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A Catena of Authorities Deprecatory of Flesh Eating
"Now we can join Gandhi and Tolstoy and nameless others who encountered this vigorous and invigorating book. Welcome to a company of radicals who believed we could and should stop eating non-human animals. They brought vegetarianism out of history and into the here and now." -- from the introduction
Ethical vegetarianism is no recent development, as this unrivaled historical anthology dramatizes. When it was first published 120 years ago, countless people read and endorsed The Ethics of Diet. But then it became a rare book, hard to find even in libraries. For countless more readers, it is at last available again.
In this classic of vegetarian writing, Howard Williams presents a line of thought, a continuous thread, a tradition, a catena of protestation against living on "Butchery." What he finds striking is the variety of the witnesses, the prophets of "Reformed Dietetics" who have "shrunk from the régime of blood," including Gautama Buddha, Pythagoras, Plato, Hesiod, Epicurus, Seneca, Ovid, Thomas More, Montaigne, Mandeville, Pope, Voltaire, Swedenborg, Wesley, Rousseau, Shelley, Byron, Lamar-tine, Michelet, Bentham, Sinclair, Schopenhauer, and Thoreau. Their words are accompanied by the vigorous narrative voice of Williams himself, who put to rest, once and for all, the idea that vegetarianism is a fad.
Howard Williams was a nineteenth-century English humanitarian and vegetarian. The Ethics of Diet (Manchester, 1883) is his magnum opus, a foundational document in the history of vegetarianism.
The Inner Art of Vegetarianism Series: Spiritual Practices for Body and Soul
The Inner Art of Vegetarianism series explores the intersections of vegetarianism and spiritual practice. It shows how those who cultivate a spiritual practice--whether it is meditation, yoga, working with dreams, keeping a journal, breath awareness, and even cooking--can extend the spiritual awareness they have nurtured to acknowledging how eating meat affects their health, the health of the planet, and the welfare of other animals. It reveals how vegetarians can extend the meaning of their vegetarianism into other areas of conscious awareness, and how doing so can deepen and strengthen their commitment to their diet, worldview, and concern for changing the status quo. The empowering books in The Inner Art of Vegetarianism Series offer the possibility for change for all those seeking to live with more integrity and holism on this Earth, while giving us tools for relaxation, inner work, self-knowledge, and spiritual growth.
The first book in this series is The Inner Art of Vegetarianism. In its pages, Carol provides practical exercises and draws upon her own life as a yoga practitioner, activist for women's and animal rights, anti-violence campaigner, and parent, partner, and cook. She reveals the insights and wisdom that can be gathered by paying attention to what we have consigned to insignificance: whether it is what we put in our bodies or in the day-to-day routines of our lives. She calls upon us to cherish all bodies--whether our own or those of other animals--and to honor our best impulses to live consciously on this planet. She also asks us to care for our souls--to cultivate joy and compassion, care for our selves and our own spiritual journeys, and to honor the process by which we can be transformed.
This process, Carol writes, is both evolutionary and revolutionary. When she became a vegetarian, she notes, "I began to experience the world in a more positive way. I learned how to make a commitment through vegetarianism, and then I learned how to keep a commitment. Anyone who wants to change the world or themselves can learn this too. Vegetarianism offers this to everyone."
Written, as Carol herself notes, to those in process from someone in process, The Inner Art of Vegetarianism is the first book that addresses the heart of what has been an unfortunate divide between vegetarians and spiritual practitioners. As Carol says, the former may be reluctant to cultivate a spiritual practice because they see religious and spiritual traditions condoning the eating of meat. The latter may see vegetarians as too rigid, doctrinaire, or concerned about the everyday (rather than the transcendental) world.
Aware that everyone is at a different place on their spiritual journey, Carol shows how the path of transformation and the healing of the division between spiritual practitioners and vegetarians takes place one step at a time. Noting that you can only be a vegetarian one meal at a time, Carol advises us to immerse ourselves in our vegetarianism and/or spiritual practice by metaphorically dipping our toe into the waters--a daily deed that Carol calls touching the process. "Touching is how you practice your spiritual path," she writes. "If it is yoga, you practice; if it is vegetarianism, you choose your food accordingly; if it is keeping a journal, you write. Touching the process is the practicing of the practice; you touch the process to let the process touch you. These are body-related practices; they involve us. We cannot be spectators to our own spiritual growth."
Table of Contents: The Inner Art of Vegetarianism
The Inner Art
• Spirituality and Vegetarianism
• Vegetarians and Other Spiritual Practices
• Spiritual Practitioners and Vegetarianism
• What Shall I Do With My Life?
