With diverse flora and fauna, magnificent natural landscapes, and an ecological biosphere that supports life, this wondrous planet is our earthly home. From our animal co-inhabitants to the lush rainforests and life-giving soil, we cherish all these as gifts from the Creator. It is a common theme in the world’s major faiths that during our temporary stay here, we should be good stewards of Mother Earth.

Throughout the years, Supreme Master Ching Hai has shared the message of leading a balanced life while following a spiritual path. Not only must we nourish our spirits, but we share the responsibility to care for nature and our fellow beings.

In light of recent scientific evidence which pinpoint the raising of livestock as the number one contributor to climate change, Supreme Master Ching Hai affirms the important message she has noted for over the past two decades: we must be vegan and practice sustainable living. We invite you to listen to a compilation of excerpts from Supreme Master Ching Hai’s lectures titled “Change Our Diet to Save Water for the World.”

We appreciate your company for today’s episode of Between Master and Disciples here on Supreme Master Television. Join us again tomorrow for part 2 of “Change Our Diet to Save Water for the World.” And now, Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants is coming up next, right after Noteworthy News. Please stay tuned. We bid you adieu for now.

It’s been a pleasure to have your company for today’s episode of Between Master and Disciples. Part 3 of “Change Our Diet to Save Water for the World” will continue next Friday. Up next is Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants right after Noteworthy News here on Supreme Master Television. Please stay tuned. May Heavens bless you with much love and light.

Thank you, for your company for today’s episode of Between Master and Disciples. Join us again tomorrow for part 4 of “Change Our Diet to Save Water for the World.” Up next is Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants right after Noteworthy News here on Supreme Master Television. Please stay tuned. May you be guided by wisdom and kindness in your everyday life.

Thank you, compassionate viewers, for your company for our program, “Change Our Diet to Save Water for the World,” on Between Master and Disciples. Up next is Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants right after Noteworthy News here on Supreme Master Television. We bid you adieu and wish you many joyous moments.

The meat diet consumes a lot of the world’s resources, so there is less water, less land and even less oxygen, and more poisonous gases. It’s because it costs a lot to produce one piece of steak.

But it costs very little to produce a piece of tofu that we eat, and tofu provides the same amount of nutrition – actually even more than the steaks – and tofu doesn’t have any ill side effects. So it’s not just about the disease. Eating steaks doesn’t just cause sicknesses. We can’t say, “If I am sick, I can go to the hospital. It’s okay. It’s my own fault, and I’ll endure the consequence myself.” No. It will affect other people and the whole world. It’s because meat eating hurts a lot of people by harming the environment: it causes global warming.

So when you go home, please be more patient and pass out more flyers. If you cannot pass out flyers, then you can talk to more people. Do whatever you can. Cook vegetarian food for others. One serving of beef, we use 1,200 gallons of clean, good water; one serving of chicken, 330 gallons of water, clean and good; and one complete vegan meal, including rice or bread or tofu that is full of protein and vegetables, it cost only 98 gallons of water.

Now, we are complaining about the shortage of water everywhere on the planet. We are complaining about the shortage of food. We use 90% of grain to feed animals instead, and we leave 862 million people hungry. That is in 2008 alone. For the grain that we use for livestock, we can feed 2 billion people, many times over, for the world hunger people that we have right now. So I do not understand, truly, from all the intelligence that I have. Would someone explain to me what kind of world we are living in and what kind of policy we are following and what kind of kindness we are doing to ourselves and our fellow beings? - not to talk about animals yet. Because we cannot even love our own species. So it would be incomprehensible, of course, for many to understand how to love animals. Now you know why.

In Ohio alone, the climate change is going to cost that state US$1 billion because the water bordering their state, the lake, will be going down drastically due to climate change. And they will have to rebuild their harbors and infrastructure to meet the new level of water, new demand.

So, that climate change, it will cost more. And why? Because of the meat diet. All we do is just forsake that piece of meat on our plate and replace it with protein from the vegetable kingdom. We have food to eat, we have choices - and they are wonderful, they’re nutritious. It’s not like we don’t have choice. We don’t have to kill to live. We don’t have to degrade ourselves into a murderous agent of the planet.

We can live and let live. The way it is right now, it seems like we will be working forever, forever busy just to pay tax. Because we earn the money and then we have to pay tax so that we can have our sickness repaired, our body checked up, and that’s not even guaranteed that we can live. That is the point. So much suffering, so much medicine, so much blood tests and x-rays and operation and all that.

All this doesn’t even guarantee that our life will be saved due to the way we don’t treat ourselves kindly, due to the way that we are taking poison for food. Meat is poison, scientifically speaking, physically speaking. It’s good enough for me if people just be veg, do good deeds. That’s all I ask: be vegetarian, do good deeds. Whatever good, you do it right away, whatever bad, you stop.

Doing good right now including saving the planet. That means go veg as well. So, it all boils down to being vegan. Okay, if you cannot be vegan, please be vegetarian first. Because if we don’t eat meat, even though we eat cheese there will be much, much less livestock raising and it would be much less killing on the planet. It is the killing karmic retribution that contributes to the danger of our planet right now.

But just scientifically speaking, meat contributes 50% of global warming and pollution. So, if we just throw that piece of meat out of our mind, then the planet will be saved and you will have a longer life. And mark my words, you will be a much happier person. You will be less anxious, sleep better at night, you will have no sickness. If all the planet’s people become vegetarian, we will have no sickness, almost zero.

