Empty fields.

When I was a little boy one of my greatest pleasures was to spend part of my school holiday on my uncle's farm on the Isle of Man.
I would cycle there early in the morning and back to my grandmother's house in the evening. I loved it. 

Being with the animals, calling to the cows to come and be milked, taking care of these gentle giant creatures. Feeding the pigs and listening to their grunting conversations, being in a loving relationship with them, such a joy. In springtime the lambs would arrive. It is hard to imagine that anyone would not feel uplifted and blessed by seeing these small beautiful animals skipping and frolicking in the field. Experiencing their life as a new and wondrous situation. Then one day I would arrive at the farm and the field would be empty.
Naturally I would ask where all my little friends were and I would be told that they had gone to a new field on another farm where the grass was better, sweeter and life more luxurious.
I was a little boy, I loved the animals and my uncle and aunt and so believed in the fantasy of a loving caring farm life, where the animals were friends and we took care of them.
However, like all childhood fantasies it had to pass.
The moment I realized where meat came from, I became vegetarian. The more I discovered the realities of animal treatment that are carefully hidden, I became vegan.
Why lie about the slaughter of lambs or any other being if it is truly acceptable?
Why not simply tell a little boy that these beings have no rights and are seen as a commodity to be bought and sold and ultimately killed?
It seems to me that there is a place of kindness that resides in the heart of all human beings that must constantly be overridden for cruelty to continue.
The truths of the cruelty of animal farming are hidden for a reason.
I recently met a woman who believed that cows just give milk, that is their life and they are happy to do it. Exactly as I believed when I was a child.
In our little town here in France there is a butcher's shop with models of cows, lambs and pigs with happy smiling faces, so happy to be killed and become a meal for you! However, love, protection and compassion for other beings is not the reality, but the facts are so awful to consider that they have to be hidden.
I am a man of Dhamma. I know that each one of us is responsible for our actions and the impersonal consequence of those actions wait for us in the future. Employing others to kill for us does not extrapolate us from the equation of cruelty and suffering and meat on the table.
If we are brave enough to reflect honestly, we cannot accept that our Dhamma path includes and supports cruelty and death to any other living being.
How could it be so?
Every day I chant the Metta Sutta wishing love, good fortune and safety to all beings. Not only the ones that we like or live in our house and sleep on our bed, but all beings.
This is the way of the heart, the way of love. To share the planet with everything that has life, and not exploit them for our own ultimately selfish benefit.
It is said that when one more person turns to the way of love and compassion, the whole world benefits, and so when I say 'May all beings be happy,' this is exactly what I mean.

May all beings be happy.