• Exploring the Mindfield
• The Next Step
Coming to Ground
• Water
• Fire
• Air
• Earth
Touch the Process
• Becoming a Vegetarian is Touching the Process
• Qualities of Touching the Process
• Attention
• Intention
• Detachment
• The Benefits of a Spiritual Practice
• Widening and Deepening
• Becoming the Nonanxious Person
• Learning to Become Fluid
• Healing Fearfulness
• Learning to Think Symbolically
• Embracing Impermanence
• Achieving Integration
Opening Our Doors to the Source of Our Being
• Meditation
• Keeping a Journal
1. Basic Rules for Journaling
2. How to Keep a Journal
• Yoga
• Vegetarianism and Yoga
• Yoga and Breathing
• Yoga and Rest
• Working with Your Dreams
• How to Work with Your Dreams
Breath Awareness
• Breathing and Nonduality
• Yoga and Breathing Revisited
• Breathing and Fear
• The Tree of Life
• Keeping a Journal: How Deep Our My Roots?
• Trophic Levels: When Secondary Consumers Triumph
• The Evolutionary Pyramid: Putting Humans at the Top
• The Evolutionary Tree
• Nonduality is a Breath Away
• Monkey Mind?
• The Animal Connection
• Yoga: Moving Like an Animal
• We Animals Dream
• Nowness and Cowness
• Breathing Time
On Not Dragging a Stone
• The Art of Stone-Dragging
• Releasing the Stone
• Acknowledging Regret
• Dreamwork: Working with a Serial Dream
• Look for Clarity
• Levity
• The Least Points to the Most
• Reversing Direction
• Abundance
Compassion and Nonviolence
• Beginning with Oneself
• How I've Been Violent Toward Myself
• Step One: Attention
• Cultivating Non-Violence and Compassion Through Your Journal
• Step Two: Love Yourself
• Step Three: Don't Force
• Violent Dreams
• Yoga: The Art and Soul of Nonviolence
• Rest
• Spaciousness and Spirituality
• Lightness of Body
• Generosity and Vegetarianism
• The Nonviolent Way to Become a Vegetarian
• Step One: Attention to Animals' Suffering
• Step Two: Love
• Step Three: Don't Force
• A Living Ahimsa
• Nonviolent Standards for Assessing Actions
The Habit of Practice
• The Seesaw Principle of Time and Practice
• Use Your Calendar
• Cultivate Awareness of Your Own Weaknesses
• Developing a Habit is Participating in the Act of Creation
• Bringing Something New into Our Lives
1. Make a Promise to Yourself: Keep It.
• Make a Promise: Identify the Next Step
• Keep the Promise: Take the Next Step
• "There is No Promise Too Small."
• Recognize Frozenness: If You Are Frozen or Blocked,
That Is Where You Are
2. Begin Again
3. What is Hard?
The Art of Focusing
4. Honor Desperation
The Time is Now: Spontaneity and Practice
The Three Stages of Spiritual Growth
Vegetarian Cooking as Meditation/A Vegetarian Cooking Meditation
• Mixing It Up
• Guidelines for Cooking in the Present Moment
• Coming to Our Senses
• Peace in the Kitchen
• A Meditation on Sourdough
• Cooking without Attachment
The final book, Meditations on The Inner Art of Vegetarianism provides reflections and meditations for 366 days of the year.
Who is The Inner Art of Vegetarianism for? People who have a spiritual practice and are aware that vegetarianism calls them, or that the possibility of vegetarianism is suggested by their practice. People who are vegans and vegetarians and either see this as an expression of their spirituality and would like to awaken a more spiritually-intense relationship with their vegetarian practice.
Praise for The Inner Art of Vegetarianism:
“In an age when most people embrace membership in a tribe (be it gender, race, ethnicity, religion, whatever) as a way of digging a moat around themselves, Carol Adams cultivates the ties that bind her to all sentient beings. Where others flaunt their differences, she rejoices in the unity of life. The Sexual Politics of Meat, her pioneering feminist analysis of meat-eating published a decade ago, showed us how patriarchal patterns of though create hierarchies of power that oppress us all. Life is indivisible, and either we connect with all who live or we create circles of oppression which–because life is indivisible–will encircle every one of us. In Sexual Politics, Adams was building bridges not only among the victims of oppression, but between the oppressed and the oppressors as well, with the aim of liberating us all.
The bridge that Adams builds in The Inner Art of Vegetarianism joins the community of ethical vegetarians with the community of spiritual practitioners. …
In language that is gentle and graceful, Carol Adams shows us how to be more effective in easing the suffering of other by engaging our own, and how to better cope with our own suffering by engaging the suffering of animals."
--Norm Phelps, Satya
"In The Inner Art of Vegetarianism, Carol Adams thoughtfully discusses how the practice of vegetarianism demonstrates care for animals and the environment while advancing good health. She explores spiritual practices–such as yoga, dreamwork, nonviolent action, meditation and journal-keeping–to encourage readers to attend fully to the present moment. The book's final section focuses on vegetarian cooking as a form of meditation."
--Publishers' Weekly
"After spending two decades practicing yoga and vegetarianism, this Dallas-area author has created a book detailing how her food selection is embedded in spirituality. While the book targets vegetarians, even a meat eater might enjoy its insight. And as Ms. Adams suggests, "it is also for spiritual seekers interested in practicing vegetarianism." The book details how readers can use journal writing, meditation, and cooking to reach a level of the subconscious mind previously reserved for spiritual practitioners."
