Can vegetarians take certain health products?

Can vegetarians take certain health products like placenta or capsule made of animal gelatin?


As for the vegetarian, is he or she a vegetarian for health or religious convictions? If it is for health reasons, then, the truth is these health products is good for health, unlike eating chunks of meats bred with growth hormones and antibiotics. Indeed humans were designed to eat more veggies than meat.

If it is for religious reasons then we can go to the root of their abstinence. Gautama (Buddha) was an Indian prince who left the comfort of his palace to live a life devoid of the richness and goodness. He wanted to seek questions to life -i.e why humans were suffering?. He was a Hindu but did not agree with the Indian caste system and was frustrated Hinduism provided no answer to human suffering. According to Gautama all suffering including hunger, disease were because of consciousness of the 'self'. His answer to avoid suffering is to have no desires at all, including craving for food and meat. They avoid meat as a way of avoiding humanly desires and cravings, but placenta is for HEALTH and not a craving.

Gautama taught that humans were born into this world with a debt from previous life. In this current life, we can either pay off or add to the debt according to the way we conduct ourselves this lifetime. This includes not killing living beings and animals. The aim is to do more good than bad to reach Nirvana whereby you simply cease to exist at all, and then all suffering is ended as you just don't exist anymore. But again there is no killing of animals with our placenta.

I have personally read the 4 books and 5 jings, Mencius and Dao De Jing (Lao Zi) in 2-3 different English translations. If you read the Confucius Analects, the disciples of Confucius paid tribute to their master's holiness and wisdom. Confucius in his teachings had alluded to "Heaven" replied that he is not the holy one. In his Analects, he said if the Holy One was to come He will be found in the west. His disciples went to the west (India) and found Buddha, That is how Buddhism came into China. (If they went further west it will be Jerusalem - they didn't go far enough).