- Hey, player.
Recently, my girlfriend and I took a mini vacation
to get away from it all.
We traveled to upstate New York
and we saw a bunch of cool places along the way.
Today, though, I wanna tell you about one specific place
that we visited called Blue Cliff Monastery,
which is a Buddhist monastery in upstate New York.
As you may already know, I'm a huge advocate
for mindfulness, meditation, and compassion.
So, visiting Blue Cliff Monastery was a perfect fit.
And on the day that we went,
they were having what's called a Dharma talk,
which is essentially when one of the Buddhist monks
talks about something that's vitally important.
So in this video, I want to share with you guys
what I learned that weekend from Brother Promise.
♪ This is The Josh Speaks ♪
♪ Watching The Josh Speaks ♪
Now, I've never actually been
to a Buddhist monastery before,
so all of this was a brand new experience for me.
As soon as you walk in, you have to take your shoes off
because you're not supposed to wear your shoes
inside the actual monastery.
So, we walked in, took off our shoes,
and then sat down on the meditation pillows
surrounding the main speaker area.
And there were several people talking about
how they were taking part in the mindful eating retreat
which just happened to overlap
with the weekend that we went up.
And as one of the Buddhist monks there
known as Brother Promise came in to speak,
the other Buddhist monks were setting up
the video camera equipment and getting everything ready
for him to give his talk.
He then went ahead and started his talk by doing something
really interesting and totally unexpected.
- So let's start with some self massage with some rubbing.
So for rubbing, use two hands, you whole palm.
And your whole palm not like this, like this.
And just rub, go through your whole body,
so we have two minutes,
and just rub your whole body.
- Everyone stood there patting themselves on the body,
which at first I thought was really weird.
But then after awhile I realized
it does actually get the blood flowing
to the rest of the parts of your body.
And it made me wonder, why doesn't every day
of school or work start like this?
It gets you energized and fueled for the day.
But putting that aside, Brother Promise then went on
to talk about mindful eating and what that really means.
And right off the bat, the very first thing he did
was recommend that we go vegan for our health,
for compassion, and for the environment.
- I believe that adopting a plant-based diet
is if not the best thing, one of the best thing,
one of the best decision we can make in our lives.
- He decided to start with the topic of health.
And the first thing he really addressed was that
heart disease is the number one killer.
Multiple studies have shown a huge connection
between eating meat and the increased risk of heart disease.
And studies done on the number two killer, which is cancer,
show that your dietary choices play a role in either
increasing or decreasing your risk of developing it.
One of the most common forms of cancer for women,
which is breast cancer, is highly increased
when you consume red meat and high fat dairy products.
And one in six men will develop prostate cancer.
One in 35 men will die from it.
And studies show that vegans have 35% lower risk
of actually developing prostate cancer.
- Colon cancer is also one of the most common cancer.
And we are taught by the meat industry
that we need a lot of meat to be strong, right?
Well, as they say,
never ask a barber whether you need a haircut.
- I know it's a bit of a challenging thing to say,
especially if you love burgers and steaks,
but even the Harvard School of Public Health recommends
that the amount of red meat consumption that we take in
to remain healthy is zero.
And another major problem that maybe someone you even know
faces is dealing with obesity and type two diabetes.
And plenty of studies have shown that by switching
to a vegetarian or vegan diet,
you can definitely help with weight loss
and even work towards reversing your type two diabetes.
Along with the multitude of studies that show that vegans
have a lower risk of developing all of these
chronic diseases, studies also show
that vegans live on average seven and a half years longer
than their meat eater counterparts.
And on that whole topic of health,
I think Brother Promise made a very, very important point.
- So, sometimes people talk about how they love life
and they don't want to renounce meat.
They don't want to renounce alcohol.
They don't want to renounce cigarette.
So, I have a question.
You love life being sick or you love life being healthy.
You love life being short or you love life being long.
'Cause if you love life being healthy and longer,
then we might have to look into our habits,
how we live our lives, how we consume.
- Now, I know that even with all of those health studies,
you still might not be convinced.
I mean, where do vegans get their protein?
How are they gonna get big and strong?
And I'm sure that was the question
of some of the people in that room with me.
But you don't really have to look too far.
There are Olympic swimmers, Olympic runners,
triathlon competitors, wrestlers, UFC fighters,
weightlifters, tennis players, boxers,
everyone all across the spectrum in the athlete world,
there's vegans there.
And as I sat there listening to the talk
and thinking about these things for myself,
I begin to wonder, what are some of the values
behind The Josh Speaks?
If we're aiming to be our best self,
shouldn't we also aim to be healthy and happy?
Whenever you sit down and have your next meal,
really take some time and look at your food
to think about, what was the process behind making this?
I think for the most part, all of us can agree
that it's wrong to just harm animals.
I mean, if I walked up to a dog and just punched it
in the face or walked up to a cat and slit its throat,
you would say that's not cool.
And I think in order to live a meaningful life,
we should aim to be compassionate,
not indifferent, towards the suffering of others.
And yet every single year, 60 billion land animals
and over 500,000 sea animals
are killed in the process for human consumption.
In fact, in the last hour,
500,000 animals were killed in the US alone.
That's cows, chickens, pigs, and more.
- What I found was it's quite disturbing,
at least to me, it is that
these animals, they reach an average 6%
of their natural life expectancy. 6%.
