Q & A: About Offering God Meat

Question: How is it that God accepted Kanappan’s meat offerings? Isn’t it an impure offering?

Answer: Yes, meat is an impure offering to give God. However you must understand that in Kanappan Nayanar’s case, first of all, God responded to his devotion, not the quality of his offerings. The story showcases the greatness of unbridled selfless devotion. It is not meant to give a devotee an excuse to offer meat or animal sacrifice to God. Secondly, Kanappan did not know better. Being born in a community of hunters and forest dwellers, meat was a central part of their diet. Meat was considered the best among foods to them since they lived in conditions where a balanced vegetarian diet may have been difficult to maintain. Thus it is natural for Kanappan, having grown up not knowing the concept of vegetarianism and not schooled in the protocols of temple worship, to offer God meat. To Kanappan this was the best quality food that he knew for offering God at the time.

Question: So if I prepared some meat dish with only the purest intention of devotion, then is it okay if I offer it to God?

Answer: Very funny. No, it is not okay because you know better.

Question:  Well what is so bad about offering meat anyway? Will God get angry at us if we offered meat to Him? After all most people in the world are nonvegetarians. If it is alright for humans to eat meat what is wrong with offering it to God?

Answer: It is true that it is not a sin or bad karma if you offered meat as part of your worship to God.  God will not get angry with you nor punish you with bad karma. You can get bad karma if you offered meat in a temple or a place where other devotees and the priest consider it offensive. You will accrue bad karma for disturbing the devotion of the other devotees and going against the temple’s protocol. Just about all Hindu temples do not allow meat as an offering. Offering meat to God is a practice that happens in a small percentage of Hindu temples. These temples are generally not run by qualified priests schooled in Scriptural liturgy and protocols. There are a couple of reasons why meat is abhored as offerings in Hindu worship.

The first reason is to instill among devotees the cardinal virtue of Hinduism and that is ahimsa. Ahimsa is the practice of nonviolence in thought word and deed. It is the greatest good. This is because the practice of ahimsa is love in action and love is God. All other virtues such as kindness, forgiveness, care, honesty and righteousness is sourced from ahimsa. Practicing ahimsa and striving to live our life by the ideals of ahimsa creates good karma for ourselves and brings the best, that is our divine soul nature, out of ourself. Living effortlessly by the principles of ahimsa is a refinement we gain over many lifetimes. It is certainly a challenge to control the instinctive impulses of fear, hatered, anger, jealousy and the other lower natures. The highest refinement of living according to ahimsa is to live fearlessly in kindness and confidence. Among the refinements of living by ahimsa is nonkilling even for food. Thus to impress upon devotees the practice of the principle of nonviolence as a path towards God, during temple worship and the observation of Hindu festivals or celebrations, devotees are enjoined to observe vegetarianism in their diet and offerings to God.

The second reason is metaphysical. When any animal is killed for its meat, the animal is in both a state of extreme fear and pain. Even after the animal is dead this feeling of fear and pain exudes from the meat as a negative spiritual vibration. This negative spiritual vibration does not attract higher spritual beings like the devas during worship. Infact devas will shun such places. Instead the meat will attract asuras and other lower elemental beings, the bhutas, to the worship. This is why Scriptures discourage meat offerings during worship.