vegetarian pork & harmony

i've always heard people commenting - if people really wanna eat vegetarian, then why do they eat vegetarian pork? and when the discussion and debate goes into the crux of the reasons behind it, things can often get heated up. this sometimes lead to people passing uncalled for negative comments that certain religions are not consistent in their practises and so on. my take is that when one discusses issues at such a level, one may not necessary see the logic. i strongly feel that there is a need to not only discuss this issue at the activity (the practise)-level, but one must rationalise this practise within the ambit of the rationale/ intent as to why this practise came about to fully appreciate the meaning. without doing this, other issues may possibly convolute the whole discussion altogether and worst still, make the act look very hypocritical in itself! let me use the same example as above. if we were to analyse the whole rationale/ act behind the practise of eating vegetarian in the context of a buddhist, then it clears the whole issue... eg

• context - religion (buddhism)
• intent/ rationale - respect lives
• action/ non-action - abstain from killing
• options - to eat non-animal-based food/ vegetarian food
• manifestation - vegetarian pork

there are a few things one can see from the above. firstly, as we go down the levels, the number of possibilities increases. that is, things branches out exponentially as one goes lower down the levels. secondly, without understanding the rationale of things, one may possibly end up with a lot of tensions when one makes his/her options at the lower levels of options/ manifestations. it may cause a lot of internal tensions on a person that may possibly end up with a lot of very wrong and bad implications at a community/ societal-levels. for example, if we were to exist at the levels of practise for our religion and to impose on other people on our practises, then, there would be a lot of tensions. but if we were to understand the rationale behind the practises and try to understand how these are manifested in other religions, we often find that there are many similarities. and often, we find that there are more similarities than we know and from here we can celebrate our similarities, learn to respect the differences and co-exist peacefully.

what do you think?