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Karma & Meat
Eating
Once, the Mahasiddha Saraha
Arrow-maker [Eng.: Fletcher] a.k.a. Rahulabhadra -- "Scourge
of Rahula," meditating while his consort cooked for him, went into
profound samadhi while waiting for a bowl of radish curry. He
did not return to normal consciousness for twelve whole years,
but when he did, the first thing he asked about was the food.
His wife skillfully wondered aloud at the value of such a
samadhi. (Saraha went on to became abbot of Nalanda University
and was the one who ordained Nagarjuna.)
We know the Buddha was
not vegetarian. Any person living the life of a monk or a
renunciate in ancient India generally begged for food. That is
the first purpose of the bowl that is seen in many images of Buddha
Shakyamuni.
The rule for those who live
in communities where begging is practiced is that you must accept
whatever is offered/put into the bowl whether it is meat or
vegetable, fresh or not, appealing or not. This practice
helps reinforce and lend support to an attitude that will eliminate
attachment or craving, as in the Third Noble
Truth.
We all have to eat, but
Buddhism advocates a mindful awareness of craving or hunger which is
expressed in some groups as restraint in, and the regulation of
eating. The more austere communities eat only twice a day, the
second time around noon. In some groups, especially when/where it is
cold, since medicine is permitted in the evening, tea, broth
or other light food may constitute an evening
"treatment."
According to the
Mahaparinirvana Sutra, it was devoted follower, Chunda
the Silversmith, who presented the Buddha with his last meal.
Legend has it that the Buddha died as a result of eating some meat --
many think it was pork -- that did not agree with his
digestion. However, pork
is not a forbidden food. There are some kinds that are,
though. Monks and nuns in the Theravada are forbidden to eat the
flesh of human beings, or of special animals such as elephants,
horses, dogs, snakes, lions, tigers, leopards, bears, hyenas, and
panthers. In places where certain animals aid in
disposing of the dead,
their meat is also forbidden, eg. Tibetans do not generally eat the
flesh of large birds.
Also, the Pratimoksha Rules
or Monastic Code stipulates that a monk is forbidden to eat raw fish
or meat, or the flesh of any animal that he sees, hears, or even
suspects was killed specifically for his or her use.
If this rule is broken,
then an offense has been committed that requires confession to the
sangha (fellow monastics.) Some schools of Mahayana Buddhism
are vegetarian following the strictest observance of the "suspects
was killed specifically" clause.
Mindfulness
The
Fourth Truth concerns the best
way to live in order to diminish suffering. That entails being
mindful, determined and energetic, among other qualities. We
should pay attention to what and how we eat to keep healthy to keep
to a minimum any harm we may do to other beings, and also to our
environment.
Tibetans eat meat, but they
also have a saying to the effect that eating meat is like eating
one's relatives.
Dedication Before Eating a Meal [in
Tibetan]
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Tun pa lamay
sanjay rinpochay
Cheu pa
lamay tamchu rinpochay
Dren pa lamay
gendun rinpochay
Chap ni kun chok
sum la chu pa
bul. |
Nagarjuna said that we
should care for, and offer food to, all
beings.
Killing to
Eat
In the past, most societies
ate very little flesh. Poverty and limited resources
contributed to a diet in which meat played a minor role. If
you read Shogun, or saw that television series about Japan of
the fifteenth century or so, you remember the incident in which the
European left some game to hang from the eaves of his house so it
could "ripen." The revulsion felt by the villagers was not due
entirely to the smell of rotten pheasant,
though.
The first Buddhist
precept is not to take lives and deprive other beings of
opportunities for enlightenment. However, without any
intention of doing so, we take thousands of lives every day, with
every step and with every breath. But Buddhism does not see
species of animals as arranged in a hierarchy where the life of a
larger animal is of greater value than that of a smaller
one.
The mantra said for
overcoming the fault of meat-eating and also helping the beings
whose flesh it was be reborn in a happy realm
is:
Om, ahbirakay
tsara, hung! (To be said over the meat seven times.
)
Compassion
Buddhism emphasizes the
inter-relatedness of all beings. Even a lowly shrimp is
another shrimp's child. Because of the belief in
reincarnation, the shrimp may even have been your mother in a
former existence.
According to Buddhist
doctrine, no eternal element such as a soul transmigrates from one
body to the next. Still tendencies and aspects of beings tend
to coalesce or intertwine a result of the laws of karma, and so
maintain relatively constant arrangements.
Karma, that is
activity and the way in which it operates in conformity with the universe {a push here causes movement
there] determines one's future, both in the short term [this life]
and in the long term [in the series of lives to
come].
