had ever explained Bhagavad Gita so clearly the way Sarvabhauma was doing from the Bhagavad Gita As It Is of Srila Prabhupada. Our devotees did kirtan and this was a great opportunity for them as mostly the ISKCON devotees are from the working class and this gave them access to very nice people.

He told them his special pilgrimage visa was up in a few days, but since they are very influential people within a day, they got it extended upto four months! This was practically impossible to do. At the train station when Sarvabhauma was seeing off the Sant and his devotees, two agents approached him and wanted to know why he wasn’t on the train. They had been observing the whole pilgrimage from the beginning so they recognized him. He informed they that he had gotten an extension. They said they would come to the house where he was staying to check out his papers the next day.

When they arrived, they apologized to him and said, that they had orders for him to immediately proceed to Lahore where he would be sent across the border by foot. But then they examined all his papers and saw that he indeed had an extension. Then they said that they really appreciated his talks as they had been assigned to watch the pilgrimage. They couldn’t believe how the programs would go up to 2 AM almost every day. They themselves couldn’t keep up with the schedule. They took photo copies of his papers and sent them off to Lahore. They next day emergency was declared so everyone forgot about him as they had more important problems to deal with.

Four days program on Bhagavatam was held in different houses in Karachi and then on 5th day there was a huge pandal at Kunja Bihari Temple, the largest temple in Karachi. Later he travelled and did programs with the devotees in Hyderbad, Mirpurkas, Shukkar, Mithi (BP), Panoquil, Mirpurmatelo, and his hometown of Rohri. People were very anxious for Krishna Conscious preaching there. Sarvabhauma told me that throughout the entire pilgrimage he wore only devotional dress and there was absolutely no inconvenience.

Anyone interested in preaching there should contact Giriraja Maharja or Gopal Krishna Maharaja.

Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu ki Jaya! Srila Prabhupada ki Jaya! Pakistan Preaching ki Jaya!

In service of Srimati Vrinda Devi, Deena Bandhu dasa

Brisbane Hare Krishna community members chant outside King George Square, in Brisbane's CBD.

Brisbane's Hare Krishna Community is doing their part for the city's ongoing water shortage, taking to the streets of the city's suburbs to chant and dance to bring rain.

Australia is currently in the most severe drought in recorded history, with various levels of water restrictions in major cities and a deepening crisis in rural areas.

Hare Krishnas belong to ISKCON, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. ISKCON was incorporated in the West in 1966 by an elderly Indian monk, His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. He had been ordered by his spiritual teacher to share India's 5000-year old teachings of devotion to God, known as Krishna, with the modern world. Today the organization has hundreds of centers around the world and tens of thousands of members.

Brisbane's Hare Krishna community have been chanting on the streets of downtown Brisbane for the past 25 years on Friday evenings, and since October they have expanded this program to visit different suburbs in Brisbane each week. Their goal is to visit each suburb of the city by the end of 2008. So far they have visited West End, Fortitude Valley, Annerley, and Stones Corner. As they chant they distribute their pamphlet: "You Can Make the Climate Change" where they explain what they are doing and invite Brisbane residents to get involved.

According to Brisbane Hare Krishna spokesperson Sita-pati das, rain and other natural resources are ultimately controlled by Krishna:

"In Bhagavad-gita Krishna explains that He controls the material nature. He also explains that our food grows because of rain, and He sends rain when people are engaged in proper activities, which includes spiritual activities, which are the unique activity that separates humans beings from animals."

"Because we have turned away from spiritual practices, today we have a fever that drives us to need more and more. A person from 100, or even 20 years ago would be shocked at what we now consider 'necessities' of life. Instead of spiritual activity we try to fill our life with material objects, and like a person who eats junk food we need more and more and yet never feel satisfied."

"This misuse of our life leads to overuse of resources, and so the planet has a fever as a result. To bring the fever of the planet down, we need to bring our own fever down. The cure for the fever is given in the scriptures as the chanting of the Holy Names of the Lord"

"Not only our scriptures, but the scriptures of all the major religions of the world recommend the congregational chanting and glorification of the Holy Names of the Lord as the best spiritual activity. We encourage adherents of all faiths to come together to glorify the Holy Names of the Lord to provoke a change in consciousness, which will lead to a change in the climate."

"We personally chant the maha-mantra, which is especially recommended as the cure for this age:

Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare
Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare"

"The state of the external environment is a reflection of our internal state of consciousness. We cannot expect a change to occur in the world around us while we remain the same, because we are the cause of our circumstances. So as we purify and rectify ourselves, the climate situation will also rectify."

"We've found a very positive response so far. Many people have come up to us to say: 'Where have you guys been?' People who don't have a reason to come downtown on Friday night have really missed us and are glad to see us again. We're definitely part of the city's culture, and we have a positive spiritual message to share too."

Sita-pati das is covering the ongoing visits to the suburbs at his website: http://www.atmayogi.com

They are also holding a music concert at Yoga on Parker in Newmarket entitled "Climate Change - Consciousness Change" to raise awareness of the role that our consciousness plays in climate change and what we can do about it.

Read more on Chanting Hare Krishna HERE:

By Sri Dharma Pravartaka Acharya (Dr. Frank Morales)

I've often been asked about what evidence there is for the process of reincarnation.  To answer this question properly, it depends on what someone means by the term "evidence".  Since reincarnation is a metaphysical reality (meta = "beyond"; physical = "material"), and not a material one, it doesn't stand to reason that there can really be scientific "evidence" per se.  A non-material, metaphysical reality simply cannot be grasped by merely material physical means.

That doesn't mean, though, that reincarnation can't be proven.  After all, we can know that many other non-material things exist that cannot be proven scientifically or empirically.  For example, we all know that we have minds€ ¦’¥yet no one can really see a mind.  We can't examine a mind in a microscope, nor can we put a mind in a test-tube.  The proof for your mind's existence is that we can infer that you have a mind because you act intelligently: you display the attributes and actions of one who has a mind.  In the same way, reincarnation cannot be proven through scientific experimentation€ ¦’¥but it can be proven through inference and logic.

One of the most powerful arguments for upholding the fact of reincarnation is that, without the existence of reincarnation and karma (reincarnation and karma are inseparable; you can't have one without the other), the existence of human suffering has no explanation and no coherent meaning.  Logically speaking, we can only explain the meaning of suffering in the world by inferring the fact of reincarnation and karma.

If each of us merely pops into existence at the moment of conception, and did not have a pre-existence previous to the creation of this body, then how do we explain the fact that some people are born with terrible birth defects (blindness, lacking a limb, etc.), and others are not?  How can a merciful and loving God allow some babies to be born fine and healthy, and others to be born in a terrible state of pain and suffering?  Simply claiming that such instances are merely "divine mysteries" is just avoiding the question.  The only explanation for suffering that does not make God seem either unjust or impotent is the concept of reincarnation/karma.

More, we also see that people are all born with very different capacities, talents, attributes, and personalities.  As much as we want to pretend that all human beings are born as complete tabula rasas, or blank slates, the truth is that none of us are born with equal intrinsic faculties.  Some people are born with more of an inherent talent to be creative and artistic than others.  Some are born more cerebral and intelligent than others.  Some are born 7 feet tall and can become famous basketball players, while some are 5 feet tall, and cannot.  Again, the only logical explanation for why a just and merciful God would allow people to be born with such diverse and unequal qualities is reincarnation and karma.

The concept of reincarnation and karma is a principle of both universal justice and radical freedom of the individual to create his/her own destiny.  This concept teaches us that with every thought, action and word containing ethical-content that we engage in, we are freely creating who we are € ¦’¶ and who we will be in the future.  When we perform actions that are of an ethically positive and good nature, we are directly affecting our own consciousness in such a way as to purify and ennoble who we are.  Conversely, when we perform actions that arise from selfishness, egotism, and negativity, we are ensuring that our future only holds darkness and sorrow.

So, the concept of reincarnation and karma, ultimately, is a positive and hopeful concept of radical freedom, in which each and every one of us has the ability, moment to moment, to freely create both ourselves and our destinies.  With every decision we make today, we are creating our own futures, our own destinies, and our own future lives.  Such is the grace and love of God that He gives us the complete freedom either to choose to know Him, or to flee from His face.  The choice to do one or the other is ours, and ours alone.

Read more on Reincarnation HERE:

If most of the people agree with you, you're probably wrong.

He who follows the crowd gets lost.

...detachment from the general mass of people; accepting the importance of self-realization; and philosophical search for the Absolute Truth -- all these I declare to be knowledge, and besides this whatever there may be is ignorance.

- Bhagavad-gita 13.12
"Crowds go wrong when diversity really breaks down," Surowiecki says. Lack of diversity, Surowiecki explains occurs when independent thought within the crowd ceases. He adds that, "crowds also break down when people start paying too much attention to what those around them are doing."

- The Crowd Knows Best -
Statistics Show Accurate Advice And Solid Solutions Hail From The Masses (CBS News)
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/01/08/sunday/main1185604_page2.shtml

Dear Members, (of Vedic culture list)

A certain Sannyasin (renunciate) friend of mine narrated to me a very interesting story. This Swamiji, before he retired from service and took Sannyasa, was known as Mr. Rao and was in the army where his job was to train typists. This was in the pre-Independence days when India was ruled by the British. One of the students in Mr. Rao's class was a young Englishman named Thomas who continued to type badly despite all possible coaching. One day Mr. Rao got tired of him and asked him a straight question: "Mr. Thomas! You have been in my class for so long. And I have also tried to help you out as much as I could. Please tell me, how is it you still continue to make the same old mistakes?". To that Mr. Thomas answered: “Mr. Rao, the first mistake I made was to be born in this world. All other mistakes followed in natural sequence".

I shall never forget that incisive remark of Thomas as faithfully recapitulated to me by my dear Swamiji friend. Our plight in the world is because we are born into it. What is this world, after all? just a trap set by Maya to capture the Jivas (individual souls) in its net and keep them away from God. So, being born into this world means the same thing as being caught in Maya's trap.

And for a trapped person, can there be any happiness? In a remarkable sentence, so reminiscent of the Gita description of worldly life, Thomas Hardy describes life in this world. Says the great English novelist, "Life is an onion. Weep as you peel it". How true! From birth to death, it is struggle, struggle, and struggle all along. For some in this world, it is a struggle for very existence. For others, it is a struggle for money or a woman or a position. Some exercise to reduce weight, others strive to put it on. Some spend ten years and twenty years running from pillar to post pining for a child. Others weep unable to support their children. People are distracted all the time. To a wise man, this whole world presents the spectacle of a lunatic asylum, where all men are in a very real sense, psychiatric cases. The vision of no man is perfect. The only exceptions are the God-realized sages whose wisdom is absolute.

Among this suffering, distracted humanity, there are people whose pride will not let them admit that they are suffering. It is difficult to deal with this lot.

There is a second group of people whose members believe that their suffering can be mitigated or removed, not by spiritual solutions, but by worldly solutions. There are two categories in this second group. In the first category, are the hungry millions of this world? They want food for their hunger, a job for their unemployment, a house for their shelter less existence. They are not interested (in their state, they cannot be interested) in the religious preacher who promises them a golden future by declaring, "You'll have pie, by and by, when you die". The starving masses want food to live, not food after they die. And they are right. Religion cannot be fed to hungry stomachs.

In the second category of the second group are the rich materialists who, despite all their wealth and women and power and position, have their own "rich man's problems and diseases", but who, in their ignorance, are unwilling to admit religion and spirituality as a way out for their vexations. They are the people who are neck-deep in the worldly mire and only time and repeated suffering can open their eye of wisdom.

The third or the last group of people are those who are above physical want, and besides, are convinced that a lasting solution to all their problems can be found only through spiritual endeavor. They have seen enough of worldly life to realize that worldly solutions are but piecemeal solutions and cannot solve all problems that vex the human mind and for all time. They understand that there is no end to problems in this world, and that these problems change color and complexion like the proverbial chameleon. These are the people who have tried all the tricks in their bag to secure unalloyed happiness in this world and ultimately failed. They have come to realize the deceptive attractiveness of the worldly objects. They have experimented and found for themselves that a change of place or circumstance or environment in this world does not produce a lasting change for the better, but only resembles a change from the frying pan to the fire. Every thing and every place is fraught with misery. Every worldly experience is conditioned by suffering and exertion. It is for these people who have realized the futility of worldly exertion, who, have understood the real nature of the world as a school of suffering, that sadhana (spiritual practice) is prescribed, that spiritual life is advocated. These are the people who are qualified to become students of the school of spirituality. They are the Sadhaks or the spiritual seekers or the spiritual aspirants proper.

A spiritual aspirant is one who feels himself in a state of bondage. He experiences a sense of suffocation, of stiffing, of impatience with Samsara (worldly life), a feeling of “I am fed up". Generally, a person who says "I am fed up with life" or "I can't cope up" does not feel fed up with everything. What he feels fed up with are certain bad situations in which he may be placed in life; his mind is full of desires and he would like to enjoy all the world if he can. That is not enough for a spiritual aspirant. He must get fed up with everything in Samsara.

A true Sadhak is thus one who tries to free himself from worldly bondage. He exerts to detach himself from the world and attach himself to God or the Spirit. He constantly struggles to undo the "first mistake". He wants to become Spirit-bound. Whereas, a worldly man is one who is still mind-bound, sense-bound, world-bound. That is the essential difference between a Sadhak and a worldly person.

In these days of materialism when selfishness has became the fashion of the day, when the go-getter who is willing to sacrifice others' interests to serve his own is considered the model to copy, when every person and thing and circumstance is looked at and weighed in the mental balance to judge its utility to serve one's own ends and purposes is prone to look at God and saints also as multipurpose tools. What is God’s utility to me? How can the saint help me? That is the question. Can your God help me to achieve my desires? Can your saint help me to fulfill my ambitions? If so, hats off to your God and to your saint. Otherwise, I want neither your God nor your saint. That is the attitude of many people.

What is the utilitarian value of God? Can He help me to pass my examination with distinction? Can He help me to win my court-case over the disputed land? Can He bless me with a son? Can He cure my disease declared incurable by the doctors? Can He destroy my enemies? "My bank wants me to go on a transfer to Bombay . I like, Delhi and want to stay here itself." Cannot your God fulfill this small desire of mine? Cannot your saint's blessings bring this about? These and a myriad other selfish expectations are sought to be realized by people through resort to God and saints.

God will be no God if He does not answer the sincere prayers of devotees. So He blesses people with the fulfillment of their desires. He answers their prayers provided they pray with sincerity and faith. People who say that their prayers are not answered are people who do not have much of a faith in God and who pray just like that on the off chance that He might after all help. By and large, the majority of devotees belong to this category only. They pray with a selfish motive. Materialism is their creed. Worldly success is their goal. They are not interested in the theory of rebirth or in the other world or in spiritual salvation. To the extent that God can help them in their material ambitious, well and good. These are the people who, when they get into trouble, when they are faced with difficulties which they find themselves unable to tackle with their own wit, turn to God out of sheer despair and helplessness. These are the people who, though not normally given to visiting temples and doing worship, will one day suddenly clean the Puja room and light lamps and buy flower-garlands to decorate the Deity. Once their prayers are answered, the lights in the Puja room will go out, and in the place of flower-garlands, cobwebs will gather. God will then go out of their mind. Like putting a car back in the garage after use, they relegate God to the background once He has done His work for them and they need Him no more.

