Meat and Vegetables

"Master, many people say that what you eat makes no difference in cultivation, and you've said so before too. Could you explain it to us again?"

"I'll put it plainly. What you eat or do not eat has nothing to do with the heart, but it does affect what your body absorbs. Whatever you absorb becomes part of your body. Humans were omnivores by nature; that had been true since ancient times.

It was just that many people, once they had enough to eat, wanted to become vegetarians themselves and then spent all day preaching about it.

Vegetarianism naturally had great benefits; that was true. But the premise was that it had to suit what your body needed.

Nowadays, by the worldly distinction between meat and vegetables, people defined meat as flesh and vegetarian food as plants, rather than describing them through the framework of Meat and Fish and such.

Meat referred to flesh, while vegetarian food referred to vegetables.

The essence of eating meat was eating corpses: pig corpses, cow corpses, sheep corpses, horse corpses, fish corpses, and so on.

The essence of eating vegetarian food was eating living beings: scallions, ginger, garlic, radishes, cabbage, mushrooms, and so on.

Before becoming meat, they were living beings—animals with consciousness, perception, and emotions.

Before becoming vegetarian food, they too were living beings—plants humans believed to lack consciousness, perception, and emotions.

Of course, these were still concepts constructed by humans. Humans were not cabbages, so they did not know whether cabbages felt pain. Nor were they radishes, so they did not know whether radishes possessed wisdom.

From Master's perspective, plants had wisdom of their own. On a bridge two or three meters above the ground, with no water source nearby, a plant extended its roots and found the direction of water, thus