Swadharma

Eating food for survival and Ahimsa pose a deep conflict that has not yet been resolved, and which needs to be resolved. “Harm,” “unnecessary killing,” and “number of senses” are fundamentally imperfect moral measurements. They can never be quantified perfectly. However, there do exist perfect moral measurements for eating. One of them is this principle of “symbiosism” that I introduce in this article: Make sure that the living organism does not die! (And make sure you are treat it well while it is alive, to foster a respectful and symbiotic relationship with the organism). This principle can be adopted very quickly by making small, but nonetheless morally significant, changes to vegetarian and vegan diets.