But then, in matters like this, there can be no generalization. There are people who develop a real and lasting faith in God after once experiencing his saving grace in a time of crisis. The crisis in personal life and consequent helplessness turn their mind, for the first time maybe, towards God and religion, and once they experience God's grace their initial half- hearted approach to God turns into living faith.

People who turn to God and spirituality for the sake of God and spirituality form or constitute a microscopic minority among devotees. But they are there. They have seen the world, understood the utter worthlessness of life on the earth-plane, realized its transience, realized its miseries and want to get out of it all. They have heard it said that abiding peace can be had only in God and they desire to know how to reach Him. They are the spiritual seekers proper. They seek the Spirit. The attraction for matter, for the world, has died in their mind, albeit temporarily.

Regards

Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare
Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare

------------------------------------------------------
If you have any questions or doubts concerning Spirituality, Mental peace or problems in life or about dharma, please write to us by clicking here:
http://www.namadwaar.org/answers/askquestion.php

His Holiness Sri Sri Swamiji personally answers these questions for you and suggests prayers.

[Excerpt from Robert Alun Jones. Emile Durkheim: An Introduction to Four Major Works. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, Inc., 1986. Pp. 82-114.]
http://www.relst.uiuc.edu/durkheim/Summaries/suicide.html

Outline of Topics
What is Suicide?
Extra-social Causes
Social Causes and Social Types
Egoistic Suicide
Altruistic Suicide
Anomic Suicide
Suicide as a Social Phenomenon
Critical Remarks
What is Suicide?

Explanation requires comparison; comparison requires classification; classification requires the definition of those facts to be classified, compared, and ultimately explained. Consistent with The Rules of Sociological Method, therefore, Durkheim began his 1897 work with a warning against notiones vulgares, together with an insistence that

our first task... must be to determine the order of facts to be studied under the name of suicide... we must inquire whether, among the different varieties of death, some have common qualities objective enough to be recognized by all honest observers, specific enough not to be found elsewhere and also sufficiently kin to those commonly called suicides for us to retain the same term without breaking with common usage.1

Durkheim's initial effort at such a definition indeed followed common usage, according to which a "suicide" is any death which is the immediate or eventual result of a positive (e.g., shooting oneself) or negative (e.g., refusing to eat) act accomplished by the victim himself.2 But here Durkheim immediately ran into difficulties, for this definition failed to distinguish between two very different sorts of death: the victim of hallucination who leaps from an upper story window while thinking it on a level with the ground; and the sane individual who does the same thing knowing that it will lead to his death. The obvious solution -- i.e., to restrict the definition of suicide to actions intended to have this result -- was unacceptable to Durkheim for at least two reasons. First, as we have seen (p. 64 above), Durkheim consistently tried to define social facts by easily ascertainable characteristics, and the intentions of agents were ill-fitted to this purpose. Second, the definition of suicide by the end sought by the agent would exclude actions -- e.g., the mother sacrificing herself for her child -- in which death is clearly not "sought" but is nonetheless an inevitable consequence of the act in question, and is thus a "suicide" by any other name.

The distinctive characteristic of suicides, therefore, is not that the act is performed intentionally, but rather that it is performed advisedly -- the agent knows that death will be the result of his act, regardless of whether or not death is his goal. This criterion is sufficient to distinguish suicide, properly so-called, from other deaths which are either inflicted on oneself unconsciously or not self-inflicted at all; moreover. Durkheim insisted that such a characteristic was easily ascertainable, and that such acts thus formed a definite, homogeneous group. Hence Durkheim's definition: Suicide is applied to all cases of death resulting directly or indirectly from a positive or negative act of the victim himself, which he knows will produce this result.

This definition, however, was subject to two immediate objections. The first was that such foreknowledge is a matter of degree, varying considerably from one person or situation to another. At what point, for example, does the death of a professional dare-devil or that of a man neglectful of his health cease to be an "accident" and start to become "suicide"? But for Durkheim to ask this question was less to raise an objection to his definition than to correctly identify its greatest advantage -- that it indicates the place of suicide within moral life as a whole. For suicides, according to Durkheim, do not constitute a wholly distinctive group of "monstrous phenomena" unrelated to other forms of behavior; on the contrary. they are related to other acts, both courageous and imprudent, by an unbroken series of intermediate cases. Suicides, in short, are simply an exaggerated form of common practices.

The second objection was that such practices, however common, are individual practices, with individual causes and consequences, which are thus the proper subject matter of psychology rather than sociology. In fact, Durkheim never denied that suicide could be studied by the methods of psychology, but he did insist that suicide could also be studied independent of its individual manifestations, as a social fact sui generis. Indeed, each society has a "definite aptitude" for suicide, the relative intensity of which can be measured by the proportion of suicides per total population, or what Durkheim called "the rate of mortality through suicide, characteristic of the society under consideration."3 This rate, Durkheim insisted, was both permanent (the rate for any individual society was less variable than that of most other leading demographic data, including the general mortality rate) and variable (the rate for each society was sufficiently peculiar to that society as to be more characteristic of it than its general mortality rate); and, just as the first would be inexplicable were it not "the result of a group of distinct characteristics, solidary with one another, and simultaneously effective in spite of different attendant circumstances," so the second proved "the concrete and individual quality of these same characteristics, since they vary with the individual character of society itself."4 Each society, Durkheim thus concluded, is predisposed to contribute a definite quota of suicides; and it was this predisposition5 which Durkheim proposed to study sociologically.

Thus defined, Durkheim's project again fell naturally into three parts: first, an examination of those extra-social causes sufficiently general to have a possible effect on the social suicide rate (but which in fact influence it little, if at all); second, the determination of the nature of the social causes, the way in which they produce their effects and their relations to those individual conditions normally associated with the different kinds of suicide; and third, the more precise account of the "suicide aptitude" described above, of its relation to other social facts, and of the means by which this collective tendency might be counteracted.

Extra-Social Causes

Durkheim suggested that, a priori, there are two kinds of extra-social causes sufficiently general to have an influence on the suicide rate. First, within the individual psychological constitution there might exist an inclination, normal or pathological, varying from country to country, which directly leads people to commit suicide. Second, the nature of the external physical environment (climate, temperature, etc.) might indirectly have the same effect. Durkheim took up each in turn.

The annual rate of certain diseases, like the suicide rate, is both relatively stable for a given society and perceptibly variable from one society to another; and since insanity is such a disease, the demonstration that suicide is the consequence of insanity (a psychological fact) would successfully account for those features of permanence and variability which had led Durkheim to suggest that suicide was a social fact sui generis. Durkheim was thus particularly concerned to eliminate insanity as a probable cause of suicide, and he did so by attacking that hypothesis in its two most common forms: the view that suicide itself is a special form of insanity, and the view that suicide is simply an effect of various types of insanity. The first Durkheim dismissed by classifying suicidal insanity as a "monomania" -- a form of mental illness limited to a single act or object -- and then arguing that not a single incontestable example of such monomania had yet been shown to exist. The second he rejected on the ground that all suicides committed by the insane are either devoid of deliberation and motive altogether or based on motives that are purely hallucinatory, while many suicides are "doubly identifiable as being deliberate and springing from representations involved in this deliberation which are not purely hallucinatory."6 There are many suicides, therefore, not connected with insanity.

But what about psychopathic conditions which fall short of insanity -- neurasthenia and alcoholism -- but which nonetheless are frequently associated with suicide? Durkheim responded by showing that the social suicide rate bears no definite relation to that of neurasthenia, and that the latter thus has no necessary effect on the former; and alcoholism was discarded as a putative cause on evidence that the geographical distributions of both alcohol consumption and prosecutions for alcoholism bear no relation to that of suicides. A psychopathic state, Durkheim concluded, may predispose individuals to commit suicide, but it is never in itself a sufficient cause of the permanence and variability of suicide rates.

Having dismissed pathological states as a class of causes, Durkheim turned his attention to those normal psychological conditions (race and heredity), which, again, are sufficiently general to account for the phenomena question. The view that suicide is the consequence of tendencies inherent in each major social type, for example, was undermined by the enormous variations in social suicide rates observed within the same type, suggesting that different levels of civilization are much more decisive. But the argument that suicide is hereditary had first to be distinguished from the more moderate view that one inherits a predisposition to commit suicide; for the latter, as in the case of neurasthenia, is not an "explanation" of suicide at all. The stronger argument -- that one inherits a semi-autonomous psychological mechanism which gives rise to suicide automatically -- was then rejected on the grounds that its most dramatic manifestation (the regularity with which suicide sometimes appears in the same family) can be explained by other causes (contagion), and that as within racial types, there are patterned variations within the same family (between husbands and wives) which. on this hypothesis, would be rendered inexplicable.

But if normal or abnormal psychological predispositions are not, by themselves, sufficient causes of suicide, might not such predispositions acting in concert with cosmic factors (climate, seasonal temperature etc.) have such a determinative effect? The conjunction of such predispositions with climate, Durkheim answered, has no such influence; for while the geographical distribution of suicides in Europe varies according to latitude and thus roughly according to climate as well, these variations are better explained by social causes. Montesquieu's suggestion that cold, foggy countries are most favorable to suicide was equally discredited by the fact that, in every country for which statistics were available, the suicide rate is higher in spring and summer than in fall and winter.

Is suicide, then, as the Italian statisticians Ferri and Morselli believed, an effect of the mechanical influence of heat on the cerebral functions? Durkheim here objected on both conceptual and empirical grounds -- that this theory presumes that the constant psychological antecedent of suicide is a state of extreme excitation, where in fact it is frequently preceded by depression; and, in any case, that the suicide rate is in decline in July and August, and thus does not vary regularly with temperature. The "revised" Italian argument -- that it is the contrast between the departing cold and the beginning of the warm season that stimulates the psychological predispositions -- was equally rejected by Durkheim as inconsistent with the perfect continuity (steady increase from January to June, steady decrease from July to December) of the curve representing the monthly variations of the suicide rate.

Consistent with the argument of The Rules (Chapter VI) Durkheim insisted that such a perfectly continuous variation could be explained only by causes themselves varying with the same continuity; and, as a first clue to the nature of these causes, he pointed out that the proportional share of each month in the total number of annual suicides is perfectly parallel with the average length of the day at the same time of the year. Other clues follow: suicide is more common by day than by nights in morning and afternoon than at midday, and on weekdays than on weekends (except for an increase of female suicides on Sundays). In every case, Durkheim observed, suicide increases in those months, days of the week and hours of the day when social life is most active, and decreases when collective activity declines. Anticipating the argument of Book Two, Durkheim thus suggested that suicide is the consequence of the intensity of social life; but before he could proceed to explain how such a cause might produce such an effect, Durkheim had to deal with one other "psychological" theory -- Tarde's argument that social facts in general, and suicide in particular, can be explained as the consequence of imitation.

The term "imitation," Durkheim began, is used indiscriminately to explain three very different groups of facts: (1) that complex process whereby individual states of consciousness act and react upon one another in such a way as to produce a new, collective state sui generis (2) that impulse which leads us to conform to the manners, customs and moral practices of our societies; and (3) that largely unpremeditated, automatic reproduction of actions just because they have occurred in our presence or we have heard of them. The first, Durkheim insisted, can hardly be called "imitation," for it involves no act of genuine reproduction whatsoever;7 the second involves an act of reproduction, but one inspired both by the specific nature of the manners, customs, and practices in question, and by the specific feelings of respect or sympathy they inspire, and thus one ill-described by the term "imitation"; only in the third case, where the act is a mere echo of the original, and subject to no cause outside of itself, is the term warranted. Hence Durkheim's definition: " Imitation exists when the immediate antecedent of an act is the representation of like act, previously performed by someone else; with no explicit or implicit mental operation which bears upon the intrinsic nature of the act reproduced intervening between representation and execution."8

Thus defined, of course. imitation is reduced to a purely psychological phenomenon; for while the synthesis of individual consciousnesses into a collective state sui generis and conformity to obligatory beliefs and practices are both highly social, "imitation properly so-called" is mere repetition, creating no intellectual or moral bond between its agent and his antecedent. We imitate other human beings in the same way that we reproduce the sounds of nature, physical objects, or the movements of non-human animals; and since no clearly social element is involved in the latter, neither is there such an element in the former. To suggest that the suicide rate might be explained by imitation, therefore, was to suggest that a social fact might be explained by a psychological fact -- a possibility Durkheim had already denied in The Rules.

Durkheim's definition9 clearly reduced the number of suicides attributable to imitation. But it did not eliminate them; on the contrary. Durkheim insisted that there was no other phenomenon so "contagious" as suicide. But it did not follow that this contagious quality necessarily had social consequences -- affected the social suicide rate -- for its consequences might instead be merely individual and sporadic: and if imitation did not affect the suicide rate, it was doubtful ( pace Tarde) that it had any social consequences whatsoever, for no phenomenon was more affected by imitation than suicide.10

If, on the other hand, imitation does influence suicide rates, Durkheim suggested, this should be reflected in the geographical distribution of suicides -- the rate typical of one country should be transmitted to its neighbors; and, indeed, contiguous geographical areas do reveal similar suicide rates. But such a geographical "diffusion" of suicides might equally well be explained by the parallel "diffusion" of distinctively social influences throughout the same region. In addition to similarity of rates in geographically contiguous areas, therefore, the "imitation hypothesis" further requires that there be a "model" of particularly intense suicidal activity, and that this activity be "visible" enough to fulfill its function as a model to be imitated. These conditions are in fact fulfilled by the major urban centers in western European countries; thus, we ought to expect the geographical distribution of suicides to reveal a pattern of concentration around major cities, with concentric circles of gradually less intensive suicidal activity radiating out into the countryside. Instead, we find suicide occurring in roughly homogeneous masses over broad regions with no central nuclei, an observation which suggests not only the complete absence of any local influence of imitation, but the presence of the much more general causes of the social environment. Most decisive, however, is the fact that an abrupt change in that social environment is accompanied by an equally abrupt change in the suicide rate. one which is not reflected beyond the bounds of the social environment in question, and thus one which could hardly be explained as the consequence of imitation.

But Durkheim's argument in fact went much further than this denial that, its individual effects notwithstanding, imitation is an insufficient cause for variations in the suicide rate; for, in addition, he insisted that imitation alone has no effect on suicide whatsoever. This extension of his argument was the consequence of Durkheim's more general theoretical commitment to the view that the thought of an act is never sufficient to produce the act itself unless the person thinking is already so disposed; and the dispositions in question, of course, are the result of social causes. Imitation, therefore, is not a real cause, even of individual suicides: "It only exposes a state which is the true generating cause of the act," Durkheim concluded, "and which probably would have produced its natural effect even had imitation not intervened, for the predisposition must be very strong to enable so slight a matter to translate it into action."11

Social Causes and Social Types

Durkheim's argument so far is a perfect example of his characteristic "argument by elimination" -- the systematic rejection of alternative explanations of a given phenomenon in order to lend authority to the "sole remaining" candidate.12 He thus claimed to have shown that, for each social group, there is a specific tendency to suicide that can be explained neither by the "organic-psychic constitution" of individuals nor by the nature of the physical environment; and as his discussion of geographic and seasonal variations of suicide has already hinted, the tendency in question must thus be, in itself, a collective phenomenon, and must depend upon social causes.

