the great vegetarian debate

Exploring Theravāda's connections to other paths - what can we learn from other traditions, religions and philosophies?
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Prasadachitta
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Re: Buying meat: akusala kamma?

Post by Prasadachitta »

Peter wrote: If everyone stopped buying meat, yes there would be no more meat sellers. But this in itself would not bring even a single being closer to true peace. The buyers, the sellers, and the chickens would all still be trapped in the cycle of birth and death.
Yes, I think it is safe to say that this would not in itself liberate any beings from suffering. However, I think it would create an environment which is more conducive to the practice of Dhamma which does lead to liberation. Ethics is only a part of the threefold path. Besides, I think it would lead to a greater degree of transient happiness like entering into the pleasant and blissful abodes and such.

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"Beautifully taught is the Lord's Dhamma, immediately apparent, timeless, of the nature of a personal invitation, progressive, to be attained by the wise, each for himself." Anguttara Nikaya V.332
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Re: Buying meat: akusala kamma?

Post by kc2dpt »

gabrielbranbury wrote:
Peter wrote:If everyone stopped buying meat...
I think it would create an environment which is more conducive to the practice of Dhamma which does lead to liberation.
Please provide a scriptural reference to support this claim, something wherein the Buddha talks about forcibly removing another's opportunity to perform an unwholesome act.
Ethics is only a part of the threefold path.
If I physically prevent you from breaking a precept, is that a case of you practicing ethics? Buddhist ethics, as I have learned it, is a matter of self-restraint, not other-restraint.
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Re: Buying meat: akusala kamma?

Post by Prasadachitta »

Peter wrote:
gabrielbranbury wrote:
Peter wrote:If everyone stopped buying meat...
I think it would create an environment which is more conducive to the practice of Dhamma which does lead to liberation.
Please provide a scriptural reference to support this claim, something wherein the Buddha talks about forcibly removing another's opportunity to perform an unwholesome act.
First of all, it isnt as if I am propasing anyone "force" anyone to do anything. You imagined a scenario where there was no market for meat and pointed out that this would not be a sufficient condition for liberation and I agree. I only added that in a society where killing for food is not a viable profession then people indeed would end up doing something else for livelihood. People in such a society will still need to eat so I assume that there would be other forms of livelihood which open up to service this shift in need. I would think that people who kill livestock due so out of an intention to financially sustain themselves and their families. The intention would be the same whether they are involved in killing livestock or in providing alternative sources of food.

Peter wrote:
Ethics is only a part of the threefold path.
If I physically prevent you from breaking a precept, is that a case of you practicing ethics? Buddhist ethics, as I have learned it, is a matter of self-restraint, not other-restraint.
Its not as if the lack of a market for meat is physically stopping a slaughterhouse from killing. Yes self restraint helps to avoid unwholesome acts but so does guarding the doors to the senses. If people are less tempted by the financial incentives of a wrong livelihood they are less likley to commit unwholesome acts and therefore their conditions will be more conducive to the practice of Dhamma.

I should say at this point that I would not say that buying meat is tantamount to inciting someone to kill. Their is an association between the two and I would say that association amounts to a type of complicity.


Metta

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"Beautifully taught is the Lord's Dhamma, immediately apparent, timeless, of the nature of a personal invitation, progressive, to be attained by the wise, each for himself." Anguttara Nikaya V.332
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kc2dpt
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Re: Buying meat: akusala kamma?

Post by kc2dpt »

gabrielbranbury wrote:I would say that association amounts to a type of complicity.
Could you say what you think that means in terms of Buddha's teachings? How does complicity relate to the Path? Can one who is complicit attain liberation?
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Re: Buying meat: akusala kamma?

Post by Prasadachitta »

Peter wrote:
gabrielbranbury wrote:I would say that association amounts to a type of complicity.
Could you say what you think that means in terms of Buddha's teachings? How does complicity relate to the Path? Can one who is complicit attain liberation?
I think in terms of the Buddhas teachings it means that this complicity is counterproductive to Dhamma practice. Everyone can be liberated. :twothumbsup:

Metta

Gabriel
"Beautifully taught is the Lord's Dhamma, immediately apparent, timeless, of the nature of a personal invitation, progressive, to be attained by the wise, each for himself." Anguttara Nikaya V.332
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Re: some very specific vegetarian questions

Post by Prasadachitta »

Peter wrote: So I wonder if when we buy meat from a supermarket there are unwholesome thoughts which habitually arise at the same time? Perhaps that's where our practice should focus. For example, thoughts of sensual desire, thoughts of greed. Then we can cultivate the appropriate antidotes, like thinking of the relevant drawbacks. Perhaps then we will find we buy less, buy healthier, and other good things.
A very good approach I think.

