Rajneesh Quotes

I've been a vegetarian for years and years. I'm not judgemental about others who aren't, I just feel I cannot eat or wear living creatures.

Therefore, vegetarianism alone can give us the quality of com-passion, which distinguishes man from the rest of the animal world.

I do not see any reason why animals should be slaughtered to serve as human diet when there are so many substitutes. After all, man can live without meat. It is only some carnivorous animals that have to subsist on flesh. Killing animals for sport, for pleasure, for adventures, and for hides and furs is a phenomenon which is at once disgusting and distressing. There is no justification in indulging in such acts of brutality . . . Life is as dear to a mute creature as it is to a man. Just as one wants happiness and fears pain, just as one wants to live and not to die, so do other creatures.

I became a vegetarian because I was persuaded that life is as valid for other creatures as it is for humans. I do not need dead animal bodies to keep me alive, strong and healthy. Therefore, I will not kill for food.

The ultimate tendency of liberalism is vegetarianism.

Some of the things that I do, I think are very important and much more important than the radio show or the television show that I do or anything else that I do. I think right at the top of the list is the basic thing. And of course the basic thing is to hopefully stop people from killing anything. And to create a non-violent diet for themselves, because a non-violent world has roots in a non-violent diet.

Vegetarianism should not be anything moral or religious. It is a question of aesthetics: one's sensitivity, one's respect, one's reverence for life.

If you could see or feel the suffering you wouldn't think twice. Give back life. Don't eat meat.

It appeals to the higher nature of the self to put aside food which once lived - I do not consider myself food, why should I ask all other creatures to consider themselves so?

We don't eat anything that has to be killed for us. We've been through a lot and we've reached a stage where we really value life.

You don't have to love animals to recognize that it is immoral and unjust to exploit them. But if you do love animals, but you continue to participate in their exploitation, you need to rethink your idea of what love means.

We stopped eating meat many years ago. During the course of a Sunday lunch we happened to look out of the kitchen window at our young lambs playing happily in the fields. Glancing down at our plates, we suddenly realized that we were eating the leg of an animal who had until recently been playing in a field herself. We looked at each other and said, "Wait a minute, we love these sheep-they're such gentle creatures. So why are we eating them?" It was the last time we ever did.

For innumerable reasons, Mahamati, the Bodhisattva, whose nature is compassion, is not to eat any meat.

There's no doubt in my mind that going vegetarian has made me feel better not only physically, but also because I learned about the suffering of animals who are raised and killed for food. I feel good knowing that I'm not contributing to that.

For fear of causing terror to living beings, Mahamati, let the Bodhisattva who is disciplining himself to attain compassion, refrain from eating flesh.

I'll quit eating meat when you get a cow out here to beat me at a poetry slam. Only so many words rhyme with 'Mooo.' I mean, yes, we're supposed to be better stewards; yes, we're supposed to take care of the earth; yes, we're supposed to honor the sacrifices made by the animals; yes yes yes yes yes, but dammit, we're in charge, and you know why? It's because of these [holding out thumbs]...Maybe you think that carrots are less important than cows. I think they're equal, especially in a sauce.

Part of my becoming a vegetarian was that I would look at my burger, then look at my dogs, and I wasn't able to see a difference.

We cannot separate ourselves from those whom we call the 'lower' animals. They are lower in the scale of evolution, but they, like us, are members of the One Family. We must not take away the life of any creature. Indeed, we must never take away that which we cannot give. And as we cannot restore a dead creature to life, we have no right to take away its' life.

I am determined not to kill, not to let others kill, and not to support any act of killing in the world, in my thinking, and in my way of life

We don't eat anything that has to be killed for us.

We are all God's creatures-that we pray to God for mercy and justice while we continue to eat the flesh of animals that are slaughtered on our account is not consistent.

I don't teach vegetarianism; it is a by-product of meditation. Wherever meditation has happened, people have become vegetarian, always, for thousands of years.

I do feel that spiritual progress does demand at some stage that we should cease to kill our fellow creatures for the satisfaction of our bodily wants.

A non-violent world has roots in a non-violent diet.

My disciples are vegetarian not as a cult, not as a creed. They are vegetarians because their meditations make them more human, more of the heart, and they can see the whole stupidity of people killing living beings for their food. It is their sensitivity, their aesthetic awareness that makes them vegetarians.