But is there, in fact, one "single, indestructible" suicidal tendency? Or are there rather several, which should be distinguished from one another and then studied separately? Durkheim had already pondered this difficulty in Book One, in his discussion of suicide by insanity, and his solution there was repeated here. Briefly, the suicidal tendency, single or not, is observable only in its individual manifestations (individual suicides); thus, Durkheim proposed to classify suicides into distinct "types" or "species" according to their similarities and differences, on the assumption that there would be as many types as there were suicides having the same essential characteristics, and as many "tendencies" as there were types.

This solution, however, immediately raised another problem. In his treatment of suicides by insanity, Durkheim had at his disposal many good descriptions of individual cases -- of the agent's psychological state prior to the act, of his preparations to commit the act, of the manner in which the act was performed, etc. But such data were almost completely unavailable for suicides committed by sane people, a fact which rendered classification by external manifestations impossible. Durkheim was thus forced to alter his strategy -- indeed, to "reverse the order of study" altogether, adopting an "etiological" rather than "morphological" system of classification. Assuming, as always, that any given effect has one, and only one corresponding cause, Durkheim argued that there must be as many special types of suicide as there are special causes producing them: "Without asking why [these types of suicide] differ from one another," Durkheim proposed, "we will first seek the social conditions responsible for them; [we will] then group these conditions in a number of separate classes by their resemblances and differences, and we shall be sure that a specific type of suicide will correspond to each of these classes."13

How, then, do we determine the causes of suicide? One answer was simply to rely on statistical records of the "presumptive motive of suicide" (apparently construed as a cause) kept by officials in most modern societies; but, despite its obvious convenience and plausibility, Durkheim rejected this resource for at least two reasons. First such "statistics of the motives of suicides" were actually statistics of officials opinions of such motives, which thus embodied not only difficult assessments of material fact, but still more difficult explanations and evaluations of actions performed at will. Second, regardless of the credibility of such reports, Durkheim simply denied that motives were true causes, a characteristic position he supported by pointing to the contrast between relatively constant proportions of different classes of "motive explanations" (both over time and across occupational groups) and extremely variable suicide rates themselves (over the same time period and across the same occupational groups). These "reasons" to which suicides are ascribed, Durkheim thus insisted, are only apparent causes, individual repercussions of more general states which they only imperfectly express: "They may be said to indicate the individuals weak points, where the outside current bearing the impulse to self-destruction most easily finds introduction. But they are no part of this current itself, and consequently cannot help us to understand it."14 Disregarding such individual repercussions, therefore, Durkheim turned directly to the "states of the various social environments" (religious confessions, familial and political society, occupational groups) across which the variations in suicide rates occur, and within which their causes might be found.

Egoistic Suicide

Durkheim first asked the different religious confessions affect suicide. If we look at a map of Western Europe, for example, we see that where Protestants are most numerous the suicide rate is highest, that where Catholics predominate it is much lower, and that the aptitude of Jews for suicide is lower still, though to a lesser degree, than that of Catholics. How are these data to be explained?

Again, Durkheim escorted the render through an argument by elimination. In many of the societies under observation, for example, Jews and Catholics are less numerous than Protestants; thus it is tempting to explain their lower suicide rates as the consequence of that rigorous moral discipline which religious minorities sometimes impose upon themselves in the face of the hostility of surrounding populations. But such an explanation, Durkheim observed, ignores at least three facts: first, suicide is too little an object of public condemnation for religious hostility to have this effect: second, religious hostility frequently produces not the moral conformity of those against whom it is directed, but rather their rebellion against it; and third, the reduced suicide rate of Catholics relative to Protestants is independent of their minority status -- even in Spain. Catholics commit suicide less frequently.

The last point in particular suggested an alternative explanation -- that the cause for lower rates of suicide is to be found within the nature of the religious confession itself. But such an explanation, Durkheim insisted, cannot refer to the religious percepts of the confession. for there Catholics and Protestants prohibit suicide with equal emphasis; rather, the explanation must proceed from one of the more general characteristics differentiating them, and that characteristic -- indeed, "the only essential difference between Catholicism and Protestantism" -- is that the latter permits free inquiry to a greater degree than the former.15

But if the proclivity of Protestantism for suicide must thus be related to its spirit of free inquiry, this "free inquiry" itself requires explanation, for it brings as much sorrow as happiness, and thus is not "intrinsically desirable." Why, then, do men seek and even demand such freedom? Durkheim's answer: "Reflection develops only if its development becomes imperative, that is, if certain ideas and instinctive sentiments which have hitherto adequately guided conduct are found to have lost their efficacy. Then reflection intervenes to fill the gap that has appeared, but which it has not created."16 In other words, Protestantism concedes greater freedom of thought to the individual because it has fewer commonly accepted beliefs and practices. Indeed, it was this possession of a common, collective credo that, for Durkheim, was the essence of religious society itself, and that distinguished it from those merely temporal bonds which unite men through the exchange and reciprocity of services, yet permit and even presuppose differences; and, precisely to the extent that Protestantism lacked such a credo, it was a less strongly integrated church than its Roman Catholic counterpart.

Durkheim then suggested that this explanation is consistent with at least three other observations. First, it would account for the still lower suicide rates of Jews who, in response to the hostility17 directed against them, established strong community ties of thought and action, virtually eliminated individual divergences, and thus achieved a high degree of unity, solidarity, and integration. Second, of all the great Protestant countries England has the lowest suicide rate; and it also has the most "integrated" of Protestant churches. And third since knowledge is the natural consequence of free inquiry, we should expect that suicide increases with its acquisition, and Durkheim had little trouble demonstrating that this was the case.

But this last demonstration did raise an anomaly: the Jews, who are both highly educated and have low suicide rates. But for Durkheim, this was the proverbial exception that proves the rule. For the Jew seeks to learn, not in order to replace traditional beliefs with individual reflection, but rather to protect himself from others' hostility through his superior knowledge. "So the exception," Durkheim observed "is only apparent";

it even confirms the law. Indeed, it proves that if the suicidal tendency is great in educated circles, this is due, as we have said, to the weakening of traditional beliefs and to the state of moral individualism resulting from this; for it disappears when education has another cause and responds to other needs.18

Finally, it should be noted that the combined effect of these observations on religious confessions and suicide was an implicit celebration of the Third Republic in general and its program of secular education in particular. For, as Durkheim was pleased to make clear, the long-acknowledged correlation between the growth of knowledge and suicide could not be taken to mean that the former "causes" the latter; on the contrary, knowledge and suicide are independent effects of a more general cause -- the decline of traditional beliefs. Moreover, once these beliefs have declined, they cannot be artificially reestablished,19 and thus free inquiry and the knowledge that results become our only resources in the effort to replace them. Finally, Durkheim had shown that the prophylactic effect of religion on suicide owed little to its condemnation of suicide, its idea of God, or its promise of a future life; rather, religion protects man from suicide "because it is a society. What constitutes this society is the existence of a certain number of beliefs and practices common to all the faithful, traditional and thus obligatory. The more numerous and strong these collective states of mind are," Durkheim concluded, "the stronger the integration of the religious community, and also the greater its preservative value."20

But if religion thus preserves men from suicide because it is a society, other "societies" (e.g., the family and political society) ought to have the same effect. After developing a statistical measure of the immunity to suicide enjoyed by various groups,21 for example, Durkheim was able to show that, while marriage alone has a preservative effect against suicide, this is limited and benefits only men; the larger family unit, on the other hand, provides an immunity which husband and wife share. Similarly, when one marital partner dies, the survivor loses a degree of suicidal immunity; but this loss is less a consequence of the severing of the conjugal bond alone than of the more general shock to the family that the survivor must endure. Finally, the immunity to suicide increases with the size of the family,22 a fact Durkheim attributed to the greater number and intensity of collective sentiments produced and repeatedly reinforced by the larger group.

Similarly, the examination of political societies showed that suicide, quite rare in a society's early stages, increases as that society matures and disintegrates. During social disturbances or great popular wars, by contrast, the suicide rate declines, a fact that Durkheim claimed is susceptible of only one interpretation -- that these disturbances "rouse collective sentiments, stimulate partisan spirit and patriotism, political and national faith alike, and concentrating activity toward a single end, at least temporarily cause a stronger integration of society."23

Suicide thus varies inversely with the degree of integration of the religious, domestic, and political groups of which the individual forms a part; in short, as a society weakens or "disintegrates," the individual depends less on the group, depends more upon himself, and recognizes no rules of conduct beyond those based upon private interests. Durkheim called this state of "excessive individualism" egoism, and the special type of self-inflicted death it produces egoistic suicide.

But why does individualism thus cause suicide? The traditional view -- that man, by his psychological nature, cannot live without some transcendent, eternal reason beyond this life -- was rejected on the ground that, were our desire for immortality so great, nothing in this life could satisfy us; whereas, in fact, we do take pleasure in our temporal lives, and the pleasures we take are not merely physical and individual, but also moral and social, bath in their origin and in their purpose. Durkheim thus returned to the conception of the duality of human nature first found in The Division of Labor:

... social man superimposes himself upon physical man. Social man necessarily presupposes a society which he expresses or serves. If this dissolves, if we can no longer feel it in existence and action about and above us. whatever is social in us is deprived of all objective foundation... Thus we are bereft of reasons for existence: for the only life to which we could cling no longer corresponds to anything actual; the only existence still based upon reality no longer meets our needs... So there is nothing more for our efforts to lay hold of, and we feel them lose themselves in emptiness.24

It is in this social (rather than the earlier. psychological) sense therefore that our activity needs an object transcending it; for such an object is implicit within our moral constitution itself, and cannot be lost without this constitution losing its raison d'être to the same degree. In this state of moral confusion, the least cause of discouragement gives birth to desperate self-destructive resolutions a suicidal tendency that infects not only individuals but whole societies; and, precisely because these intellectual currents are collective they impose their authority on the individual and drive him even further in the direction he is already by internal disposition inclined to go. Ironically therefore, the individual submits to the influence of society at the very moment that he frees himself from it: "However individualized a man may be, there is always something collective remaining -- the very depression and melancholy resulting from this same exaggerated individualism."25

Altruistic Suicide

But if excessive individuation thus leads to suicide, so does insufficient individuation: thus, among primitive peoples, we find several categories of suicide -- men on the threshold of old age, women upon the deaths of their husbands, followers and servants upon the deaths of their chiefs -- in which the person kills himself because it is his duty. Such a sacrifice, Durkheim argued, is imposed by society for social purposes; and for society to be able to do this, the individual personality must have little value, a state Durkheim called altruism, and whose corresponding mode of self-inflicted death was called obligatory altruistic suicide.26

Like all suicides, the altruist kills himself because he is unhappy;27 but this unhappiness is distinctive both in its causes and in its effects. While the egoist is unhappy because he sees nothing "real" in the world besides the individual, for example, the altruist is sad because the individual seems so "unreal"; the egoist sees no goal to which he might commit himself, and thus feels useless and without purpose while the altruist commits himself to a goal beyond this world, and henceforth this world is an obstacle and burden to him. The melancholy of the egoist is one of incurable weariness and sad depression, and is expressed in a complete relaxation of all activity the unhappiness of the altruist, by contrast, springs from hope, faith even enthusiasm, and affirms itself in acts of extraordinary energy.

Altruistic suicide thus reflects that crude morality which disregards the individual, while its egoistic counterpart elevates the human personality beyond collective constraints; and their differences thus correspond to those between primitive and advanced societies. But altruistic suicides do occur among more civilized peoples -- among the early Christian martyrs and the French revolutionaries -- and in contemporary French society, Durkheim insisted, there even exists a "special environment" in which altruistic suicide is chronic: the army Military suicide thus represents an evolutionary survival of the morality of primitive peoples: "Influenced by this predisposition," Durkheim observed, "the soldier kills himself at the least disappointment, for the most futile reasons, for a refusal of leave, a reprimand an unjust punishment, a delay in promotion, a question of honor, a flush of momentary jealousy, or even simply because other suicides have occurred before his eyes or to his knowledge."28 The "contagious" suicides ascribed by Tarde to psychological causes Durkheim thus insisted, are rather explained by the moral constitution which predisposes men to imitate one another's actions.

Finally, Durkheim's discussion of altruistic suicide aptly illustrates some of the most characteristic arguments of the work as a whole -- his rejection of any definition of suicide which appeals to subjective mental states (motives purposes, etc.), his suggestion that self-inflicted deaths reflect the most general moral sentiments of the societies within which they occur, and the view that such suicides are thus merely exaggerated expressions of behavior which, in more moderated form, would be labeled "virtuous." However pure the motives which led to the "heroic" suicide of Cato, for example, it was not different in kind from that of one of Frazer's primitive Polynesian chiefs; and where altruistic suicides reflect a courageous indifference to the loss of one's life (albeit to the loss of others' lives as well), its egoistic counterpart exhibits a praiseworthy respect and sympathy for the suffering of others (albeit a concern to avoid one's own suffering and sacrifices as well).

Anomic Suicide

Egoistic and anomic suicide, as we have seen, are the respective consequences of the individual's insufficient or excessive integration within the society to which he belongs. But quite aside from integrating its members, a society must control and regulate their beliefs and behavior as well; and Durkheim insisted that there is a relation between a society's suicide rate and the way it performs this important regulative function. Industrial and financial crises, for example, increase the suicide rate, a fact commonly attributed to the decline of economic well-being these crises produce. But the same increase in the suicide rate, Durkheim observed, is produced by crisis resulting in economic prosperity; "Every disturbance of equilibrium," he insisted, "even though it achieved greater comfort and a heightening of general vitality, is an impulse to voluntary death."29 But how can this be the case? How can something generally understood to improve a man's life serve to detach him from it?

No living being, Durkheim began, can be happy unless its needs are sufficiently proportioned to its means; for if its needs surpass its capacity to satisfy them, the result can only be friction, pain, lack of productivity, and a general weakening of the impulse to live. In an animal, of course, the desired equilibrium between needs and means is established and maintained by physical nature -- the animal cannot imagine ends other than those implicit within its own physiology, and these are ordinarily satisfied by its purely material environment. Human needs, however, are not limited to the body alone; indeed, "beyond the indispensable minimum which satisfies nature when instinctive, a more awakened reflection suggests better conditions, seemingly desirable ends craving fulfillment."30 But the aspirations suggested by such reflections are inherently unlimited there is nothing in man's individual psychology or physiology which would require them to cease at one point rather than another. Unlimited desires are, by definition, insatiable, and insatiability is a sure source of human misery: "To pursue a goal which is by definition unattainable," Durkheim concluded, "is to condemn oneself to a state of perpetual unhappiness."31

For human beings to be happy, therefore, their individual needs and aspirations must be constrained; and since these needs and aspirations are the products of a reflective social consciousness, the purely internal, physiological constraints enjoyed by animals are insufficient to this purpose. This regulatory function must thus be performed by an external, moral agency superior to the individual -- in other words, by society. And since the constraints thus applied are borne unequally by a society's members, the result is a "functional" theory of stratification resembling that of Kingsley Davis and Wilbert Moore32 -- society determines the respective value of different social services, the relative reward allocated to each, and the consequent degree of comfort appropriate to the average worker in each occupation.