Metta

Gabriel
"Beautifully taught is the Lord's Dhamma, immediately apparent, timeless, of the nature of a personal invitation, progressive, to be attained by the wise, each for himself." Anguttara Nikaya V.332
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Eating Meat...check out the stats...

Post by appicchato »

If everyone went vegetarian just for one day, the U.S. would save: :pig:

● 100 billion gallons of water, enough to supply all the homes in New England for almost 4 months;

● 1.5 billion pounds of crops otherwise fed to livestock, enough to feed the state of New Mexico for more than a year;

● 70 million gallons of gas--enough to fuel all the cars of Canada and Mexico combined with plenty to spare;

● 3 million acres of land, an area more than twice the size of Delaware;

● 33 tons of antibiotics.

If everyone went vegetarian just for one day, the U.S. would prevent:

● Greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to 1.2 million tons of CO2, as much as produced by all of France;

● 3 million tons of soil erosion and $70 million in resulting economic damages;

● 4.5 million tons of animal excrement;

● Almost 7 tons of ammonia emissions, a major air pollutant.

My favorite statistic is this: According to Environmental Defense, if every American skipped one meal of chicken per week and substituted vegetarian foods instead, the carbon dioxide savings would be the same as taking more than half a million cars off of U.S. roads. See how easy it is to make an impact?

Other points:

Globally, we feed 756 million tons of grain to farmed animals. As Princeton bioethicist Peter Singer notes in his new book, if we fed that grain to the 1.4 billion people who are living in abject poverty, each of them would be provided more than half a ton of grain, or about 3 pounds of grain/day--that's twice the grain they would need to survive. And that doesn't even include the 225 million tons of soy that are produced every year, almost all of which is fed to farmed animals. He writes, "The world is not running out of food. The problem is that we--the relatively affluent--have found a way to consume four or five times as much food as would be possible, if we were to eat the crops we grow directly."

A recent United Nations report titled Livestock's Long Shadow concluded that the meat industry causes almost 40% more greenhouse gas emissions than all the world's transportation systems--that's all the cars, trucks, SUVs, planes and ships in the world combined. The report also concluded that factory farming is one of the biggest contributors to the most serious environmental problems at every level--local and global.

Researchers at the University of Chicago concluded that switching from standard American diet to a vegan diet is more effective in the fight against global warming than switching from a standard American car to a hybrid.

In its report, the U.N. found that the meat industry causes local and global environmental problems even beyond global warming. It said that the meat industry should be a main focus in every discussion of land degradation, climate change and air pollution, water shortages and pollution, and loss of biodiversity.

Unattributed statistics were calculated from scientific reports by Noam Mohr, a physicist with the New York University Polytechnic Institute.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kathy-fre ... 81716.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
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Re: Eating Meat...check out the stats...

Post by Ben »

That is incredible Bhante!

i wonder how difficult it is to make the US go vegetarian for a day?
We've got 'Earth Hour', why not a global 'veg day'?
Thank you for sharing!
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Re: Eating Meat...check out the stats...

Post by Cittasanto »

where do the animals go for these statistics to be realised?
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Re: Eating Meat...check out the stats...

Post by DNS »

Ben wrote:That is incredible Bhante!

i wonder how difficult it is to make the US go vegetarian for a day?
:jumping: In Texas, where I went for my university degrees, it will be very difficult. Many Americans love their steaks, burgers, etc. In other places, in general near water, such as the East and West coasts, they will be more receptive to the idea.
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Re: Eating Meat...check out the stats...

Post by DNS »

Manapa wrote:where do the animals go for these statistics to be realised?
Not as many would be bred. If the world went vegetarian, it would not happen all at once. There would be a gradual decline in meat consumption. As this happens, the number of animals bred for slaughter would decrease. As the numbers decrease, you will see the statistics shown above. If everyone abstained for meat just one day per week, the number of animals being bred would also decrease and you would see the numbers Bhante posted.
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Re: Eating Meat...check out the stats...

Post by nathan »

Any farmer, hunter or fisherman living 150 years ago would have seen all this coming. They were the one's who actually wept. All of us, us with our many comforts and amusements, we all think everything has never been better than since we began driving the whole earth ahead of us straight into hell. What could possibly slow us down as we continue to accelerate now?