In order to adapt to
certain environments, physical, economic and cultural, we may have
to consume the flesh of fish, and four-legged animals. The
general principle of the Buddhist community is to try and
diminish the harm we do as much as is possible. In the urban
milieu we do not kill for food, and we should not encourage the
killing of animals for their meat. In other words, do not let
someone kill a chicken or a goat in order to throw a party for
you. Do not ask a butcher to obtain a cut of meat especially
for your consumption, either.
This does not go very far
in diminishing the general demand for meat in western society,
though. Perhaps the Dalai Lama's public comment that we should
try to lessen the number of meat meals eaten during the week, will
encourage people to be mindful about their diet
They will then buy less
meat at their grocery stores. The number of animals killed
will certainly diminish. The price of meat will certainly go
up, and so more people will learn how to prepare meatless meals. The
trend will continue to improve.
The story is told of a
boy who found fish stranded
on the shore, as the tide receded.
He started to pick
them up one by one, and threw them back into
the sea.
A passer-by said, "There are millions of fish
stranded
on the shore as far as the eye can see. What does
it
matter if you save a few?"
The boy replied, "It
matters to the ones I threw back."
More about vegetarianism
vs. meat-eating from the kagyu list:
Barry: "Tibetans eat meat,
if they actually grew up in Tibet, because there are not enough
(especially, fresh) vegetables for that to be the basis of their
diet. That is also why they eat tubers such as potatoes,
beets, and onions, because [in that harsh environment they are foods
that are grown] beneath ground level. They have always eaten meat.
[Strict Hindu vegetarians do not eat onions or
garlic.]
... my (Gelugpa) Teacher
... . adds that there is no direct Karmic repercussion from
eating meat per se. It is obviously the killing of the animal
that is at issue. Geshela says that if the animal was not killed by
you, or expressly killed for you, that you can freely eat the meat,
prefaced by a prayer of gratitude for the life of the animal. He
adds that, especially in the West, ... animals were killed
previously for whomever and the meat is there waiting, already
prepared. The same holds true for restaurants.
In most Tibetan cities of
any size, there is a special part of town which is the butcher area.
This is also the Muslim area of the city, and the Muslims are
engaged in the activity of preparing meat. This is accepted
practice.
I have been to Dharma
centers where, at group meals, the meat dishes were deliberately
badly prepared and terribly presented, while vegetable dishes
directly adjacent were made to be very appealing. This is usually
accompanied by thinly veiled disdain for those who opt for the meat
anyway. This type of activity should be beneath the dignity of a
good Dharma center, especially when the Lama is present. All
offerings should and can be made beautiful. I am the vice-president
and public relations person for a Tibetan Buddhist center which is
blessed by the presence of our resident Lama. I would never even
consider preparing a dish which he would not himself eat. He does
not care what others around him eat, unless it is obviously bad for
them.
There is also good reason
why meat is among the ritual offerings at Tsog [a ritual feast.]
And, as those who have received initiation well know, meats are also
a part of the "Inner Offering". There is a well known anecdote
in the Life of Milarepa, where, after living for a long time
on only nettles, to the point where he had taken on a greenish
pallor, The Guru was offered fresh meat by a visitor. Upon
eating the meat, Milarepa had spontaneous visionary experiences
which revealed to him the reasons for previous blockages in his
practice."
Lhamo: "Even in Tibet,
where vegetables are scarce, and people have to eat meat to survive,
they told me that they consider it bad to eat a fish because a fish
can only feed one person, or two at the most, so it's considered to
be worse karma."
Ani Trinlay: " ... there is a strong vein of
vegetarianism in the Drikung Kagyu. Unlike virtually all other
well-known Tibetans, the founder of the lineage was vegetarian. Many
of the prominent lamas (such as Drupwang Rinpoche, Garchen Rinpoche,
and Khenchen Konchog Gyaltshen Rinpoche) eat no, or very
little, meat.
At a retreat with Drupwang
Rinpoche here last year, more than 70 people took a pledge never to
eat meat again; whole villages in Ladakh promised to shut down their
meat markets for one day a week after he visited
there.
We do not use meat or
alcohol at tsok/ganachakra
-- "not necessary" is what our text says. Our center (Tibetan
Meditation Center in Frederick, MD) is meat-free. Even when
there are meat-eating residents at the center, they go elsewhere to
cook and eat meat out of respect for this practice.
Vegetarianism is not
required of anyone, but it is strongly advised by our spiritual
leaders. (Besides, it causes disease and makes us
fat!)