This classically conservative doctrine is tempered by two qualifications. First, the scale of services and rewards is not immutable, but rather varies with the amount of collective revenue and the changing moral ideas of the society itself; and second, the system must secure some degree of legitimacy -- both the hierarchy of functions and the distribution of these functions among the population must be considered "just" by those subject to it. These caveats entered, however, Durkheim insisted that human happiness can be achieved only through the acceptance of moral (that is, social) constraints.

But what has this to do with suicide? Briefly, when society is disturbed by some crisis, its "scale" is altered and its members are "reclassified"33 accordingly; in the ensuing period of dis-equilibrium, society is temporarily incapable of exercising its regulative function, and the lack of constraints imposed on human aspirations makes happiness impossible. This explains why periods of economic disaster, like those of sudden prosperity, are accompanied by an increase the number of suicides, and also why countries long immersed in poverty have enjoyed a relative immunity to self-inflicted death.

Durkheim used the term anomie to describe this temporary condition of social deregulation, and anomic suicide to describe the resulting type of self-inflicted death; but in one sphere of life, he added, anomie is not a temporary disruption but rather a chrome state. This is the sphere of trade and industry, where the traditional sources of societal regulation -- religion, government, and occupational groups -- have all failed to exercise moral constraints on an increasingly unregulated capitalist economy. Religion, which once consoled the poor and at least partially restricted the material ambitions of the rich, has simply lost most of its power. Government, which once restrained and subordinated economic functions, is now their servant, thus, the orthodox economist would reduce government to a guarantor of individual contracts, while the extreme socialist would make it the "collective bookkeeper" -- and neither would grant it the power to subordinate other social agencies and unite them toward one common aim. Even occupational groups, which once regulated salaries, fixed the price of products and production, and indirectly fixed the average level of income on which needs were based, has been made impotent by the growth of industry and the indefinite expansion of the market. In trade and industry, therefore, "the state of crisis and anomy is constant and, so to speak, normal. From top to bottom of the ladder greed is aroused without knowing where to find ultimate foothold. Nothing can calm it," Durkheim concludes, "since its goal is far beyond all it can attain."34 And thus the industrial and commercial occupations are among those which furnish the greatest numbers of suicides.

Quite aside from such economic anomie, however, is that domestic anomie which afflicts widows and widowers as well as those who have experienced separation and divorce.35 The association of the latter with an increased tendency to suicide had already been observed,36 but had been attributed to marital selection -- divorced couples are more apt to have been recruited from individuals with psychological flaws, who are also more apt to commit suicide. Characteristically, Durkheim rejected such individual, psychological "explanations" for both suicide and divorce arguing instead that we should focus on the intrinsic nature of marriage and divorce themselves.

Marriage, Durkheim explained, ought to be understood as the social regulation not only of physical instinct, but also of those aesthetic and moral feelings which have become complicated with sexual desire over the course of evolution. Precisely because these new aesthetic and moral inclinations have become increasingly independent of organic necessities, the moral regulation of monogamic marriage has become necessary: "For by forcing a man to attach himself forever to the same woman," Durkheim observed, "it assigns a strictly definite object to the need for love, and closes the horizon."37 Divorce would then be understood as a weakening of this matrimonial regulation, and wherever law and custom permit its "excessive" practices the relative immunity to self-inflicted death thus guaranteed is undermined, and suicides increase.

As we have already seen, however, the immunity guaranteed by marriage alone is enjoyed only by the husband, both partners participating only in the immunity provided by the larger domestic society; similarly, it is husbands rather than wives who are afflicted with increased suicide rates where divorces are "excessive." Why don't divorce rates affect the wife? Durkheim's quintessentially Victorian answer was that the mental life of women -- and thus the "mental character" of their sexual needs -- is less developed than that of men; and since their sexual needs are thus more closely related to those of their organism, these needs find an efficient restraint in physiology alone, without the additional, external regulation of that monogamic matrimony required by males. This was an observation however, from which Durkheim derived an un-Victorian inference: since monogamic matrimony provides no suicidal immunity to the wife, it is a gratuitous form of social discipline which she suffers without the slightest compensatory advantage. The traditional view of marriage -- that its purpose is to protect the woman from masculine caprice, and to impose a sacrifice of polygamous instincts upon the man -- is thus clearly false; on the contrary, it is the woman who makes the sacrifices, receiving little or nothing in return.38

To this "etiological" classification of suicides by their causes, Durkheim added a "morphological" classification according to their characteristic effects or manifestations. Suicides like that of Lamartine's Raphael, for example, committed out of a morbid mood of melancholia -- were considered the consequence and expression of egoistic suicide, as were the more cheerfully indifferent "Epicurean" suicides of those who, no longer able to experience the pleasures of life, see no reason to prolong it. Altruistic suicide, as we have already seen, is characterized by the serene conviction that one is performing one's duty, or a passionate outburst of faith and enthusiasm; while anomic suicide, though equally passionate, expresses a mood of anger and disappointment at aspirations unfulfilled.

Just as there are different types of suicide distinguishable by their causes, therefore, there are different species of moods or dispositions through which these types are expressed. In actual experience, however, these types and species are not found in their pure, isolated state; on the contrary, different causes may simultaneously afflict the same individuals, giving rise to composite modes of suicidal expression. Egoism and anomie, for example, have a special "affinity" for one another -- the socially detached egoist is often unregulated as well (though usually introverted, dispassionate, and lacking in those aspirations which lead to frustration), while the unregulated victim of anomie is frequently a poorly integrated egoist (though his boundless aspirations typically prevent any excessive introversion). Similarly, anomie may be con joined with altruism -- the exasperated infatuation produced by anomie may coincide with the courageous, dutiful resolution of the altruist. Even egoism and altruism, contraries though they are, may combine in certain situations -- within a society undergoing disintegration, groups of individuals may construct some ideal out of whole cloth, devoting themselves to it to precisely the extent that they become detached from all else.

Finally, Durkheim found no relation whatsoever between the type of suicide and the nature of the suicidal acts by which death is achieved. Admittedly, there is a correlation between particular societies and the popularity of certain suicidal acts within them, indicating that the choice of suicidal means is determined by social causes. But the causes which lend one to commit suicide in a particular ways Durkheim insisted are quite different from those which lead one to commit suicide in the first place; the customs and traditions of a particular society place some instruments of death rather than others at one's disposal, and attach differing degrees of dignity even to the various means thus made available. While both are dependent on social causes, therefore, the mode of suicidal act and the nature of suicide itself are unrelated.

Suicide as a Social Phenomenon

At any given moment, therefore, the moral constitution of a society -- its insufficient or excessive degree of integration or regulation -- establishes its contingent rate of voluntary deaths, its "natural aptitude" for suicide; and individual suicidal acts are thus mere extensions and expressions of these underlying currents of egoism, altruism, and anomie. Moreover, the terms that Durkheim employed in making this argument -- "collective tendencies," "collective passions," etc. -- were not mere metaphors for average individual states; on the contrary, they are "things," sui generis forces which dominate the consciousnesses of individuals. In fact, the stability of the suicide rate for any particular society could have no other explanation:

... the numerical equality of annual contingents... can only be due to the permanent action of some impersonal cause which transcends all individual cases.... The proof that the reality of collective tendencies is no less than that of cosmic forces is that this reality is demonstrated in the same way, by the uniformity of effects.39

Such an argument, Durkheim admitted suggests that collective thoughts are of a different nature from individual thoughts, that the former have characteristics which the latter lack. But how can this be if there are only individuals in society? Durkheim's response was an argument by analogy alluded to in The Division of Labor40 and developed more fully in "Individual and Collective Representations" (1898). The biological cell, Durkheim observed, is made up exclusively of inanimate atoms; but surely this doesn't mean that there is "nothing more" in animate nature. Similarly individual human beings, by associating with one another, form a psychical existence of a new species, which has its own manner of thinking and feeling: "When the consciousness of individuals, instead of remaining isolated, becomes grouped and combined," Durkheim observed, "something in the world has been altered. Naturally this change produces others, this novelty engenders other novelties, phenomena appear whose characteristic qualities are not found in the elements composing them."41 Social life, Durkheim thus admitted, is essentially made up of representations; but collective representations are quite different from their individual counterparts. Indeed, Durkheim had no objection to calling sociology a kind of psychology, so long as we recall that social psychology has its own laws which are not those of individual psychology.

Moreover, it is simply not true that there are "only individuals" in society. First, a society contains a variety of material things (e.g., written laws, moral precepts and maxims, etc.) which "crystallize" social facts, and act upon the individual from without; and second, beneath these immobilized, sacrosanct forms are the diffused, mingling subjacent sentiments of which these material formulae are the mere signs, and which are equally external to the individual conscience. The result was a critique of Quetelet reminiscent of Kant's rejection of any empiricist ethics. Struck by the statistical regularity of certain social phenomena over time, Quetelet had postulated "the average man" -- a definite type representing the most generalized characteristics of people in any given society. Such an approach, Durkheim insisted, makes the origin of morality an insoluble mystery; for it conflates the collective type of a society with the average type of its individual members, and since the morality of such individuals reaches only a moderate intensity, the imperative, transcendent character of moral commands is left without an explanation. Beyond the vacuous conception of "God's will," Durkheim insisted, "no alternative exists but to leave morality hanging unexplained in the air or make it a system of collective states of conscience. Morality either springs from nothing given in the world of experience, or it springs from society."42

In fact, these three currents of opinion -- that the individual has a certain personality (egoism), that this personality should be sacrificed if the community required it (altruism), and that the individual is sensitive to ideas of social progress (anomie) -- coexist in all societies, turning individual inclinations in three different and opposed directions. Where these currents offset one another, the individual enjoys a state of equilibrium which protects him from suicide; but where one current exceeds a certain strength relative to others, it becomes a cause of self-inflicted death. Moreover, this strength itself depends on three causes: the nature of the individuals composing the society, the manner of their association, and transitory occurrences which disrupt collective life. The first, of course, is virtually immutable, changing only gradually over a period of centuries; the only variable conditions, therefore, are social conditions, a fact which explains the stability observed by Quetelet so long as society remains unchanged.

The decisive influence of these currents, however, is rarely exerted throughout an entire society; on the contrary, its effect is typically felt within those particular environments whose conditions are especially favorable to the development of one current or another. But the conditions of each individual environment are themselves dependent on the more general conditions of the society as a whole -- the force of altruism in the army depends on the role of the military in the larger civilian population; egoistic suicide increases among Protestants to the extent that intellectual individualism is a feature of the entire society; and so on. No collective sentiment can affect individuals, of course, when they are absolutely indisposed to it, but the same social causes that produce these currents also affect the way individuals are socialized, so that a society quite literally produces citizens with the appropriate dispositions at the same time that it molds the currents to which they will thus respond. Durkheim did not deny, therefore, that individual motives have a share in determining who commits suicide but he did insist that the nature and intensity of the "suicidogenic" current were factors independent of such psychological conditions. Indeed, this was why Durkheim could claim that his theory, however "deterministic," was more consistent with the philosophical doctrine of free will than any psychologistic theory which makes the individual the source of social phenomena; for the intensity of his currents, like the virulence of an infectious disease, determines only the rate at which the population will be affected, not the identity of those to be struck down.

The last remark hinted at what we have seen to be one of Durkheim's preoccupations -- his repeated efforts to resolve philosophical quandaries by sociological means; and he soon turned to another: Should suicide be proscribed by morality?43 This question, Durkheim observed, is typically dealt with by formulating certain general moral principles and then asking whether suicide logically contradicts these or not. But Durkheim insisted instead on an empirical sociological approach, examining the way in which real societies have actually treated suicide in the course of history, and then inquiring into the reasons for this treatment. This examination indicated that suicide has been long, widely, and severely condemned, but that such condemnations fell into two categories, indicating two historical stages. In antiquity, suicide was a civil offense, and though the individual was forbidden to end his own life, the state might permit him to do so on certain occasions. But in modern societies, suicide is viewed as a religious crime, and the condemnation is thus both absolute and universal. The distinctive element in the second stage, Durkheim insists, is the Christian conception of the human personality as a "sacred" thing; henceforth, in so far as he retains his identity as a man, the individual shares that quality sui generis which religions ascribe to their gods: "He has become tinged with religious value; man has become a god for men. Therefore any attempt against his life suggests sacrilege."44

To Montesquieu or to Hume, such an argument, based on a religious premise, was less than compelling. But to Durkheim, agnostic though he was, the religious vestments of the argument were purely symbolic and did little to discredit it; on the contrary, for Durkheim, every symbol (however mystical) must correspond to something real, and the reality to which the "sacred individual" corresponds is that body of collective sentiments which, with the growth of social volume and density, the division of labor, and individual differences, has elevated the individual personality above that primitive, homogeneous community within which it was literally non-existent.45 This view that the human person is in some sense sacred, Durkheim insisted, is virtually the only common bond joining a modern society's members; far from injuring only himself, therefore the man who commits suicide violates the most fundamental maxim of the social orders a transgression which is reflected in and in turn justifies, its severe moral prohibition.

Such an appeal to the sacredness of individual life necessarily raised the question of the relation between suicide and homicide; and this in turn led Durkheim to another attack on the "Italian school" of Ferri and Morselli, for whom such acts were the result of the same psychological cause (moral degeneracy) under different social conditions (suicide is simply a homicide which, repressed by a pacific social environment, is directed back toward the self). Durkheim denied of course that the causes of suicide and homicide are either "psychological" or "the same," and also that the social conditions under which they occur are so consistently different; for, as we have seen there are different kinds of suicide with different, non-psychological causes, and while some of these are identical to those of homicide others are quite opposed to them. Egoistic suicide, for example results from conditions of disintegration and social indifference which, by reducing the intensity of the passions and increasing the respect for the individual, decreases the tendency to homicide. Altruistic suicide, by contrast, springs from a reduced respect for the individual life, as does homicide; but these are the social conditions of primitive rather than civilized societies. Anomie suicide, however is produced by that more modern mood of exasperation and world-weariness which is equally conducive to homicide; and which kind of death will result is largely determined by the moral constitution of the individual in question. If suicide and homicide vary inversely, Durkheim thus concluded it is not ( pace Ferri and Morselli) because they are differing social expressions of the same psychological phenomenon; on the contrary, it is because most modern suicides result from conditions of egoism which are hostile to homicides. And if the relationship between suicide and homicide is not perfectly inverse, it is because the special social conditions which favor either anomie or altruistic suicide are also favorable to homicide.46

Here was another sociological answer to a venerable philosophical question -- i.e., whether our feelings for others are mere extensions of our feelings for ourselves or, by contrast, are independent of such selfish sentiments altogether. Durkheim's answer was that both alternatives are misconceived. Feelings for others and feelings for ourselves are not unrelated, but neither does one spring from the other; on the contrary, both are derived from a third source: that estimate of the moral value of the individual rendered by the conscience collective at any point in time. Where that estimate is low, as in primitive societies, our indifference to the pain and sadness of others, for example, is matched by our indifference to our own; but where that estimate is high, as in advanced societies, our concern for our own comfort is balanced by a concern for that of others. Our egoistic instincts, of course, will weaken feelings when applied to the first, and strengthen them in application to the second; but the same moral condition exists and is active in both cases.

