In Buddhism, the most important pre

In Buddhism, the most important precept of all is to live in
awareness, to lmow what is going on. To lmow what is going on,not only here, but there. For instance, when you eat a piece of
bread, you may choose to be aware that our farmers, in growing
the wheat, use chemical poisons a little too much. Eating the
bread, we are somehow co-responsible for the destruction of our
environment. We can increase our awareness of the fact that
40, 000 children die each day from hunger. In order to produce a
piece of meat or a bottle of liquor, we have to use a lot of grain.
Eating a bowl of rice may be reconciling more with the suffering
of the world than eating a piece of meat. An authority on economics
who lives in France told me that if only the people in
Western countries would reduce their eating of meat and drinking
of alcohol by 50 percent, that would be enough to change the
situation of the world. Only 50 percent less.