Funny story

Well, I'll start with the end first: I ate meat last night. Here's what happened. A girl named Stephanie from Australia (also here teaching english) has become a friend and the kids love her so she has come over the past three Tuesday evenings to watch them so I could go to this meditation group. It's lovely- the kids love her, get some time away from their mom and get to speak english and I get my meditation and an evening out of the house. So I head over to the meditation place and when I arrive the man who's setting up tells me it's a different meditation than their usual tchenrézi. Once a month when it's on or almost the full moon they do a ceremony for Milarepa which involves everyone bringing offerings of food and drink which are purified and shared at a certain point in the ritual. There are cakes resembling stupas, wine and juice, candies, cookies, crackers, cheese, and meat. He tells me there is a point where first you share a drink of wine and everyone takes a piece of meat and the idea is that after the rituel they are purified and therefore no longer considered alcohol or flesh. I say to the man, do you have to eat it, I am vegetarian, and his reply is well, you really should have a small piece at least because the idea is that in eseence it is all the same food, the same taste, and sharing in it is refraining from adversion or attachment to what one habitually does like or not like/eat or not eat. So I decide I better give it a go, not such a big deal right? It seems like the underlying principle has reason. Well, when the time came, they passed the wine, passed the meat (small pieces of someting steak-like) all very communion-esque as well, and eat my tiny piece. Actually I was amazed at how good it actually tasted when i was expecting to be revolted. But then they passed around more stuff and just gave you some of what was on each platter and you didnt choose what you got. Of course, I got a slice of some other meat, like prosciutto or some thin cured sliced kind of thing which I wasn't expecting to have and then really didn't want and had to rince that down quickly with some juice. So much for the "neither aversion nor attachment" thing! Everything else went fine and I came home, hung out with Stephanie a bit and then went to bed. Well a short later I woke up with the worst feelings in my digestive system! I wo't go so far as to say pain but it was not comfortable and I couldn't sleep for a bit. Immediately I said to myself, my body is revolting against this foreign substance! I suppose it could have been anything, even just the odd combo of many different foods eaten together but my conscience wasn't believing that! I don't think I'll be dipping my toes back into that water!! But I will admit, that little piece of steak was mighty tasty......