I guess this is why there
are all those different schools and sub-schools and branches and
sects and lineages -- something to fit everyone's disposition and
mental capacity!
Skip: "There are varying
opinions about this. HH Dalai Lama has said that it is karmically
much preferable to be a vegetarian, though he himself was unable to
tolerate such a diet (he became jaundiced, and his Tibetan physician
advised him to discontinue).
And Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche, for
one, has said that eating meat does carry some negative karma. I
don't see how it could otherwise, really. Karma (as I poorly understand it) is about cause
and effect. Eating meat does in fact cause people to kill animals --
it's a simple supply-and-demand question. If there is causation,
there is effect, which then applies specifically to the being(s)
responsible for the cause -- Buddhist scriptures are pretty clear on
that point. It is also said that negative karma performed by a group
is not "distributed" over its members proportionately; rather, if a
group does something negative, the full weight of the karma rests on
each individual of that group. I would interpret the above that to
mean that eating meat carries a significant karmic burden, even if
one isn't responsible for the killing per
se.
Mitigating this, there is the concept of the 3
components of cause -- that to get full karmic effect, you have to
(1) plan/premeditate the act, (2) do the act, and (3) be glad you
did it afterwards. I remember hearing a teacher say that if you go
to a restaurant, it's worse if you plan to have meat beforehand. And
it's better if you express some regret thereafter, rather than
"rejoicing" in having eaten meat. ... .
As for lamas eating
meat -- well, no one's perfect. And for some who are actually
realized beings, it may actually be neutral or even productive of
good karma. Kind of like Tilopa liberating the fish by eating them.
As I learned recently in a teaching by HE Garchen R., the reason
it's so hard to get out of the lower realms is because it's hard
there to create a cause (accumulate merit) for higher rebirth. But
an animal can create such a cause by giving itself to the Three
Jewels -- in this case, by feeding a teacher of dharma, or better
yet, a bodhisattva or buddha."
Tamra: " ... some are
uncomfortable with my being a vegetarian. I don't know why,
just that it's so.
My response to [the argument that the
animal is]... already dead, has been to say that [someone who hires]
a hitman is responsible for those he pays to have killed.
That's just how i see it with economic considerations. And i see
their attempt to have me eat it as aggressive, so [I tend to ]
answer in more blunt terms than i would if just sharing points of
view. Once or twice, someone has said that deer are starving, so it
is compassionate to kill them. My response was that children are
starving too.
The monks in Buddha's time were permitted
meat only if it wasn't slaughtered
for them. In other
words, if it was being prepared for the family whose
home
they begged at that morning. We now have grocery
stores and a demand-driven
market. All meat is killed for
the one paying for it, so we might translate
that to 'as
long as the meat wasn't bought for you.'
In the early
90s, wisdom showed me that there are no separate selves and in
essence, no death. So all of my dos and don'ts [went] out the
window. In fact, all of 'reality' as I knew it was out the window.
... . [That] state of awareness was [one in which there was neither]
good vs bad [n]or harmful vs helpful. It's all essence changing
forms. At some point, I ate a shrimp and drank some kind of alcohol
(wine i think) since it didn't matter either way. And since it
didn't matter, that was the end of that. [However,] I returned to
not drinking or eating critters with eyes.
...
.
All survival has [at its foundation ] life consuming life.
In the case [where there is] no food, some have eaten human flesh.
In religious ritual, some have eaten flesh as taking the other's
spirit and goodness into themselves. How we interpret life consuming
life varies, but we all do it. And i guess that's why one shrimp was
enough for me to see where i naturally draw the line. ... . Although
i know that ultimately it doesn't matter (or that there is no
harming another), it conventionally does matter that we follow 'do
no harm' as we understand it at the deepest or most sublime level.
For some, that may be eating everything without preference and i'd
say that's right action. For others, it may be accepting meat only
when it's offered and i'd say that [too is] right action. In a plane
crash into snow covered mountains, what would i eat? I don't know.
But i would choose then and there, and leave it then and
there.
I'm reminded of that story about the [celibate]
monk [who did not hesitate to embrace a woman in order to carry her]
across the river and his fellow monk being upset for hours, finally
saying something about him having touched a female.
The monk said, "i left her
there. You're still carrying her."
Eating is like that for me
and i suspect it is like that for many, whether the plate has meat
or veggies."
... . Follow "do no harm" in the truest way you
know it. ... and remember that it can harm others to try to make
them see or do the same.
A lama never would ask you to
eat meat just because he does, but some people
do exert
pressure ... as if agreement determines the right or wrongness
of an action ... .
For me, right action springs from
right intention and right intention springs from (and leads to)
right view. For me, exerting pressure on another not to eat meat
would be just as aggressive as eating a piece. Why?
