Pearls of Wisdom
Is It OK to Consume Milk?
Spoken by Supreme Master Ching Hai, New York, USA,
August 4, 1999 (Originally in English) Videotape#664I didn't say, “No milk,” just no meat, no eggs and no anything of killing animals. But with milk and dairy products, you don't have to kill to get them. It's just that I myself don't often use them. So when people ask me should they use them because they don't feel comfortable, then I say, “It’s up to you.” I myself don't like milk so much because of the way it is taken. But in some places like India, they take milk from the cow in a very humane and very normal way.
Also, if you don't drink the cows’ milk, sometimes too much milk makes them suffer; it’s painful. But the way people do it with machines, and they feed them and then confine them: that I don't like. In most industrial countries, they confine the cow and they force her to take a lot of chemical substances to produce more milk. Or they force them and put some medicine to push them to make more milk. And then the consequence is that their bones are rotten and they can hardly support their bodies. Many of the cows in the U.S., their intestines fall down, their stomachs fall down, and they can hardly walk because their bones are so weak from producing too much milk. And that's what I hate about it. I don't think we should survive at the cost of anyone else's suffering, even suffering of the cow.
I don't like the inhumane way that people treat cows. Also, they put too many chemicals into the body of the cow to make it grow bigger than it's supposed to. The weight is very heavy for the cow, and it can fall and get sick. And if its organs come out of its body, they don't even give anesthesia or anything when they want to stitch it back up. They just do the cheap job; any cowboy or anyone can come and just stitch it up like it’s something normal. I don't like all these inhumane and uncivilized ways of treating an animal, an animal who is beneficial to humankind, who is so kind and so gentle.
That's why when I think of taking milk, I don't want it. I don't like to be reminded of the cruelty of us, of humankind. It’s not that I am fanatic, because people still need milk to survive. The children who sometimes the mother can't feed, they need milk. The sick people who sometimes can’t drink or eat anything else, they need milk. I’m not advocating fanaticism; it’s just that I hate to see any suffering. But milk is OK.