Like The Division of Labor in Society, Suicide concludes with some thoroughly practical questions: What attitude should modern societies take towards suicide? Should reforms be undertaken to restrain it? Or must we accept it as it is? Again as in The Division of Labor, Durkheim's answers to these questions depended on whether the current state of suicide is to be considered "normal" or "abnormal," and, as he had already shown through the example of crime in The Rules of Sociological Method, the "immorality" of suicide did not necessarily point to the latter. On the contrary, the statistical data going back to the eighteenth century, as well as legislation surviving from still earlier periods, suggested to Durkheim that suicide was a normal element in the constitution of all societies. In primitive societies and the modern military, for example, the strict subordination of the individual to the group renders altruistic suicide an indispensable part of collective discipline. Again, in societies where the dignity of the person is the supreme end of conduct, egoistic suicide flourishes. And again, in societies where economic progress is rapid and social restraints become slack, anomie suicides are inevitable.

But don't such currents of altruism, egoism, and anomie cause suicide only if excessive? And might such currents not be everywhere maintained at the same level of moderate intensity? Durkheim's initial response echoed his discussion of crime in The Rules -- there are special environments within each society which can be reached by such currents only if the latter are strengthened or weakened far above or below the more general societal norm. But again, as with crime, these special modifications of the current are not merely necessary; they are also useful, for the most general collective state is simply that best adapted to the most general circumstances, not to those exceptional circumstances to which a society must also be adapted. A society in which intelligent individualism could not be exaggerated, for example, would be incapable of radical innovation, even if such innovation were necessary; inversely, a society in which such individualism could not be significantly reduced would be unable to adapt to the conditions of war, in which conformity and passive obedience are elevated into virtues. It is essential, therefore that such "special environments" be preserved as a part of the more general existence, so that a society might both respond to particular conditions and evolve gradually over time.47

Thus the spirit of renunciation, the taste for individuation, and the love of progress each have their place in every society, and cannot exist without generating suicide. But this does not mean that every suicido-genic current is "normal"; on the contrary, these currents must produce suicides only in a certain measure which varies from one society to another as well as over time. Here Durkheim was particularly concerned to dismiss the view that suicide, the rate of which had increased exponentially in western Europe since the eighteenth century, was the "ransom money" of civilization, the inevitable companion of social progress. The rash of suicides which accompanied the growth of the Roman Empire, Durkheim admitted, might support such a view; but from the height of Rome to the Enlightenment, suicide rates increased only slightly, while Roman culture was assimilated and then surpassed by Christianity, the Renaissance, and the Reformation. Social progress, therefore, does not logically imply suicide, and the undeniably rapid growth of suicide in the late nineteenth century should be attributed not to the intrinsic nature of progress, but rather to these special conditions under which this particular phase of progress has occurred; and even without knowing the nature of these conditions, Durkheim insisted that the very rapidity of this growth indicated that they are morbid and pathological rather than normal.48

How, then, was this "pathological phenomenon" to be overcome? Durkheim clearly considered the present indulgence toward suicide excessive, but felt that increased penalties for self-inflicted deaths would be inefficacious. The proposed imposition of severe penalties, for example, ignored the fact that suicide is but an exaggeration of acts regarded as virtuous, which a society could hardly be expected resolutely to condemn; and the milder moral penalties (e.g., refusal of burial, denial of civil, political, or familial rights), like education, fail to touch suicide at its source. Indeed, both the legal and the educational systems are themselves products of the same currents that cause suicide itself.

The recent, pathological growth of suicide must thus be attacked at its egoistic and anomie.49 The rapid increase of egoistic suicides, for example, could be attributed to the increasing failure of society to integrate its individual members; and it could be counteracted only by re-establishing the bonds between the individual and the social group: "He must feel himself more solidary with a collective existence which precedes him in time, which survives him, and which encompasses him at all points."50

Which social groups were best prepared to exercise this reintegrative function? Certainly not the state, Durkheim insisted, for political society is too distant from the individual to affect his life forcefully and continuously. Neither is religion a binding force; for while the Roman Catholic Church once exercised an integrative influence, it did so at the cost of a freedom of thought it no longer has the authority to command. Even the family, traditionally the central cohesive force in the life of the individual, has proved susceptible to the same disintegrative currents responsible for the rapid increase of suicide. In fact, the state, religion, and the family were able to prevent suicides only because they were cohesive, integrated societies in themselves; and, having lost that character, they no longer have that effect.

But there is a group -- the "occupational group" or "corporation" -- that has enormous integrative and thus preventative potential. "Its influence on individuals is not intermittent," Durkheim emphasized for "it is always in contact with them by the constant exercise of the function of which it is the organ and in which they collaborate. It follows the workers wherever they go.... Wherever they are, they find it enveloping them, recalling them to their duties, supporting them at need. Finally," he concluded, "corporate action makes itself felt in every detail of our occupations, which are thus given a collective orientation."51

To fulfill this potential, however, the occupational groups must become a recognized organ of public life, outside of (though subject to)52 the state, and be granted definite social functions -- the supervision of insurance, welfare, and pensions; the settling of contractual disputes; the regulation of working conditions; etc. But above all, the occupational group must exercise a moral function: "Besides the rights and duties common to all men," Durkheim explained, "there are others depending on qualities peculiar to each occupation, the number of which increases in importance as occupational activity increasingly develops and diversifies. For each of these special disciplines," he concluded, "an equally special organ is needed, to apply and maintain it."53

But if this is the best way to combat "corrosive individual egoism," it is also the best means to combat anomie;54 for the same groups that re-integrate the individual into social life can also serve to regulate his aspirations: "Whenever excited appetites tended to exceed all limits," Durkheim explained, the corporation would have to decide the share that should equitably revert to each of the cooperative parts. Standing above its own members, it would have all necessary authority to demand indispensable sacrifices and concessions and impose order upon them.... Thus, a new sort of moral discipline would be established, without which all the scientific discoveries and economic progress in the world could produce only malcontents.55

The pathological increase in suicides is thus a result of the "moral poverty" of our age, Durkheim insisted, and a new moral discipline is required to cure it; but as always, he insisted that this moral poverty itself had structural causes, and thus a reform of social structure (i.e., decentralized occupational groups)56 was required to relieve its most morbid symptoms.

Critical Remarks

As the first systematic application of the methodological principles set out in his "manifesto" of 1895, Suicide reveals their limitations as well as their advantages, and thus provides an occasion for considering a number of difficulties -- argument by elimination, petitio principii, an inappropriate and distortive language, etc. -- which, though typical of Durkheim's work as a whole, are perhaps most clearly seen here. Durkheim's characteristic "argument by elimination," for example, pervades both The Division of Labor and The Elementary Forms, but there is no better example of its power to both persuade and mislead than Durkheim's discussion of "extrasocial causes" in Book One of Suicide. Briefly, the argument consists of the systematic rejection of alternative definitions or explanations of a social fact, in a manner clearly intended to lend credibility to the sole remaining candidate -- which is Durkheim's own. Durkheim's use of this technique, of course, does not imply that his candidate does not deserve to be elected; but as a rhetorical device, argument by elimination runs at least two serious risks: first, that the alternative definitions and/or explanations might not be jointly exhaustive (other alternatives may exist); and, more seriously, that the alternative definitions and/or explanations might not be mutually exclusive (the conditions and causes they postulate separately might be conjoined to form perfectly adequate definitions and/or explanations other than Durkheim`s' "sole remaining" candidates). Durkheim's persistent use of this strategy can be attributed to his ineradicable belief, clearly stated in The Rules, that a given effect must always have a single cause, and that this cause must be of the same nature as the effect.57

Petitio principii -- the logical fallacy in which the premise of an argument presumes the very conclusion yet to be argued -- is, again, a feature of Durkheim's work as a whole. In The Elementary Forms, for example, Durkheim first defined religion as a body of beliefs and practices uniting followers in a single community, and later he concluded that this is one of religion's major functions. But there is no clearer instance of this style of argument than Durkheim's "etiological" classification of the types of suicide, which of course presupposes the validity of the causal explanations eventually proposed for them. The point, again is not that this automatically destroys Durkheim's argument; but it does make it impossible to entertain alternative causes and typologies, and thus to evaluate Durkheim's frequently ambitious claims.58

Durkheim's repeated insistence that sociology is a science with its own, irreducible "reality" to study also led him to adopt a language that was both highly metaphorical and systematically misleading. This is first evident in The Division of Labor, where abundant biological metaphors continuously suggest that society is "like" an organism in a variety of unspecified and unqualified ways; and it is still more pernicious in The Elementary Forms, where the real themes of the work -- the social origin of religious beliefs and rituals, their symbolic meanings, etc. -- are frequently disguised beneath the obfuscatory language of "electrical currents" and "physical forces."59 Suicide combines the worst elements of both; and in particular, this language made it difficult if not impossible for Durkheim to speak intelligibly about the way in which individual human beings perceive, interpret, and respond to "suicido-genic" social conditions.60

Finally, it might be argued that Durkheim's central explanatory hypothesis -- that, when social conditions fail to provide people with the necessary social goals and/or rules at the appropriate levels of intensity their socio-psychological health is impaired, and the most vulnerable among them commit suicide -- raises far more questions than it answers. Aren't there different kinds of "social goals and rules," for example, and aren't some of these dis -harmonious? What is socio-psychological "health"? Isn't it socially determined, and thus relative to the particular society or historical period in question? Why are disintegrative, egoistic appetites always described as individual, psychological, and even organic in origin? Aren't some of our most disruptive drives socially generated? And if they are, aren't they also culturally relative? Why are some individuals rather than others "impaired"? And what is the relationship (if, indeed, there is one) between such impairment and suicide? The fact that these questions and others are continuously begged simply reiterates an earlier point -- that Durkheim's macro-sociological explanations all presuppose some social-psychological theory, whose precise nature is never made explicit.61

Notes
1897b: 42.
Durkheim recognized that this distinction was already not without ambiguity: "In one sense, few cases of death exist which are not immediately or distantly due to some act of the subject. The causes of death are outside rather than within us, and are effective only if we venture into their sphere of activity" (1897b: 43).
1897b: 48.
1897b: 51.
Durkheim did not deny, therefore, that individual conditions may cause individual suicides, nor did he deny that this was a profitable area of study for psychologists; but most of these conditions are insufficiently general to affect the suicide rate of the society as a whole, and thus they were of no interest to the sociologist (cf. 1897b: 51-52).
1897b: 67.
It is interesting to see how little Durkheim claimed to understand this process in 1897 (cf. 1897b: 125-127, 130 n10), particularly in light of its significance in Durkheim's later explanation of religious belief and ritual (cf. 1912: 240 245).
1897b: 129.
Durkheim also distinguished between suicides caused by moral contagion (originating in one or two individual cases and then repeated by others) and those caused by moral epidemic (originating in the whole group under the influence of a common pressure): the first involved imitation and were thus attributable to psychological causes while the second was a social fact subject to social causes (cf. 1897b: 131-130).
This scorns to have been the main point of this chapter altogether: cf. Durkheim s conclusion: No fact is more readily transmissible by contagion than suicide. yet we have lust seen that this contagiousness has no social effects. If imitation is so much without social influence in this case, it cannot have more in others: the virtues ascribed to it are therefore imaginary (1897b: 141, 142).
1897b: 141.
Cf. Lukes, 1972: 31-32.
1897b: 147.
1897b: 151.
1897b: 157. Here Durkheim was not denying the idealistic nature of Roman Catholicism by contrast, for example, with Greco-Latin polytheism and Hebrew monotheism; rather, he was arguing that Protestantism stresses religious individualism and freedom of personal interpretation, while "all variation is abhorrent to Catholic thought" (1897b: 158).
1897b: 158.
Durkheim thus acknowledged the role of minority status, not because religious hostility Imposes some "higher morality," but because it forces the minority to achieve greater unity and integration (cf. 1897b: 159-160).
1897b: 168.
Cf. the similar point in The Division of Labor (1893: 409).
1897b: 170.
This was Durkheim's famous "coefficient of preservation"--the number showing how many times less frequent suicide is in one group than in another at the same age. Thus. when Durkheim said that the coefficient of preservation of husbands of the age of 25 in relation to unmarried men is 3, he meant that, if the tendency to suicide of married persons at this time of life is represented by 1, that of unnamed persons must be represented by 3. When the coefficient of preservation sinks below 1, Durkheim described it as a "coefficient of aggravation" (1897b: 177).
Durkheim thus rejected the Malthusian connection between limitation of family size and general well-being: "Actually [this restriction] is so much a source of the reverse condition that it diminishes the human desire to live. Far from dense families being a sort of unnecessary luxury appropriate only to the rich, they are actually an indispensable staff of daily life" (1897b: 201).
1897b: 208.
1897b: 213.
1897b: 214.
"Obligatory" altruistic suicide is the essential type, from which two others derive -- i.e., "optional" altruistic suicide, in which a concurrence of circumstances makes self-inflicted death praiseworthy, thus encouraging it without requiring it; and "acute" altruistic suicide (of which "mystical" suicide is the "perfect pattern"), in which the individual kills himself for the pure joy of sacrifice and self-renunciation (cf. 1897b:222-225).
This is not to say that a melancholy view of life automatically increases the inclination to suicide. Christians, for example, have a gloomy conception of this life combined with an aversion to suicide, a conjunction Durkheim attributed to their "moderate individualism" (cf. 1897b: 226).
1897b: 238-9.
1897b: 246.
1897b: 247. This argument -- that desires are simple and few in the "state of nature," but multiply with advancing civilization -- is one that we (and presumably Durkheim) owe to Rousseau's Discourse on the Origin of Inequality (1755).
1897b: 247-8.
Cf. Davis and Moore. "Some Principles of Stratification", American Sociological Review, Vol. X (April, 1945). pp. 242-249.
Durkheim used the term "repressive anomy" to describe the condition produced by a reclassification downward in the social hierarchy, and "progressive anomy" to describe its upward counterpart (cf. 1897b: 285).
1897b: 256.
Cf. Book Two, Chapter 3.
Cf. the study of Bertillon (September. 1882), summarized by Durkheim on p. 260.
1897b: 270.
1897b: 275-6.
1897b: 309. Durkheim thus presented an alternative explanation for a phenomenon -- the statistical regularity of certain social phenomena over time -- first analyzed scientifically in Adolph Quetelet's Sur l'homme et le développment de ses facultés ou Essai de physique sociale (1835) and Du système social et des lois qui le régissent (1848). See Durkheim's discussion of these works on pp. 300-304.
Cf. 1893: 96-100.
1897b: 310-11.
1897b: 318. Durkheim insists that the alternative view -- that a whole is qualitatively identical with the sum of its parts, and an effect qualitatively reducible to the sum of its causes -- would render all change inexplicable; and he again attacks what he takes to be Tarde's defense of this position (cf. 1897b: 311-312).
See, for example, the famous arguments against such proscription presented in Montesquieu's Persian Letters (1721) and Hume s "On Suicide" (1783).
1897b: 334.
This modern "cult of man" should not be confused with the "egoistic individualism" discussed earlier. The latter represents an insufficient state of integration which detaches the individual from society with dangerous consequences, the former unites the members of a society in a single thought, the disinterested impersonal conception of an "ideal humanity" which transcends and subordinates private, selfish goals (cf. 1897b: 330-337).
Durkheim recognized that the homicides produced by conditions of anomie and those produced by conditions of altruism could not be "of the same nature"; like suicide, therefore. homicide "is not a single, individual criminological entity, but must include a variety of species very different from one another" (1897b: 358).
Cf. the discussion of crime presented in 1897b: 98-104.
Cf. 1897b: 85-107. To these symptoms of pathology, Durkheim adds the rise of philosophical pessimism. Comparing his own intellectual milieu with that of Zeno and Epicurus, he points to the systems of Schopenhauer and Hartmann, and the more broadly based intellectual movements of anarchism, aestheticism, mysticism, and revolutionary socialism as evidence of a "collective melancholy" which "would not have penetrated consciousness so far if it had not undergone a morbid development" (1897b: 370).
The causes of altruistic suicide, as we have seen, played no role in the "morbid effervescence" of nineteenth-century suicides, and appeared instead to be declining. Fatalistic suicide was already a subject of merely historical interest.
1897b: 373-374.
1897b: 379. Cf. the important Preface to the second edition of The Division of Labor (1902) which extends this argument.
The failure of the state to perform this regulative function in the past, Durkheim suggests, led to the eventual suppression of the medieval guilds altogether: "... if similar corporations of different localities had been connected with one another instead of remaining isolated. so as to forth a single system, if all these systems had been subject to the general influence of the State and thus kept in constant awareness of their solidarity, bureaucratic despotism and occupational egoism would have been kept within proper limits" (1897b: 381-382).
1897b: 380.
Though not all kinds of anomie. The only way to reduce suicides arising from conjugal anomie (i.e.. divorce), Durkheim suggests, is to make marriage more indissoluble; but by thus diminishing the suicides of husbands, we would also increase those of wives, for whom the matrimonial bond is of considerably less benefit. This dilemma can he overcome, however. if we recall that the differential advantage enjoyed by the husband is due to the fact that his aspirations are of societal origin while the wife is more influenced by physiology. While Durkheim was sure that a woman could never fulfill the same social functions as a man, therefore, he still felt that granting women a more active and important role in society would eventually secure them the same advantages from matrimony hitherto enjoyed only by men (cf. 1897b: 384 386).
1897b: 383. This parallel efficacy is due to the fact that, at least in part, anomie results from the same cause -- the "disaggregation" of social forces -- as does egoism; but in each case "the effect is different, depending on the "point of incidence" of this cause, and whether it "influences active and practical functions, or functions that are representative. The former it agitates and exasperates; the latter it disorients and disconcerts" (1897b: 382).
"Decentralization" was the watchword of a number of Durkheim's contemporaries who, recognizing the impotence of the monolithic state in the face of egoism and anomie, sought to restore to local groups some of their old autonomy. Durkheim's proposed reform was thus a specific variation on this more general theme. The particular advantage of occupational decentralization, he urged, is that, because each of these new centers of moral life would be the focus of only specialized activity, the individual could become attached to them, and they could become attached to one another, without the solidarity of the country as a whole being undermined (cf. 1897b: 390-391).
Lukes, 1972: 31-33.
Cf. Lukes, 1972: 31.
In his defense of The Elementary Forms before the Société francaise de philosophie (1913), Durkheim insisted that his primary concern had been to point out the "dynamo-genic" quality of religious belief.
Cf. Lukes, 1972: 34-36.
Cf. Lukes, 1972: 213-222.

