One of the big ones is vegetarianism. We're not all vegetarians. The Dalai Lama himself for the longest time wasn't a vegetarian. Oddly enough, in my experience, there's two sets of people for whom this seems somewhat prevalent. The first group comprises American convert Buddhists who often expect that other Buddhists should be vegetarians or that they themselves should be a vegetarian as part of being Buddhist or that they feel bad because they're not vegetarian and they're Buddhist. The second group I have found comprises non-religious Chinese people whose experience with Buddhism seems to be encounters with Chinese vegetarian Buddhist monks, and therefore expect all "good" Buddhists to be vegetarian.
So next time I encounter a representative from the latter group, I'll ask them to explain what I observed in my local Chinese live seafood market yesterday (click image for detailed view):
It's the closest thing to a realDharma Burger I've ever seen - it's KFC Dharma!
I'd been going through the Lankavatara Sutra, dealing with a hiatus to deal with a death in the family, and various work related things, but the recent posts on vegetarianism made me remember that the Lankavatara Sutra, Chapter 8, is all about not eating meat.
How can a Buddhist not eat meat when it clearly, clearly says:
Said the Blessed One: Then, Mahāmati, listen well and reflect well within yourself...
Certainly, Blessed One; said Mahāmati the Bodhisattva-Mahāsattva and gave ear to the Blessed One.
The Blessed One said this to him: For innumerable reasons, Mahāmati, the Bodhisattva, whose nature is compassion, is not to eat any meat; I will explain them: Mahāmati, in this long course of transmigration here, there is not one living being that, having assumed the form of a living being, has not been your mother, or father, or brother, or sister, or son, or daughter, or the one or the other, in various degrees of kinship; and when acquiring another form of life may live as a beast, as a domestic animal, as a bird, or as a womb-born, or as something standing in some relationship to you; [this being so] how can the Bodhisattva-Mahāsattva who desires to approach all living beings as if they were himself and to practise the Buddha-truths, eat the flesh of any living being that is of the same nature as himself? Even, Mahāmati, the Rakshasa, listening to the Tathagata's discourse on the highest essence of the Dharma, attained the notion of protecting [Buddhism], and, feeling pity, refrains from eating flesh; how much more those who love the Dharma! Thus, Mahāmati, wherever there is the evolution of living beings, let people cherish the thought of kinship with them, and, thinking that all beings are [to be loved as if they were] an only child, let them refrain from eating meat. So with Bodhisattvas whose nature is compassion, [the eating of] meat is to be avoided by him. Even in exceptional cases, it is not [compassionate] of a Bodhisattva of good standing to eat meat. The flesh of a dog, an ass, a buffalo, a horse, a bull, or man, or any other [being], Mahāmati, that is not generally eaten by people, is sold on the roadside as mutton for the sake of money; and therefore, Mahāmati, the Bodhisattva should not eat meat.
For the sake of love of purity, Mahāmati, the Bodhisattva should refrain from eating flesh which is born of semen, blood, etc. For fear of causing terror to living beings, Mahāmati, let the Bodhisattva who is disciplining himself to attain compassion, refrain from eating flesh. To illustrate, Mahāmati: When a dog sees, even from a distance, a hunter, a pariah, a fisherman, etc., whose desires are for meat-eating, he is terrified with fear, thinking, "They are death-dealers, they will even kill me." In the same way, Mahāmati, even those minute animals that are living in the air, on earth, and in water, seeing meat-eaters at a distance, will perceive in them, by their keen sense of smell, the odour of the Rakshasa and will run away from such people as quickly as possible; for they are to them the threat of death. For this reason, Mahāmati, let the Bodhisattva, who is disciplining himself, to abide in great compassion, because of its terrifying living beings, refrain from eating meat. Mahāmati, meat which is liked by unwise people is full of bad smell and its eating gives one a bad reputation which turns wise people away; let the Bodhisattva refrain from eating meat. The food of the wise, Mahāmati, is what is eaten by the Rishis; it does not consist of meat and blood. Therefore, Mahāmati, let the Bodhisattva refrain from eating meat.
In order to guard the minds of all people, Mahāmati, let the Bodhisattva whose nature is holy and who is desirous of avoiding censure on the teaching of the Buddha, refrain from eating meat. For instance, Mahāmati, there are some in the world who speak ill of the teaching of the Buddha; [they would say,] "Why are those who are living the life of a Śramaṇa or a Brahmin reject such food as was enjoyed by the ancient Rishis, and like the carnivorous animals, living in the air, on earth, or in the water? Why do they go wandering about in the world thoroughly terrifying living beings, disregarding the life of a Śramaṇa and destroying the vow of a Brahmin? There is no Dharma, no discipline in them." There are many such adverse-minded people who thus speak ill of the teaching of the Buddha. For this reason, Mahāmati, in order to guard the minds of all people, let the Bodhisattva whose nature is full of pity and who is desirous of avoiding censure on the teaching of the Buddha, refrain from eating meat.
Mahāmati, there is generally an offensive odour to a corpse, which goes against nature; therefore, let the Bodhisattva refrain from eating meat. Mahāmati, when flesh is burned, whether it be that of a dead man or of some other living creature, there is no distinction in the odour. When flesh of either kind is burned, the odour emitted is equally noxious. Therefore, Mahāmati, let the Bodhisattva, who is ever desirous of purity in his discipline, wholly refrain from eating meat.
Pretty obvious that the writers of this did not want aspirants to eat meat.
There is a kinship with all living things, let there be no mistake about that.
