Abstaining from Flesh

Religious vegetarianism, the abstention from meat, and sometimes from all animal products, on spiritual or ethical grounds, is practised across many traditions, though for strikingly different reasons. In some it flows from a principle of non-violence toward living beings; in others from ideas of ritual purity, from ascetic self-discipline, from beliefs about the transmigration of souls, or from a vision of an original or ideal harmony among creatures. The same outward practice thus carries very different meanings depending on the tradition that adopts it, and its scope ranges from the avoidance of certain meats on certain days to a complete and lifelong renunciation of all food derived from the killing of animals.

The practice is most deeply rooted in the religions of India. For Jainism it follows with rigorous logic from the doctrine of ahimsa, non-violence toward every form of life, and Jain vegetarianism extends even to the avoidance of root vegetables whose harvesting kills the whole plant and the small creatures around it. In much of Hinduism vegetarianism is an ideal associated with purity, spiritual advancement and the priestly and ascetic life, and it is bound up with the belief in rebirth and the kinship of all living things.