Read more on Suicide HERE

It's holiday season (at least for those Christians who believe Lord Jesus was born on 25 December), and materialistic mercantilism runs wild. We present some unusual Christ-conscious gifts, or rather some Christ-connected commercial novelties. Warning: those allergic to weirdness are strongly advised to avoid this gallery.

This page has to be seen to be believed................ http://www.mcphee.com/categories/christianity.html

Four ISKCON restaurants have been included in the top 15 best vegetarian restaurants to eat by the Australian public.

The I LOVE FOOD awards has been established to find the best places in Australia to eat out. Over 11,000 eateries were nominated in 36 categories by the public. So congratulations to GOVINDA’S in Sydney, CARDAMOM POD in Byron bay, GAURA NITAI’S in Cairns and GOPAL’S in Melbourne.

All these restaurants are either run by the temple or devotee couples.

For more information visit the http://www.lifestylefood.com.au  site.
 

Australians Vote with Their Tongues
http://www.iskcon.net.au/kurma/2007/12/20#a4295
 

Australia's LifeStyle FOOD Channel has conducted a survey (based on a public voting system) on Australia's most popular restaurants.

Of the top 15 vegetarian restaurants in Australia http://www.lifestylefood.com.au/eatoutguide/?Type=VEGETARIAN, four are Hare Krishna restaurants: Govinda's in Darlinghurst NSW, The Cardamom Pod in Byron Bay NSW, Gaura Nitai's in Cairns QLD, and Gopal's in Melbourne, Victoria.

Congratulations! And thanks to the Australian public for letting us know what you like (Kurma dasa).

(Christian science monitor)

JHABUA, INDIA, December 28, 2007: Biju Verghese believes the end of the world is coming. This faith makes his work urgent: Convert as many Indians to Christianity as possible. Or, as he puts it, "reach the unreached at any cost." Verghese is a new breed of missionary, tied not to the mainline Protestant or Catholic churches that came with European colonizers but to expansionist evangelical movements in the U.S., Britain, and Australia. These newer Christians are now the most active, swiftly winning over Indians like Verghese who in turn devote themselves to expanding the church's reach, village by village.

The success of recent Christian missionaries and their methods of quick conversions have brought tensions with other religions, including some Christians who fear that certain evangelicals are contributing to a volatile -- and at times violent -- religious atmosphere. The new missionaries put an emphasis on speed, compelled sometimes by church quotas and a belief in the approach of the world's end. "Aggressive and unprincipled missionary work that exploits the distress and ignorance of marginalized groups . .. can constitute a catalyst to localized violence, particularly when they are brought into confrontation with other creeds," says Ajai Sahni, executive director of the Institute of Conflict Management in New Delhi.

The Christian zeal for conversions ebbed in India after a nearly successful Indian rebellion in 1857 and a theological trend toward good works, such as improving education and healthcare. Yet many of today's missionaries are returning to practices of proselytizing that were long ago abandoned by the mainline missionaries because they were seen as offensive.

In recent years conversion activity has grown more intense, driven by the evangelical Christians funded from abroad. But the conversion work that some call "aggressive" takes place outside the traditional places of worship. Evangelical and Pentacostal missionaries go village to village, holding prayer meetings in homes or preaching outdoors to all the villagers together.

These e vents often mix emotional messages of personal salvation, speaking in tongues, shaking in trances, and miraculous healings. Some people come for the spectacle; others take advantage of free food. After these performances, whole families, neighborhoods, and even villages are sometimes converted. The missionary leaders move on to the next village, leaving behind money -- but sometimes little other support -- for new church constructions and pastor salaries.

The differing approaches also came to light during recent tsunami relief efforts. A host of small Christian groups headed to India, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka to distribute humanitarian aid along with Christian literature. After the tsunami, the U.S. National Council of Churches issued a statement warning against the practice by "New Missionaries" of mixing evangelism and aid. "You get this guy out of Texas who has no idea of the local culture, he is out to win souls, and he comes with a lot of money," says Bob Alter, former Presbyterian pastor.

Vedic World Heritage links:

See our pages supporting these views HERE:
http://www.hknet.org.nz/VWH.html (Vedik World Heritage)
Western Indologists been exposed page:
http://www.hknet.org.nz/WesternIndologists-page.htm
How British Misguided the World on Vedic History
http://www.hknet.org.nz/MotiveBritishRajMissionaries.html

Courtesy of Hinduism Today

While religions around the world share a quest for spirituality, they vary in their perception that respecting all forms of life is integral to that quest. In the following 13 pages, we focus on the subject of compassion as it is practiced by the adherents of eight religions--four East and four West--and reflected in their choice to eat meat, or not .

By Jane Srivastava, South Carolina

All religions of the world extol compassion, yet they vary in their commitment to expressing this virtue through nonviolence and vegetarianism. A growing number of today's vegetarians refrain from eating meat more for reasons pertaining to improved health, a cleaner environment and a better world economy than for religious concerns. Even those whose vegetarianism is inspired by compassion are oftentimes driven more by a sense of conscience than by theological principle.

In this article we briefly explore the attitudes of eight world religions with regard to meat-eating and the treatment of animals. It may be said with some degree of certainty that followers of Eastern religions--like Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism--generally agree in their support of nonviolence and a meatless lifestyle. But such a collective stance among followers of Western religions--like Judaism, Christianity and Islam--may not be asserted with the same confidence. Many deeply religious souls in the West eat meat because it is sanctioned in their holy books. Others refrain for a variety of reasons, including their sense of conscience that it is just not right, regardless of what scriptures say. Certainly, many scriptural references to food and diet are ambiguous at best. The issue is complicated.

Good Jains are exceptional examples of nonviolence and vegetarianism. Jainism, a deeply ascetic religion mainly centered in India, mandates that adherents refrain from harming even the simplest of life forms. Jains even follow dietary codes regulating the types of plants they eat.

Over the ages and around the world, Hindus have followed a variety of diets predicated on geography and socio-economic status. Although vegetarianism has never been a requirement for Hindus and modern Hindus eat more meat than ever before, no follower of this oldest of world religions will ever deny that vegetarianism promotes spiritual life.

The dietary standards of Buddhists also vary in accordance with time and place. Although the cessation of suffering and an earnest commitment to nonviolence are central to Buddhist Dharma, most of the world's Buddhists are not vegetarian.

In Judaism, the oldest of the Abrahamic religions, there has long been a debate over whether meat should be eaten, with the view predominating that God allowed meat-eating as a concession to human weakness and need.

Muslim cultures are predominantly nonvegetarian, though abstaining from eating meat is generally permitted if the devotee acknowledges that such abstinence will not bring him closer to Allah.

Modern-day Christians may eat meat without restriction. Even though many Christians of the Middle Ages were vegetarian, a meat-eating interpretation of the Bible has slowly become the official position of the Christian Church.

Here follows a study of perspectives on vegetarianism and nonviolence in these eight world faiths.

Jainism
The virtuous compassion of the Jain lifestyle yields exemplary vegetarians

All good Jains are vegetarians, for they believe that no living entity should be harmed or killed, especially for food. According to one famous Jain motto: "All living creatures must help each other." From its inception 2,600 years ago, Jainism has remained faithful in its commitment to nonviolence and vegetarianism.

Because followers of this gentle religion make compassion the central focus of their lives, their understanding and practice of ahimsa exceeds even that of many of the followers of other Eastern religions. Jains believe that humans, animals and plants are all sacred and can feel pain. Hence, they are careful to avoid harming even plants.

The concept of ahimsa, noninjury, permeates all aspects of Jain life. Some ascetics of this faith will sweep insects from their path as they walk and wear a face mask to prevent inadvertently killing small organisms as they breathe. Traditionally, these kindly souls adhere to the ideals of nonviolence with regard to the jobs they take to make a living. Often, they will work as traders of commodities. Even here, they follow rules. They will never handle goods made with animal products, such as hides, horns, ivory and silk. Farming and defending one's nation are allowed as exceptions to the rule.

Jains classify the life-quality of all living entities according to the number of senses they possess. The lowest forms of life have only one sense: touch. This group includes plants. The highest life forms--including humans and most animals--have all five senses: touch, taste, smell, sight and hearing. The earthworm is an example of a life form with only two senses: touch and taste. Lice have three: touch, taste and smell. Mosquitoes have four: touch, taste, smell and sight. Jains consume only plants, because plants have just one sense.

Jains have extensive dietary rules regarding the choice and preparation of the plants they eat. Generally, vegetables that grow underground are prohibited, because harvesting them usually means pulling them up by their roots, which destroys the entire plant, as well as all the microorganisms living around its roots. When possible, fruits are plucked only when they are ripe and ready to fall to the ground. Ideally, these are harvested after they have fallen of their own accord.

Grains, such as wheat, rice and beans, are collected only when the pods are dry and dead. Very orthodox Jains will not eat certain fruits and vegetables that contain a lot of seeds--like eggplant and guava--because these so often contain worms. Cauliflower, broccoli and other vegetables with velvety surfaces are also avoided by orthodox Jains because tiny insects get stuck on their surfaces and cannot be removed. Mushrooms are not consumed because they may contain parasites. Leafy vegetables, like cabbage and spinach, are carefully washed and inspected for insects and worms. Dairy products are allowed.

Jains follow restrictions on the timing of food preparation and its consumption. Meals must be cooked and eaten only during daylight hours. This rule evolved because cooking food at night could cause the death of small flying creatures like gnats and mosquitoes that would be attracted to the light and warmth of a fire.

Jains perform several kinds of fasts, including during festivals and on the eighth and fourteenth day of the full moon cycle. While fasting, only foods prepared from grains are allowed, and no fruits or vegetables are consumed. Besides protection of other living beings, the primary purpose of the Jains' dietary codes is to control desire and purify mind and body. In addition, their practices provide health and environmental benefits and help to conserve world resources. At a world environmental congress recently held in England, a comparative study of religions proclaimed Jainism the most environmentally friendly religion on Earth.

The lifestyle of modern Jain monks and nuns is more austere than that of even the strictest lay Jains. In their respect for Mahavira, Jainism's founder, monks of the Digambar (sky-clad) sect wear no clothes, shave their heads and walk barefoot. They eat only once a day, and then only what is offered to them as a sacrament.

Today there are roughly five million Jains worldwide, with the most orthodox residing in India. Although many modern Jains modify their dietary restrictions for convenience, most are faithful vegetarians. Some have entered non-traditional professions. A select few have migrated to foreign countries and have become some of the wealthiest Indians in the world.
 

Hinduism
Hindus comprise the great majority of the world's vegetarians

The vast diversity of Hinduism's multifaceted culture shines like gold in the variety of its numerous foods--both vegetarian and not. Geography, occupation, class and economic status play a significant role in determining the diets of modern-day Hindus. So does dedicated religious commitment.

Hindus are unmatched in their development of the art of enjoyable eating for healthy living. Their vegetarian food preparations are among the most varied in the world, and their ability to create a well-rounded nutritional diet without forfeiting taste is legendary. Many Westerners, inspired to be vegetarian but thinking a meatless diet might be boring or nutritionally lacking, derive renewed encouragement and inspiration from the many time-tested vegetarian traditions of India. One source of such wholesome eating dates back thousands of years to the health-care system of ayurveda, the "science of long life, "which utilizes food both as medicine and sustenance.

