If fishes eat other creatures why should there be sin in eating fish?

[Fishes eat other creatures and so there should be no sin if I eat the fish. For those who recommend vegetarianism, don’t plants have life too? Isn’t killing and eating them sinful too?]

A goat is a pure vegetarian but you even eat that poor goat. When you find a human being, who is a murderer, do you kill him directly or hand over him to the police and courts? Assuming that the fish is also a murderer, you cannot kill it directly. God will punish it. In the case of the fish, you need not file a case against the fish in the court of God, because there is no need of such filing in the case of God. Moreover don’t you raise your voice against the hanging of a murderer stating “If you cannot give life, you have no right to take it away”. You also plead that hanging is the the most barbaric deed and that several countries have banned it. Your statement applies even to the fish, which is a murderer of other creatures. Life is common in the human being or the fish. Both are living beings. If you don’t have the right to take away the life of a human being, you have no right to take the life of the fish either. The Dharma Shastras say that non-voilence is the highest justice (Ahimsa Paramo Dharmah). If you say that the fish kills other creatures for food and that there is no sin in humans killing it for food, then there should not be sin if carnivorous hunters from the forest enter the city and start eating human beings. You should not object to their eating food either. But you will not allow that and will kill them because your fellow human beings are getting killed. If you broaden your heart and look at the fish as your fellow living being, you would be practicing the highest form of justice, which pleases the Lord.

You cannot compare plants with animals and birds. Even in the case of plants, the green plants should not be cut. Plucking leaves and fruits is not killing. Foodgrain crops are cut only when they die after loosing the sign of the life, which is the green chlorophyll. Life exists in plants but mind and intelligence do not exist. Life is called as Pranamaya Kosha. Mind is Manomaya Kosha. Intelligence is Vijnanamaya Kosha. Life is only the inert mechanism of the exchange process of oxygen and carbon dioxide leading to the release of energy by oxidation. This mechanism has no awareness of pain. The mind is represented by the nervous system, which is not present in the plants. The mind may be in a very very primitive stage in plants as per the research of J. C. Bose. The ancient Indian sages avoided even plucking of leaves and fruits. They ate leaves and fruits when they had fallen from the plants (Swayam Visheerna Dhruva Patra Vrittita). They avoided even this trace of sin.

In plucking a leaf and killing an animal, the sin may be qualitatively equal, but there is a lot of quantitative difference. One percent sin and hundred percent sin cannot be equated. Your argument concludes that if one does one percent sin, why not do hundred percent sin? This is what is meant when you say that if a vegetarian person plucks a leaf why not we kill an animal. Are you pained equally if I steal one rupee or one hundred thousand rupees from your pocket? The trace of sin can always be neglected. The Lord came as Buddha and preached this non-voilence. The Veda also says that one should kill his animal nature in the sacrifice and not the animal (Manyuh Pasuh).