Osho International Foundation

No animal eats like man; every animal has its chosen food. If you bring buffaloes in the garden and leave them, they will eat only a particular grass. They will not go on eating everything and anything – they are very choosy. They have a certain feeling about their food. Man is completely lost, has no feeling about his food. He goes on eating everything and anything. In fact you cannot find anything which is not eaten somewhere or other by man. In some places, ants are eaten. In some places, snakes are eaten. In some places, dogs are eaten. Man has eaten everything. Man is simply mad. He does not know what is in resonance with his body and what is not. He is completely confused.

Man, naturally, should be a vegetarian, because the whole body is made for vegetarian food. Even scientists concede to the fact that the whole structure of the human body shows that man should not be a non-vegetarian. Man comes from the monkeys. Monkeys are vegetarians – absolute vegetarians. If Darwin is true then man should be a vegetarian. Now there are ways to judge whether a certain species of animal is vegetarian or non-vegetarian: it depends on the intestine, the length of the intestine. Non-vegetarian animals have a very small intestine. Tigers, lions – they have a very small intestine, because meat is already a digested food. It does not need a long intestine to digest it. The work of digestion has been done by the animal. Now you are eating the animal’s meat. It is already digested – no long intestine is needed. Man has one of the longest intestines: that means man is a vegetarian. A long digestion is needed, and much excrement will be there which has to be thrown out.

If man is not a non-vegetarian and he goes on eating meat, the body is burdened. In the East, all the great meditators – Buddha, Mahavira – they have emphasized the fact, not because of any concept of nonviolence, that is a secondary thing, but because if you really want to move in deep meditation your body needs to be weightless, natural flowing. Your body needs to be unloaded; and a non-vegetarian’s body is very much loaded.