India's cooking traditions vary greatly from North to South. One typical South Indian vegetarian meal might consist of an ample portion of rice centered on a banana-leaf plate, surrounded by small servings of vegetables prepared as curries, pickles and chutneys. This tasty assortment would be enhanced with soupy sambars and rasam, a few jaggery sweets on the side and a small portion of yogurt to balance the tastes and soothe digestion at the end of the entire meal.

Setting aside extenuating circumstances, most good Hindus would choose to follow a vegetarian way of life. All Hindu scriptures extol nonviolence and a meatless diet as being crucially important in the successful practice of worship and yoga. Most Hindu monastic orders are vegetarian. For centuries, Hindu temples and ashrams have served only vegetarian food. "Hindu dharma generally recommends vegetarianism, " notes Vedacharya Vamadeva Shastri, "but it is not a requirement to be a Hindu."

The earliest scriptural texts show that vegetarianism has always been common throughout India. In the Mahabharata, the great warrior Bhishma explains to Yudhisthira, eldest of the Pandava princes, that the meat of animals is like the flesh of one's own son, and that the foolish person who eats meat must be considered the vilest of human beings. The Manusmriti declares that one should "refrain from eating all kinds of meat " for such eating involves killing and leads to karmic bondage (bandha). The Yajur Veda states, "You must not use your God-given body for killing God's creatures, whether they are human, animal or whatever." The Atharva Veda proclaims, "Those noble souls who practice meditation and other yogic ways, who are ever careful about all beings, who protect all animals, are commited to spiritual practices."

Over 2,000 years ago, Saint Tiruvalluvar wrote in the Tirukural (verse 251): "How can he practice true compassion who eats the flesh of an animal to fatten his own flesh?" and "Greater than a thousand ghee offerings consumed in sacrificial fires is to not sacrifice and consume any living creature." (verse 259)

Vegetarianism, called shakahara in Sanskrit, is an essential virtue in Hindu thought and practice. It is rooted in the spiritual aspiration to maintain a balanced state of mind and body. Hindus also believe that eating meat is not only detrimental to one's spiritual life, but also harmful to one's health and the environment.

Most Hindus strive to live in the consciousness that their choice of foods bears consequences, according to the law of karma. Even the word "meat, " mamsa, implies the karmic law of cause and effect. Mam means "me " and sa means "he, " intimating that the giver of pain will be the receiver of that same pain in equal measure.

Historically, while a large portion of ancient Hindu society lived predominantly on a vegetarian diet for religious reasons, certain communities, like kshatriyas (the Hindu warrior class), consumed at least some meat and fish. Hindu royalty also ate meat. Nomadic Hindus, who did not farm, had to rely on animal flesh for food, because nothing else was available. Agricultural communities were among the best examples of Hindu vegetarianism, for they were not inclined to kill and eat the animals they needed for labor.

All animals are sacred to Hindus, but one stands out among all the rest--the cow. According to an ancient Hindu story, the original cow, Mother Surabhi, was one of the treasures churned from the cosmic ocean. The five products of the cow (pancha-gavya)--milk, curd, ghee, urine and dung--are considered sacramental.

Although no temples have ever been constructed to honor the cow, she is respected as one of the seven mothers--alongside the Earth, one's natural mother, a midwife, the wife of a guru, the wife of a brahman and the wife of the king.

Some controversy exists with regard to the Vedic interpretation of meat-eating. The the earliest of the Vedas, the Rig Veda, mentioned the consumption of meat offered in sacrifice at the altar, but even such ceremonial meat-eating was an exception, rather than a rule. Vedic offerings primarily consisted of plant and dairy products, such as ghee, honey, soma (an intoxicating plant juice), milk, yogurt and grain.

According to Vedacharya Vamadeva Shastri in his book, Eating of Meat and Beef in the Hindu Tradition: "Animal sacrifice (pashu bandhu) is outlined in several Vedic texts as one of many different possible offerings, not as the main offering. Even so, the animal could only be killed while performing certain mantras and rituals."

Today, according to a recent survey, 31 percent of all Indians are vegetarian. Meat is not even sold or allowed in certain famous pilgrimage locations like Haridwar and Varanasi, and many non-vegetarian Hindus abstain from eating meat on holy days or during special religious practices. Most Indian states have a legal ban on the slaughter of cows, and beef is only available in non-Hindu stores and restaurants.

They who are ignorant, though wicked and haughty, kill animals without feelings or remorse or fear of punishment. In their next lives, such sinful persons will be eaten by the same creatures they have killed. Shrimad Bhagavatam, (11.5.14),
 

Buddhism
Buddha condemned meat-eating, but advised his monks to accept the food they were served

Like Jainism, Buddhism has earned well-deserved distinction for its ideals of nonviolence and compassion. Although animal sacrifice and meat-eating were common practices during Buddha's lifetime, the sage opposed animal slaughter and advised his followers to not eat meat under the following three conditions: if they saw the animal being killed; if they consented to its slaughter; or if they knew the animal was going to be killed for them.

As Buddhism spread around the world, many of its fundamental concepts were modified to fit changing times and different cultures. The concept of ahimsa acquired a less stringent interpretation, and meat-eating among Buddhists became more and more commonplace.

Today, the international Buddhist community is divided on the issue of vegetarianism. The Dalai Lama himself is not vegetarian. Many Buddhists feel that it is acceptable to eat meat if someone else does the killing. Those who believe in the vegetarian ideal assert that killing animals is avoidable and does not resonate with Buddhism's spirit of reverence for all life.

All Buddhist schools of thought agree that compassion and the cessation of suffering lies at the core of Buddha's teaching. But there are conflicting interpretations even regarding Buddha's own consumption of meat. While at least one tradition declares that Buddha died from eating tainted pork, a number of nineteenth-century scholars asserted that it was a poisonous mushroom that caused his death. Most Buddhists favor the latter explanation.

Buddha did not teach vegetarianism in a formal way. In one scriptural verse, he made it clear that a Buddhist monk should receive with gratitude any food that was put into his begging bowl, even if it were meat. It is almost certain, however, that most Buddhists giving food to a monk would know that offering meat would not be proper.

The Buddhist view of animals is best described in Jataka Tales--stories Buddha himself is said to have narrated. These anecdotes tell of his previous incarnations as animals and as humans. They convey the message that all creatures are divine, and that slaying an animal is as heinous as killing a human.

The two prominent Buddhist traditions today are the Hinayana and Mahayana sects. Those of the Hinayana sect, most of whom are renunciate monks, seek spiritual liberation through the attainment of Self-realization. The Mahayana sect, by far the largest school, is comprised mainly of family men and women who pursue spiritual advancement through service--helping themselves by helping others. The Indo-Tibetan and Zen traditions, which are of the Mahayana sect, have many texts that praise the vegetarian ideal.

A good example is found in the Lankavatara Sutras, a central Mahayana scripture said to consist of Buddha's own words. In support of vegetarianism, the sage states: "For the sake of love and purity, the bodhisattva should refrain from eating flesh, which is born of semen and blood. For fear of causing terror to living beings, let the bodhisattva, who disciplines himself to attain compassion, refrain from eating flesh. It is not true that meat is proper food and permissible to eat. Meat-eating in any form, in any manner and in any place is unconditionally and once and for all prohibited. I do not permit it. I will not permit it."

A Buddhist Bible, written by in Dwight Goddard in 1932, echoes this vegetarian sentiment. This book strongly influenced the growth of Buddhism in the English-speaking world during the 20th century. It is famous for its transformatory effect on beat writers such as Jack Kerouac. "The reason for practicing dhyana (meditation) and seeking to attain samadhi (mystic contemplation) is to escape from the suffering of life, " writes Goddard. "But in seeking to escape from suffering ourselves, why should we inflict it upon others? How can a bhikshu (seeker), who hopes to become a deliverer of others, himself be living on the flesh of other sentient beings?"

The vegetarian flavor of the faith found fertile fields when Buddhism spread to China and Japan, where a nonviolent, meat-free culture had long been an established way of life. According to The Encyclopaedia of Buddhism, "In China and Japan the eating of meat was looked upon as an evil and was ostracized. The eating of meat gradually ceased and this tended to become general. It became a matter of course not to use any kind of meat in the meals of temples and monasteries."

Buddhism entered China during the Han dynasty (206 bce--220 ce) when Confucianism and Taoism were already well established. The Chinese worshiped ancestral deities and followed strict dietary rules. Certain foods--pork, for example--were said to make the breath "obnoxious to the ancestors " and were frowned upon.

Ancient Japanese lived primarily on vegetables, rice and grains. When Buddhism began to gain a stronghold in Japan during the sixth century, the nation had already absorbed much of Chinese culture. Chinese Buddhism blended compatibly with the Shintoism of Japan, which was significantly vegetarian. According to Shinto tradition, no animal food is offered at a shrine, as it is taboo to shed blood in a sacred place. Today, the Buddhism of Japan constitutes a merge of Shintoism with Chinese Buddhism. Although eating meat, especially fish, is common in the Japanese Buddhist community, the deeply religious still consider it an inferior practice. No meat or fish is ever consumed in a Zen Buddhist monastery.

Today, most Buddhists are not vegetarian, though contemporary Buddhist movements, such as Buddhists Concerned for Animal Rights, are seeking to reestablish vegetarian ideals. One Buddhist denomination, called the Cao Dai sect, has two million vegetarian followers.

The greatest progress of righteousness among men comes from the exhortation in favour of non-injury to life and abstention from killing. The Edicts of Ashoka
 

Judaism
Jewish scholars believe God intended man to be vegetarian

Although ancient Hebrews ate meat, they did so sparingly. This restraint was not religiously or even ethically motivated. Meat was expensive and its consumption was a luxury. As an agrarian society, biblical Jews used animals mainly for labor and were largely vegetarian. They also consumed a great quantity of milk and milk products, mainly from sheep and goats.

Today most Jews live on a predominantly meat-based diet. A typical Jewish simcha (private celebration) consists of brisket, gefilte fish cakes, fish and chicken soup or chopped liver. Roberta Kalechofsky points out in Vegetarian Judaism--A Guide for Everyone that "Western Jews have historically eaten as much meat as the non-Jews; and due to their growing prosperity, European Jews have started to fully identify themselves with the meat-based diet."

Scholars of Judaism agree that God's intention was for man to be vegetarian. "God did not permit Adam and his wife to kill a creature and to eat its flesh,'' said Rashi, a highly respected, 12th-century, Jewish rabbi who wrote the first comprehensive commentaries on the Talmud and Tanakh. Ronald Isaacs states in Animals in Jewish Thought and Tradition that all Talmudic rabbis conclude that "the permission to eat meat [was granted to human kind] as a compromise, a divine concession to human weakness and human need." Rabbi Elijah Judah Schochet, in Animal Life in Jewish Tradition, notes that "scripture does not command the Israelite to eat meat, but permits this diet as a concession to lust."

Jewish dietary laws are unique in including a prohibition against mixing meat and milk: "You shall not seethe a kid in its mother's milk " (Exodus 23:19). This mandate of not boiling a young goat in the milk of its mother is an elaboration of the command against cruelty to animals. Also, because offering meat boiled in milk was a pagan form of hospitality, Jews saw ruling against the practice as a way of distancing themselves from pagan ways.

Judaism prohibits the consumption of blood: "Only flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall you not eat " (Genesis 9:4). "You shall eat the blood of no manner of flesh; for the life of all flesh is the blood thereof " Leviticus 17:14). The rationale behind this injunction is that life belongs to God, and blood is life. "Blood is the life, and you shall not eat the life with the flesh " (Deuteronomy 12:23).

In Jewish tradition, only certain animals are suitable as food. According to Elijah Schochet in his book Animal Life in Jewish Tradition: "Only quadrupeds which chewed their cud and had parted hoofs, such as the cow, sheep, goat, gazelle and male deer, were fit for food, these being by and large the herbivorous ruminants. Animals possessing only one of the two required characteristics, however, such as the camel, the badger and the pig, were forbidden, as of course, were animals which neither had split hoofs nor chewed their cud. Animals which died of natural causes were prohibited, as were those torn by wild beasts. Only fish possessing both fins and scales were permitted, while the majority of insects were forbidden. All land creatures that crawled on their bellies or moved on many feet were prohibited. Numerous birds were outlawed, notably predatory fowl and wild waterfowl."

Jewish scholars cite three characteristics that distinguish animals as not suitable for slaughter as kosher meat: 1) that they are injurious to health, 2) that they are aesthetically repulsive and 3) that they serve as symbolic reminders to Jews of their status as holy people. Rabbinical authority states that these guidelines are to be obeyed in order that Israel should be "a holy people unto the Lord, " and "distinguished from other nations by the avoidance of unclean and abominable things that defile them."

The Bible does not provide direct support for the various Jewish dietary laws pertaining to the koshering process. Still, ritual slaughter (shechitah) is one of the central elements of kashrut (Jewish dietary laws). Kashrut decrees that an animal's throat must be cut with a single, swift, uninterrupted horizontal sweep of a perfectly smooth knife in such a way as to sever the trachea, esophagus, carotid arteries and jugular vein. The profuse loss of blood is supposed to render the animal unconscious quickly, thus minimizing suffering.

Cruelty can be measured by the length of time it takes for an animal to die. One study performed by the English Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals concluded that "there is often a time-lag of anything from seventeen seconds to six minutes from the moment the animal's throat is cut until it actually loses consciousness. Although the throat may be cut, the animal is by no means free from pain and can in some cases have a considerable awareness of what is happening." Clearly, Judaism's animal slaughter for food is difficult to reconcile with its pro-vegetarian interpretation of the Torah and its mandate to not inflict pain on any living being.

Jewish dietary laws apply only to animal foods. All fruits, vegetables, unprocessed grains--and anything that does not contain meat or milk products--are intrinsically kosher. Making meat kosher involves a complex process of removing all blood from the flesh. The butcher must remove veins, sacs and various membranes that collect blood, then soak, salt and rinse the meat to extract any remaining blood. Some authorities point out, however, that while koshering removes blood from the larger blood vessels, it does not extract it from the smallest vessels, such as the capillaries.

Today, the number of Jewish vegetarians is increasing. Advocates promote the Jewish teaching that "humans are partners with God in the preservation of life and health."

"The removal of blood [from meat] is one the most powerful means of making us constantly aware of the concession and compromise which the whole act of eating meat, in reality, is." The Jewish Dietary Law by Rabbi Samuel Dresner
 

Islam
In a religion that praises the pleasures of meat, a few go vegetarian

In ancient times, meat-eating in Islamic countries was predicated on necessity. Pre-Islamic Arabs led a pastoral and nomadic existence in harsh desert climates where it would have been challenging, if not impossible, to survive on a vegetarian diet.

When Islamic civilization spread into Asia in the eighth century, meat-eating became an important symbol of difference, separating them from the predominantly vegetarian Buddhist and Hindu faiths and practices.

Muslims adhere to dietary regulations which are similar to those of Jews. Forbidden foods, referred to as haram, are blood, pork and those animals that have not been slaughtered by cutting the jugular vein with a very sharp knife while reciting a prayer pronouncing the name of Allah.

According to his earliest biographies, the Prophet Mohammed preferred vegetarian food, particularly favoring milk blended with yogurt, butter, nuts, cucumber, dates, pomegranates, grapes, figs and honey.