This part of the sutra, as the editor/translator noted, and as can be easily seen by appeal to the lengths and styles in subject matter, is clearly a later addition. It is indisputable that at the time the Lankavatara Sutra was written, vegetarian, eating meat was not a paramount concern of the writer(s). It was about as prominent on their radar as gayness and abortion were with Jesus Christ.
Now admittedly, someone who was vegetarian did later add this stuff.
But...then...I must go to more fundamental issues in Buddhism, as I see it: what do my senses, knowledge, science tell me?
Humans clearly evolved as omnivores. This is not something that would have been obvious to the author of this chapter.
Humans clearly must carefully consider the effect on the environment of all their actions. That means whether or not eating meat is prohibited by one's self or not, what is not optional is careful consideration of the environmental effects of eating (or not eating) meat.
The conundra of an absolutist vegetarian position might boggle the mind. If all animal life is precious, what are we to do with carnivores? Kill them? Let them die by keeping them from their prey so the prey over-reproduce and lead to havoc on their ecosystem? And then there are animals that depend on carnivorousness for their very survival: should we make tapeworms extinct? (HT: PZ Myers) Why not? Aren't they our kin too? (And make no mistake about it, they are.)
Finally, to rephrase points made previously, the effects of not eating meat may be worse than eating meat. We know from experiences with wolves in the Western US that removal of predators has dramatic adverse consequences on many many species. The prey may be eaten, but other life forms depend on the predator eating his prey (and not just the predator species.
This is why, I think, many meat eaters don't like it when vegetarians get in their faces, so to speak.
The moral issues are actually more complex than would be made by many vegetarian activists.
What is very, very important for all of us is to reduce our footprint on the planet, and to be mindful of our effect on all living beings.
It's too simplistic to assume that the valuation of life can be maximized by forswearing the use of animals in the diet.
And it's certainly way to simplistic to assume that the ecosystem can be tuned to maximize the amount of animal life by forswearing carnivorousness or omnivorousness.
The latter, in particular, got us through the Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event. Of course, "we" were shrew-like creatures, but still...
[W]hen people ask [whether it is wrong to kill animals for human consumption], they almost always find a variety of resourceful answers that purport to justify the killing and consumption of animals in the name of human welfare. And even when people ask this question, they almost always find a variety of resourceful answers that purport to justify the killing and consumption of animals in the name of human welfare. Strict ethical vegans, of which I am one, are customarily excoriated for equating our society’s treatment of animals with mass murder. Can anyone seriously consider animal suffering even remotely comparable to human suffering? Those who answer with a resounding no typically argue in one of two ways.
Some suggest that human beings but not animals are made in God’s image and hence stand in much closer proximity to the divine than any non-human animal; according to this line of thought, animals were made expressly for the sake of humans and may be used without scruple to satisfy their needs and desires. There is ample support in the Bible and in the writings of Christian thinkers like Augustine and Thomas Aquinas for this pointedly anthropocentric way of devaluing animals.
Others argue that the human capacity for abstract thought makes us capable of suffering that both qualitatively and quantitatively exceeds the suffering of any non-human animal. Philosophers like Jeremy Bentham, who is famous for having based moral status not on linguistic or rational capacities but rather on the capacity to suffer, argue that because animals are incapable of abstract thought, they are imprisoned in an eternal present, have no sense of the extended future and hence cannot be said to have an interest in continued existence.
The most penetrating and iconoclastic response to this sort of reasoning came from the writer Isaac Bashevis Singer in his story “The Letter Writer,” in which he called the slaughter of animals the “eternal Treblinka.”
Let's leave the absurdity of the last sentence quoted for the moment and go to the two arguments above. I tend towards the latter argument, but I would add that in the case of animals such as turkeys, (and ducks and rabbits raised for food) these animals would not have existed but for their domestication by humanity. And it is clear that we have been domesticated to these animals, and if that sounds like a whopper consider how humanity has evolved lactose intolerance.
It is true that animals - moving things, to translate the Japanese literally - do have somewhat of an awareness, although it clearly is not at the level of ours. It is also true that there are ethical and moral issues to be considered in their treatment.
Humanity must kill to eat, and we cannot, as of yet, explain why A is aware and B is not other than an observed ability to modify behavior in response to a stimulus.
We can't really tell if that which cannot be responded to in a stimulus is aware in all cases; we only recently found out about the "locked" condition where people are aware yet unable to respond to external stimuli.
Perhaps everything is aware, in which case, we're quite screwed.
I tend to think awareness is substantially more distributed than even vegans are led to believe, in which case, the fact that they can empathize with vertebrates and mollusks does them no good morally in the grand scheme of things.
That is to say, if suffering is that ubiquitous, (even if our suffering, as opposed to other animals' suffering can be narrated in terms of a past, present and future), then we might as well eat meat.
The vegan has one more problem I might want to point out: what of the non-human carnivore? Should we wipe them out because they eat other animals? We could. Heck, we're almost there with the blue-fin tuna! Then their prey would be safer. But they might over-"graze" their environment, leading to a population/environmental collapse.
Which is to say, even animal-eating humans are part of the eco-system. True, we haven't been doing it sustainably, but clearly there's a point that we could, or if we didn't there'd be another stable point of the ecosystem which might - or might not - have been reached by a calamitous destruction of human and animal life.
So, let's go slow on this stuff for now, OK?
And besides, there are cultural implications to all this. Five will get you ten a survey of the acquaintances of the author of that Times article might reveal that the author was a bit...overbearing at times on this vegan stuff.
One more thing: I generally don't make turkey at Thanksgiving; and this year I couldn't decide if it was rabbit season or duck season.