Well, because
it seems to me that the heart-eye of each of us sees what it does,
and action comes from that vision (to a greater or lesser
distortion). Some live far removed from their own inner truth, but I
would still be taking something vital if succeeding in molding their
action contrary to their heart-mind's knowing. It would be taking
something of the vital connection with the lifeforce
within.
[That is ] much like how i see taking the flesh
of an animal to satisfy hunger. We crave consensus like a hunger. It
[conjoins] us into societies and religious views. But it's not
necessary. In my opinion, living 'do no harm' to the deepest
possible level is all one can do amid various [lifestyles] where a
common denominator is that life consumes life for survival of
beings/aggregates.
Some argue that killing is ok because one is
only killing aggregates.
Compassion brings transcendent
wisdom into the conventional though, so i find fault with that logic
just as i did with the hunters telling me deer are starving and they
[by shooting them, are] compassionately prevent[ing] that
suffering."
Not Eating, or
Fasting:
In the Tibetan Buddhist
tradition as practiced by members of the Kagyu denomination, there
is a shorter ningnye and longer Nyungnye type of
fast.
No special permission is
required to undertake a Ningne or half-day fast.
On the designated or chosen day, the practitioner takes 8 vows with
the intention of keeping them for a 24-hour period. The meal
for the day, usually vegetarian, must be finished by1 o'clock.
In the afternoon, liquids are permitted, but with absolutely no
solids such as sugar in them. This follows the daily practice
of the monks and nuns in the south Asian tradition.
There is a longer fast
associated with the thousand-armed form of Chenresi [bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara.] There most be
permission to do this practice, called Nyungnye, and usually a lama leads
it.
In the West, it is often
held from Friday evening to Monday morning. It begins in the
manner of the Nyingne, but no drink or other food is
permitted from the evening of the day the vows are taken until 24
hours have passed. During the second day, except for the
chanting of the mantra there is no talking, either.
To accommodate the demands
of the Western work week, on the morning of the third day, the chant
leader [Tib.: Umze ] or the lama may take the responsibility
of breaking the vows to enable the others to drink or eat before
going to work.
Not eating after noon
Sojong
is a practice observed by some Buddhists that was instituted
among the general population by Vasubanda, sometimes
referred to as a Second Buddha. A quotation from
Supreme Master Padmasambhava goes:
To fully restore all
positivity,
To clear
away all negativity;
To replenish (so) virtue and purify
(jong)
harmful deeds;
The
Tathagata has taught the practice of
Sojong.
From Erin Riddle who
prepares the
Snow Lion calendar:
"On sojong days the
observance of the Eight Vows of the Mahayana, the Sojong
of the practice of Narak Kong Shak, is recommended.
These are: to refrain from killing, stealing, sexual
misconduct, lying and intoxication; not to take a high or luxurious
seat, not to sing, dance or wear ornaments, and not to eat after
midday."
More about the
place of meat as part of Vajrayana practice:
From BB: " ... we
will all attain Enlightenment one day, as long as we practice the
whole of the Dharma with diligence and faith.
"... there are
generally 4 levels of Tantras in
the Vajrayana: Kriya, Charya, Yoga and Anuttarayoga. ...
some general examples of them. Annutarayoga Tantras
include
Cakrasamvara,
Kalacakra, Hevajra, Guhyasamaja, Mahamaya, Yamantaka, as well as the Nyingma practices of the Eight Herukas,
Dakinis and so on. The examples for the other three [known as Outer
Tantras] include Green Tara, White Tara, Chenrezig, Manjushri,
Amitayus and many ... peaceful deities.
For practitioners of
the Outer Tantras, especially of
the Kriya and Charya classes, a vegetarian diet is generally
necessary, especially in retreat situations, e.g., in the 2-day
retreat of Nungnye, even for the first day when one may eat, it must
be vegetarian. Even when one does these practices on a daily
basis, it is necessary to abstain from meat (as well as onion and garlic) UNTIL one has completed the daily
practice. This is because these two classes of Tantras emphasize
purification -- Tibetans of yore [and many still] would actually
limit their diets to the "three sweet and three whites." White being
the color for pacification and purification.
In many of the
Yoga Tantra practices, and definitely all of the Anuttarayoga, meat
is not proscribed. In fact, as part of Anuttarayoga, eating meat --
as a result of having been [shown] the essential non-differentiation
of Nirvana and Samsara, as well as the primordial purity of all
-- is essential [to the] practice, as emphasized in the Tsok Khor
[Skt. gunachakra]. ...
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