--The Dallas Morning News Religion Section
From the "Introduction" to Meditations
The Inner Art of Vegetarianism celebrates my discovery that vegetarianism had deepened my spirituality. I wanted to express this joy and invite others into the process. The nature of an inner art, I suggested, is that it simultaneously has the feeling of being both necessity and spontaneity. When we develop what I call "the habit of vegetarianism" we discover this nature–a vegetarianism in which what has been willed becomes so necessary to who we are that it has the fresh feeling of both necessity and spontaneity. An inner art is a living, glowing aspect of ourselves, constantly transforming us as we extend its presence in our lives.
In this book of Meditations, I offer daily reflections that try to keep the dynamic of necessity and spontaneity alive. If these Meditations were seen as answering a question, that question might be "how do we bring something new into our lives or deepen that which is already a part of us to discover the spirituality in our lives and in our being a vegetarian?" The inner art occurs when we find ways to bring the energy that wants to change into our day. We learn the art of enlisting the part of us that doesn't want to change into the process of changing.
The same process is at work in vegetarianism as in other spiritual practices. Meditation is the practice of the art of nonattachment; the inner art of vegetarianism enlists meditation to bring centeredness and consciousness to an eating practice. Journaling is the practice of valuing the self-examined life; the inner art of vegetarianism enlists journaling to enable us to develop the skills for self-examined meals. Prayer is a conversation with God or the divine: the inner art of vegetarianism brings animals and plants into this conversation. We pray with our hands as we prepare, serve, and eat healthy vegetarian meals. Dreamwork engages with an aspect of ourselves that is not readily accessible to our conscious self; the inner art of vegetarianism assumes dreams can guide us in changing. Activism is the practice of actively working against injustice; the inner art of vegetarianism recognizes the value of individual efforts at boycotting products derived from the suffering of others.
We can each discover–or unfold-- the inner art. The purpose of this Meditation book is to provide reflections and prompts that aid us in doing so–that is, assist us in aligning consciousness and action.
The Inner Art of Vegetarianism Workbook
The Inner Art of Vegetarianism Workbook offers a variety of tools, methods, exercises, meditations, and writing prompts that guide you in touching the process of spiritual vegetarianism. For those who wish to become vegetarians, the Workbook features a gentle, inner process of changing, "Growing Vegetarian Roots." For vegetarians who wish to enhance their own spirituality, the Workbook provides a practical, engaged way to begin or continue the spiritual practices introduced in The Inner Art of Vegetarianism. It contains guidance for journal-keeping, dream work, body awareness, and meditation. For every reader, it emphasizes practical ways of deepening a sense of connectedness, compassion, and nonviolence so that they can express themselves through vegetarianism, activism, and daily living.
Ecofeminism and the Sacred
The Ms. magazine reviewer recommended this volume saying, "This multicultural anthology is a thoughtful contribution to an evolving body of analysis and action." It is published by Continuum International.
Table of Contents
Revisioning Religion
• Rosemary Radford Ruether: Ecofeminism: Symbolic and Social Connections of the Oppression of Women and the Domination of Nature
• Delores S. Williams: Sin, Nature, and Black Women's Bodies
• Catherine Keller: Talk about the Weather: The Greening of Eschatology
• Stephanie Kaza: Acting with Compassion: Buddhism, Feminism, and the Environmental Crisis
• Judith Plaskow: Feminist Judaism and Repair of the World
• Sallie McFague: An Earthly Theological Agenda
• Lina Gupta: Ganga: Purity, Pollution, and Hinduism
Envisioning Ecofeminism
• Karen J. Warren: A Feminist Philosophical Perspective on Ecofeminist Spiritualities
• L. Teal Willoughby: Ecofeminist Consciousness and the Transforming Power of Symbols
• Ellen Cronan Rose: The Good Mother: From Gaia to Gilead
• Andy Smith: For All Those Who Were Indian in a Former Life
• Gloria Feman Orenstein: Toward an Ecofeminist Ethic of Shamanism and the Sacred
• Shamara Shantu Riley: Ecology Is a Sistah's Issue Too: The Politics of Emergent Afrocentric Afrowomanism
Embodying Ecofeminist Spiritualities
• Carol Lee Sanchez: Animal, Vegetable, and Mineral: The Sacred Connection
• Jane Caputi: Nuclear Power and the Sacred: Or Why a Beautiful Woman Is Like a Nuclear Power Plant
• Rebecca Johnson: New Moon Over Roxbury: Reflections on Urban Life and the Land
• Charlene Spretnak: Earthbody and Personal Body as Sacred
• Byllye Avery and Mary E. Hunt: Natural Resources
• Carol J. Adams and Marjorie Procter-Smith: Taking Life or "Taking on Life"? Table Talk and Animals
• Zoe Weil: Ecofeminist Education: Adolescence, Activism, and Spirituality
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