So, God has created enough water for us, enough food for us to last even forever, if we but know how to stop abusing the Earth’s resources and her sustenance. We should not kill our fellow beings to satisfy our greed. This is the main point for planetary problems right now, our overly spending of our moral merit and world resources. All these changing bulbs, new car technology and sparing water, “don’t take a shower too long,” and “don’t turn on the tap water while you are cleaning your teeth,” all this is fine, but they are just scratching the itch outside of the sock.

It will not ease our itch. It only makes matters temporarily forgotten and covers the real problem and covers the real solution. It just distracts us from our real goal, real solution, and the planet will get worse if we just keep doing this “scratching outside the sock” thing. We have to scratch on the skin if we want to ease our itch. What I mean is we have to address the main wound: that is the meat production.

Everybody who has the chance to know, and who has the power to know, should know by now that meat production is the main cause of global warming, and stop meat eating is the main solution to save the planet. I do not understand why we don’t go there. If somebody with intelligence explains this to me, I would be very grateful if I have a good answer for that. Meanwhile, we have to continue doing what we do.

Because we need to save this planet to pass onto our grandchildren. If we live the way we do now – meat eating, drugs, alcohol, cigarettes and all that, and killing each other, killing the animals – I don’t know how we really can answer to our own conscience, not to talk about religious obligation, nothing at all. Ever wonder what kind of example we want to offer to our children when they grow up? From all the goodness, the well manners that we expect from them… If we tell them to be frugal and “don’t shower too long,” or even “don’t leave water running” while brushing their teeth and all that.

And even suppose we don’t take baths anymore, even, all of us, or suppose we don’t brush our teeth anymore, suppose we don’t even drink water, how much water do we save? - 30%, more or less. What good will that do to us? When we just stop eating meat, then we have 70% plus water to use. You can take as long a bath as you want, you can have three, four swimming pools in your house. Nobody will say anything and you will never feel any guilt, you’ve never done anything harm to the planet. Just leave that piece of meat out of your diet. Let peace begin on your table.

The experts told us a lot of things. They say that California right now is headed toward the worst drought in California’s recorded history, the worst drought they are heading to. The Sierra Nevada Mountains, which supply much of the rest of California’s water, is supplying now 61% of the usual amount in this past winter season – winter season even! We’re not talking about summer yet, when it’s dry. California produces 50% of fruit, vegetables, and nuts that are grown in the United States, but the US government has announced that farmers will not be able to buy any water from the state. Imagine this?

They supply 50% of your fruits and vegetables, but now they’re not able to buy any water from the state. And their state is in a drought predicament because the main source of water for the farmers is expected to go dry this year. Greenhouse gases are causing deserts to expand in California, elsewhere as well but now we just zoom in on California. Moreover, two of the largest manmade lakes in the US, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, will be dry in the next decade, 2021. These lakes and the Colorado River system that fills them provide water to nearly 8% of the US population.

Now they are drying; they will be completely dry soon. So, picture all this. Stockholm International Water Institute states that 70% of water is used by agriculture. Of that amount, a lot of it is going into planting corn and soy, and that is to feed animals, not humans! That’s why we’re short of water, short of food. It’s a waste of precious food – not just our precious water – as well. The experts also calculate that 1 kilogram of beef takes 5,000 to 20,000 liters of water to produce, but 1 kilogram of wheat takes only 500 to 2,000 liters of water. That is one-tenth, 10% of the amount of water for meat.

At a time when we have water shortage and all the reservoirs are dwindling at such an alarming rate, we are truly afraid that even if we don’t take showers at all, it will not do much help because all the humans’ use and everything comes together is only 30% of water around the world. Everything else is mostly used for meat industry, 70% of it. You see that? So even if you and I go ascetic, we don’t even wash clothes, we go like the Himalayan yogis – the ones who don’t wear clothes – and we don’t wash ourselves, we put ash on our body forever, it won’t help the planet. Meat industry should be cut.

That will help the planet. That will help to reserve our water, to refill our lakes and our rivers again. That is physically and scientifically speaking. I’m not talking about the merit, the bad karmic contribution that we are doing to ourselves by harming others and torturing animals and killing them just to save our stomach. On the other hand, if we forgo 1 pound of beef, we can save more water than if we stop showering for half a year. Just don’t eat 4 hamburgers and you can shower half a year every day, generously. Can you imagine the big, big, big difference like that? So if we really want to save the water for the world to be able to use for our daily necessity, not to talk about future generations, then we have to change to a vegetarian diet, animal-free diet. Animal industry must be out. That’s it.

I’d like to ask about the conflicts between nations caused by global warming and their solution. In March 2007, the United Kingdom suggested that climate change and the conflict problem should be discussed as an urgent agenda for the UN Security Council, and it was actually discussed seriously. It shows that people have begun to recognize that climate change caused by global warming has become a serious threat to national security. Global warming can cause not only natural disasters such as floods, storms, and rising sea levels, which threaten national security, but also a large number of climate refugees flowing over national borders. These series of incidents will cause not only worldwide insecurity but also can be a definite reason for increasing conflicts between nations. Could you tell us what efforts and measures each country should develop in order to be ready for conflicts between other countries as a result of global warming?

Hallo, Colonel and Professor Yeo. Thank you for your very important question. It is true exactly as you have said, that we are facing a very serious situation. However, we hope it does not have to come to the point of more conflict. We already have plenty. However, the most effective effort that can be made by any country to avoid further catastrophe, whether natural or manmade, is to promote a compassionate, noble lifestyle. Not only does this benefit the planet in its reduction of greenhouse gases, but being veg opens up land and delivers crops to humans that were previously being grown for animal feed. Moreover, a plant-based diet saves immensely on water.