So, if we were to bring this to our level as human beings,
our life expectancy is 79, about 79 years.
So, 6% of 79 years will be 4.74.
So that would mean to die at five years old, basically.
- Some people try to justify it by saying things like,
well, we need meat to survive,
or, well, the animals are stupid or they're not that smart
or they don't know they're being killed.
And that's just simply not true.
Animals are sentient beings,
which means that they can feel, they can experience,
and they can perceive their own sense of subjectivity.
They know when something's happening to them
like them being hurt or killed.
And some people try to ignore and reduce the fact
that animals are sentient by saying things like,
well, plants are alive and they have feelings too.
So if you're killing a plant,
it's just like killing an animal,
but there's a major difference.
Plants aren't sentient beings.
They don't have the neurological structure
to experience a subjective world around them
like animals do.
And then in other cases, we either try to tell ourselves
stories about the animals to help justify what we're doing,
or we just simply don't know how processes work,
which was the case with me.
When I was younger, I was told that cows
are always producing milk, and you have to milk them
or else their udders are gonna explode.
Cows only produce milk after giving birth, but sadly,
the way that most of these cows actually get pregnant
in the first place is not through natural means,
it's actually through forcible artificial insemination.
- She did not become pregnant with the miracle of life.
She became pregnant through rape.
And I know it's a very strong words,
and this is definitely not the word that the dairy industry
would like me to use,
they would prefer to talk about artificial insemination.
- Generally, 24 hours after the baby calf is born,
it's taken away from its mother
and it's kept off separately.
And those baby calves are intentionally fed
an iron deficient diet
so that their meat ends up being white,
since that's what consumers prefer to eat. White veal.
Pigs are also crammed into
tiny little cages with each other.
Imagine if you were stuck in an elevator
with 10 people and you had to stay in there for an hour.
That'd be insufferable.
Now imagine having to stand there your entire life.
And that's what pigs have to go through,
which pushes them to go insane enough
to bite each other's tails off.
So in order to prevent that from happening,
farmers just cut their tail off with no anesthesia.
Pigs are also castrated without anesthesia, too.
And when one of those baby piglets isn't growing fast enough
for the pork industry, they simply grab it by its hind legs
and smash its head against the concrete.
Chickens don't have it any easier.
They're often stacked up in tiny little crates.
And every time one of them poops,
it drops down on the previous chicken
causing lots of infections to all the chickens.
Plus when I was younger, I never really thought about
the idea of a male chick being born.
I assumed all chickens, men and female, just laid eggs.
But that's not the case.
When male chicks are born, they're useless to the industry
because they can't lay eggs,
so they're either tossed into a black garbage bag
and suffocate to death, or they're all thrown into a grinder
and ground up into meat that's served to the other animals.
This sounds insane to hear,
but this is standard practice in the meat industry.
When we talk about developing compassion,
is this part of that?
- We all know that life is very precious.
If someone comes to us and asks your money or your life,
we always give them money and we keep our life.
If someone wants our house, they can take whatever,
they can just give them everything.
But we cherish our lives above all right,
and it's the exact same thing with the animals.
- And when we think about being mindful in our actions,
it's important to think about how our actions
also affect the environment around us.
Despite the fact that the planet is covered in water,
only about 2% of it is actually fresh water.
And about 60% of that 2%
is trapped in ice caps and glaciers.
39% of that 2% is actually underground,
which means only about 1% of the water available
is out there in rivers and streams.
And yet if we look at where the majority of water
that's used in this country is going,
it's to help grow crops to feed the livestock.
To produce one gallon of milk,
it takes 1000 gallons of water,
and to produce one pound of beef,
it takes 2,500 gallons of water.
The way the whole animal agriculture system works
is that we breed animals, we grow crops to feed them,
we collect fresh water to give them to drink,
and then we kill them and eat their flesh
instead of just eating the crops
and drinking the water ourselves.
And factoring in the direct pollution
and indirect pollution caused by
the animal agriculture industry,
which is upwards of 51% of greenhouse gas emissions,
the United Nations recommends that we make
a global shift towards a vegan diet.
Now, you may be skeptical about all the numbers,
so I'll link anything that I've talked about
in the description below.
By switching to a vegan diet,
it's a win, win, win, win type of situation.
We win for our health.
We win for our compassion towards the animals.
We win for the environment.
And we win for the future generations.
- Going vegan saves water.
Going vegan saves food.
Going vegan saves land.
And going vegan eliminates many root causes
of environmental pollution.
So, all of this, all of this we can do
through a small, very simple dietary change.
- What do you think, though?
Would it be possible for you to eat mindfully?
To be aware of where your food comes from
and to eat in a way that is beneficial for your health,
the animals, and the environment?
Leave your comments below and we'll talk about it.
Visiting Blue Cliff Monastery was an amazing
and transformative experience for me.
If you're interested in seeing the full talk
by Brother Promise, I'll put that link
in the description below.
Otherwise you can check out the video over on the side
to see why I went vegan originally.
Everyone's journey towards being their best self
is different, so all I ask is that you don't completely
rule out the idea of eating mindfully and being vegan.
Remember, everything is small steps,
and every step you take that works towards compassion
not only helps you, but helps the entire world around you.
As always, guys, love and peace.