Mohammed was said to have been compassionate toward animals, and Islamic scriptures often command that all creatures be treated with care. According to Islamic tradition, no creature should be harmed in Mecca, the birthplace of Mohammed.

The Qur'an states that animals are like humans: "There is not an animal on earth, nor a bird that flies on its wings--but that they are communities like you. Nothing have We omitted from the Book, and they all shall be gathered to their Lord in the end."

Richard C. Foltz writes in Animals in Islamic Tradition and Muslim Cultures: "[Even though] in mainstream Islam there is a tendency to see animals in terms of how they serve human interests, animals are to be valued, cared for, protected and acknowledged as having certain rights, needs and desires of their own. Their case is like that of human slaves albeit lower in the hierarchical scheme of things."

Some customs of the Sufis, an offshoot of Islam, recommend abstention from meat-eating for bodily purification. Bawa Muhaiyaddeen, a teacher in a 20th century school of Sufism, referred to as the Sri Lankan Qadiri, taught that the consumption of meat stimulates the animal nature, while the consumption of plant and dairy products brings peace. Chishti Inayat Khan, who helped introduce Sufi principles to Europe and America in modern times, observed that vegetarianism not only promotes compassion toward living creatures, it provides an important aid in the purification of the body for spiritual practices.

Nearly all of today's 1.4 billion Muslims eat meat. The practice is justified by the logic that "one must not forbid something which Allah permitted." According to the Qur'an, meat eating is one of the delights of heaven.

Some Islamic legal scholars assert that vegetarianism is actually not allowed by Islam. According to Mawil Izzi Dien in The Environmental Dimensions of Islam, "In Islamic law, there are no grounds upon which one can argue that animals should not be killed for food. & Muslims are not only prohibited from eating certain foods, but also may not choose to prohibit themselves food that is allowed by Islam. Accordingly, vegetarianism is not permitted unless on grounds such as unavailability or medical necessity."

A few stalwart Muslim jurists insist that there should be no prohibition of vegetarianism in Islam and have actually issued legal rulings, known as fatwas, to this effect, asserting that Muslims may choose to be vegetarian, provided they realize and acknowledge that eating meat is allowed, and that vegetarianism will not bring them closer to Allah.

Iran has at least one vegetarian society. Turkey has several national vegetarian organizations. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has, at the suggestion of its Muslim members, launched a web site on Islam and vegetarianism.

Muslims who choose to abstain from eating meat do so for a variety of reasons. Some argue that, especially in the West, truly halal meat does not and cannot exist--that making meat halal is impossible in today's industrialized world of factory farming. Even if the technical requirements of a halal slaughter are observed, the animals are not raised in humane and wholesome environments. They are physically abused and may be killed within view of other animals.

Some Muslims are choosing vegetarian lifestyles more for reasons of good health than upon religious principle. Dr. Shahid Athar of Indiana University School of Medicine asserts in www.IslamicConcern.com: "There is no doubt that a vegetarian diet is healthier."

Others are turning to vegetarianism because of the deleterious effect meat-eating has on the environment. Industrial meat production may render meat haram (Islamically unlawful), because it leads to environmental collapse and destruction. The Qur'an (7:56) states, "Waste not by excess, for Allah loves not the wasters, " and "Do not pollute the earth after it has been (so) wholesomely (set in order) &."

Muslims in the West face additional challenges in following dietary mandates of their faith. Halal meat is often not readily available. Restaurant and pre-packaged foods may contain forbidden ingredients. One option in the face of these challenges is a vegetarian meal, which avoids restricted ingredients. While some Muslims conclude that simply abstaining from eating meat is an obvious solution, others are adamant that following Islamic dietary law is far more complicated than just being vegetarian.

"In all that has been revealed unto me, I do not find anything forbidden to eat, unless it be carrion, or blood poured forth, or the flesh of swine." Qur'an 5:3, 2:173, 6:145
 

Christianity
Both vegetarians and meat-eaters find support in scriptures

Most modern Christians believe in the "dominion perspective, " an exclusively Christian theological stance asserting that human life has greater value than animal life and that all of nature exists for the sole purpose of serving the needs and interests of man. This perspective gained significant development and fortification from famous philosophers and theologians like Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas and Descartes. Descartes asserted that animals were "automata," souless entities with no capacity to experience suffering.

Unlike the Jewish Torah, the New Testament sets no moral guidelines for man in dealing with animals. Apostle Paul, commenting on the Torah's restriction of muzzling an ox that threshes corn, observed: "Does God care for oxen? Of course not. [Their purpose] is altogether for our sakes." (1 Corinthians. 9:9-10)

The Old Testament, known also as the Hebrew Bible, is the first part of the Christian Bible. Therefore, Jews and Christians share the concept that in the beginning, symbolized in the story of the Garden of Eden, mankind was nonviolent and vegetarian, later becoming corrupt, symbolized by the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden.

Genesis 9:1-3 is the most significant Biblical text supporting the Christian tradition of eating meat. This famous verse states that "God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them: 'Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. The fear and dread of you shall rest on every animal of the earth, and on every bird of the air, on everything that creeps on the ground, and on all the fish in the sea; into your hand they are delivered. Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you; and just as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything.' "

If rabbinical literature interprets Genesis 9:3 as divine concession to human weakness and human need, Christians consider it clear and unconditional approval of the consumption of animal flesh.

It is clear from the teachings of the New Testament that Christian tradition came to interpret in the teachings of Christ an express authorization to freely eat meat: "Thus, he declared all foods clean." (Mark 7:19) This assessment is further rationalized with the argument that Jesus put much greater emphasis on man's deeds than on his diet. It has also been postulated that, as a radical reformer, Jesus wanted to distance himself from the formalism of the Jewish faith, and that moving away from Jewish dietary laws toward a more virtue-based ethic might highlight this shift.

There are varying opinions with regard to whether or not Jesus himself ate meat. According to the Bible, he at least ate fish: "And when he said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, 'Have you anything here to eat?' They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence." (Luke 24:40-43).

Christians seeking further justification for their meat-based dietary preferences cite many examples in The New Testament where Jesus asks for meat. Some scholars deny the validity of these citations, asserting that a closer study of the original Greek text reveals that the words understood as "meat " would more accurately be translated as "food." Also, it has been asserted by some experts that fish in this context could also mean little bread rolls made from a submarine plant known as the "fish plant." These soft plants were dried in the sun, ground into flour and baked into rolls. Fish-plant rolls were a significant feature of the ancient Babylonian diet.

There is a strong opinion among some scholars that the original teachings of Jesus were altered by the Church, particularly by the "correctors " who were appointed by ecclesiastical authorities of Nicea in 325 ce. Those scholars believe that these "corrections " most blatantly misrepresented the teachings of Jesus with regard to violence and meat-eating. In his foreword to the translation of The Gospel of the Holy Twelve, Rev. G.J. Ousley writes: "What these correctors did was to cut out of the Gospels, with minute care, certain teachings of our Lord which they did not propose to follow namely, those against the eating of flesh and the taking of strong drink."

Scholars tend to agree that many early Christians were vegetarians. St. John Chrysostom wrote: "We, the Christian leaders, practice abstinence from the flesh of animals to subdue our bodies." Some experts assert that Matthew and all the Apostles abstained from eating meat.

Prior to the Middle Ages, several monastic orders adhered to vegetarianism, including the Augustinian, Franciscan and Cistercian orders. With time, however, organized Christianity moved away from these vegetarian roots. Meat-eating was so much an accepted way of life during the time of the Roman Empire that vegetarian Christians had to follow their culinary choices in secrecy.

Before the end of the 18th century, John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist Church, was the only major Christian leader who was a vegetarian. In 1809, in Safford, England, Reverend William Cowherd started the Bible Christian Church, Europe's first vegetarian church in recent times. By 1817, Reverend Cowherd's nephew, Reverend William Metcalfe, established a branch of this church in Philadelphia, bringing vegetarianism onto American soil.

More recently, several notable personages have adopted and/or encouraged vegetarianism. after: These include Ellen G. White, one of the founders of the Seventh Day Adventists; Dr. Albert Schweitzer, Nobel Peace Prize winner, theologian, musician and philosopher; Dr. John H. Kellogg, creator of corn flakes; Reverend Fred Rogers, host of TV show "Mr. Roger's Neighborhood; " and Reverend Sylvester Graham, creator of graham crackers.

Reverend Sylvester Graham was a Presbyterian minister. He launched a modern food reform, campaigning to assure that essential nutrients were not removed from vegetarian foods. The Seventh day Adventists were the first official vegetarian Christians. Today, half of all Seven Day Adventists are vegetarian. The Trappist, Benedictine and Carthusian Orders of the Roman Catholic Church are also vegetarians.

A growing number of modern Christians not only perceive vegetarianism as being in consonance with core principles of Christianity, they also see it as at least a partial relief to problems like poor health, world hunger and global economy.

"Thou shalt not kill." Exodus 20:13

Sikhism
The first Sikh guru established vegetarian community kitchens

Scholars perceive Sikhism as a syncretic faith that combines elements of Hinduism and Islam. The Sikh religion began in the 16th century in northern India with the teachings of Guru Nanak and was continued by the nine gurus that followed him. Today most of the world's Sikh population live in the Indian state of Punjab. They are mostly meat-eaters, but a predilection for vegetarianism has been present from the faith's beginning.

According to Sikh scholar Swaran Singh Sanehi of the Academy of Namdhari Culture: "Sikh scriptures support vegetarianism fully. Sikhs living during the time of Guru Nanak had adopted the Hindu tradition and way of living in many ways. Their dislike for flesh-foods arose from that tradition. Guru Nanak considered meat-eating improper."

Nanak instituted a tradition of free community kitchens, lungar (still flourishing today) where anyone--regardless of race, religion, gender or caste--can enjoy a simple meal. This was inspired by a belief in the equality of all men and rejection of the Hindu caste system. Such kitchens serve vegetarian food twice a day, every day of the year. Being vegetarian, the meals are acceptable to to people from different religions and cultures. These lungars have been appreciated during times of disaster, such as following the 2005 tsunami and Hurricane Katrina.

In the Sikh scripture, Guru Granth Sahib, meat consumption is strongly condemned in passages like the following: "You kill living beings, and call it a righteous action. Tell me, brother, what would you call an unrighteous action?"

Sikhs rigorously denounce animal sacrifice as well. This includes ritual slaughter to sanctify meat for eating, as in the preparation of halal or kosher meat.

The Indian saint and mystic Kabir, a contemporary of Guru Nanak who some believe may have been Nanak's preceptor, wrote: "If you say that God resides in all, why do you kill a hen? & It is foolish to kill an animal by cruelty and call that dead animal sanctified food. & You keep fasts in order to become acceptable to God, but kill a living animal for your relish."

The ten Gurus of Sikhism neither condoned nor condemned meat-eating in a formal way. Although they felt that it was unnecessary to kill animals and birds for food, they did not believe vegetarianism should become dogma. They emphasized controlling the contents of the mind more than controlling the contents of the body. Guru Nanak apparently considered it futile to argue about food. When pressed to comment on meat-eating, he said, "Only the foolish quarrel over the desirability of eating flesh. They are oblivious to true knowledge and meditation. What is flesh? What is vegetable? Which is sin-infested? Who can say what is good food and that which leads to sin?" Today, some Sikhs avoid beef and pork, observing the meat prohibitions of both Islam and Hinduism. Other groups, such as the Namdharis and Yogi Bhajan's 3HO Golden Temple Movement, are strictly vegetarian.
 

Zoroastrianism
Zoroaster inspired compassion through the practice of virtue

Zoroastrianism (sometimes called Magianism, Mazdaism or Parseeism) was founded in ancient Persia by the prophet Zoroaster, also known as Zarathushtra. Although estimates for the birth of Zoroaster vary greatly, it is popularly accepted that he lived in pastoral Iran around 600 bce and was an ardent advocate of vegetarianism when it was not customary to be so. According to Colin Spencer in The Heretic's Feast, Zoroaster was not only a vegetarian, he also disavowed animal sacrifice.

Zoroaster emphasized moderation. With regard to food, this meant not eating too much--such as in gluttony, or too little--such as in fasting. He also taught compassion through the kind treatment of all living entities.

Zoroastrians have always had a great respect for nature. Today, this benevolence is incorporated into a lifestyle that highlights striving to live with a sensitivity to the soul force vibrant in all things. Zoroastrian festivals celebrate six seasons of the year, which correspond to six periods of creation in nature: mid-spring, mid-summer, the season of corn, the season of flocks, winter solstice and the fire festival of sacrifices.

In the ninth century, the High Priest Atrupat-e Emetan recorded in Denkard, Book VI, his request for Zoroastrians to be vegetarians: "Be plant eaters, O you men, so that you may live long. Keep away from the body of the cattle, and deeply reckon that Ohrmazd, the Lord, has created plants in great number for helping cattle and men."

Zoroastrian scriptures assert that when the "final Savior of the world " arrives, men will give up meat eating.
 

Jane Srivastava holds a bachelor's degree from Vilnius State University, Lithuania, and a degree from the Albany Law School, Albany, New York. She now lives in South Carolina.
 
 

See our World Vegetarian Day Newsletters 2004 - 2005 - World Vege Day

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When the word spread that the world famous, huge Himalayan mountain range was going to produce offspring, hundreds of people began gathering at the foothills of the mountains.  In anticipation, crowds waited, and finally they saw hundreds of rats running from the mountains.

MORAL: It is expected that from the great universities of the world, something wonderful will come out.  But unless they become Krsna conscious, they would be like the offspring of the Himalayan mountains.

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The phaomnneil pweor of the hmuan mnid: Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig!
Mybae the I can sotp slpel ckchenig?

http://www.gaura-gambhira.com/

Written by HH Bhakti Purusottama Swami

Dear Maharaj/ Prabujis/ Matajis,

It is my great pleasure to inform all the devotees of Lord Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu that a great service opportunity has been offered by the temple authorities of Gambhira, in Puri dham, where Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu spent the final years of His manifested pastimes on this earthly planet. Kasi Mishra's house, also known as Gambhira, and the Radha Kanta math, were both under the care of the Orissa government due to 20 years of litigation. Finally, this litigation problem has been resolved and the management of the institution has been returned to the temple mahanta.

The temple has sustained much damage over the years due to lack of proper maintenance. The whole place is very dirty and the roofs and walls are falling down. The temple roof is also cracking. Additionally, the temple has a lack of proper income for the maintenance of the devotees and for deity puja—and, of course, the more the Gambhira is allowed to deteriorate, the fewer visitors it will have.

At this crucial point, the mahanta of Gambhira has requested ISKCON to extend kind assistence to him in order to protect and maintain this most holy place. Devotees from all over the world come to offer their prayers and obeisances at Gambhira. This is one of the most important places for the followers of Lord Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, and must be maintained nicely.

Thus, this is a golden opportunity for devotees to render service to this most sacred cause. I request all devotees to kindly donate towards this purpose. There are many things to be fixed at the place. For the time being we have prepared a rough budget, for whatever the most urgent needs are, just to bring the situation up to  survival position. Later on, we will let you know about further opportunities for service in the development of the Gambhira.

For further information contact

Bhakti Purusottama Swami

Phone: ++ 91 9434506434

E mail: bps@pamho.net

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