Yes it's a house of cards but I'm not laughing.

Escape now.
But whoever walking, standing, sitting, or lying down overcomes thought, delighting in the stilling of thought: he's capable, a monk like this, of touching superlative self-awakening. § 110. {Iti 4.11; Iti 115}
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Re: Eating Meat...check out the stats...

Post by pink_trike »

nathan wrote:Any farmer, hunter or fisherman living 150 years ago would have seen all this coming. They were the one's who actually wept. All of us, us with our many comforts and amusements, we all think everything has never been better than since we began driving the whole earth ahead of us straight into hell. What could possibly slow us down as we continue to accelerate now?

Yes it's a house of cards but I'm not laughing.

Escape now.
Not even 150 years. I'm only one generation off the land. My extended family in northern Minnesota engaged in farming, fishing, lumberjacking...and they saw what was coming 50ish years ago. There used to be widespread understanding of local sustainability, and a inviolate ethic of restraint in "respect for the land" ("the land" actually meaning "ecosystem" in what would have been distrustfully regarded as fancy "Harvard" talk). When life was lived for the most part locally, people tended not to pooh in their own bed, not to take more than their own share, made sure everyone had enough, and made sure shares were used carefully and made to last - not so far removed from "sila".

"A day without meat" is, imo, not a good idea...a short-term, "feel good" bandaid. In lickity-split time, "A day without meat" will become something like Christmas...one day a year when a lot of people are "generous" - this is what happens in our mediatized culture. For the previous 50ish years there has been a full-blown corporate war going on for "maximized mind-share" - fancy "Harvard" talk for brainwashing as many minds as possible to discard common sense and instead buy whatever is placed in front of them, regardless of effect on mind/body/ecosystem.

I think the only solution is for everyone to sit down, shut up, and take a close look at the ecosystem that is the mind/body - it is no different from the ecosystem within which this body lives. Then maybe the external ecosystem will get some attention as we begin to see that one person's poison is everyone's sickness. As it is, we are caught in a runaway system that our mind has calibrated with...because that's what minds do. We need to break that calibration and return to "the land" in the mind, or as we say in Buddhism, "the ground of being". Only then will we be able to make real, informed, even wise decisions about how to live integrally within the boundaries of the natural world, instead of dis-eased, dis-integrated, and dis-connected from the fullness of reality. It isn't "escape" we need...it is re-integration at all levels of our being. We have the tools to do that, if we choose to use them.
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Re: Eating Meat...check out the stats...

Post by appicchato »

pink_trike wrote:"A day without meat" is, imo, not a good idea...a short-term, "feel good" bandaid. In lickity-split time, "A day without meat" will become something like Christmas...one day a year when a lot of people are "generous" - this is what happens in our mediatized culture.
Looked at in this light, I wouldn't (completely) disagree...also, looked at in a different light it could be a good thing...human nature being what it is (having to be dragged, kicking and screaming, to 'change'), we've got to start somewhere...even 'A meal without meat' would be a plus...

My intention here wasn't to plug this idea, only to highlight the numbers involved...

Vegi, or not, we're all on our way out... :pig:

Be well...
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Re: Eating Meat...check out the stats...

Post by nathan »

pink_trike wrote: As it is, we are caught in a runaway system that our mind has calibrated with...because that's what minds do. We need to break that calibration and return to "the land" in the mind, or as we say in Buddhism, "the ground of being". Only then will we be able to make real, informed, even wise decisions about how to live integrally within the boundaries of the natural world, instead of dis-eased, dis-integrated, and dis-connected from the fullness of reality. It isn't "escape" we need...it is re-integration at all levels of our being. We have the tools to do that, if we choose to use them.
"We" don't have any kind of common basis for anything like that at all. There is no "we". We are more deeply divided one from the next every day even as we become the indistinct machine-like cogs of an incomprehensible device that serves something entirely alien to life, perhaps Death itself. Note that. Planets die too. Maybe prepare for that also. Note that the children are already getting ready for it anyways. Note that the old are resigned to it. Note that the powerful and wealthy really couldn't care less about it or about the rest of us. Note that none of this is new in any way. Just note that every chess game has an end game. Still want to be king for the day?

No. I think escape now is a much better bet than dig in deeper. I've integrated with my inner granola and yogurt and it is the same beautiful nightmare on that side of it. As they say, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. Third time on that one is not necessary. Even an edenic earth is as full of worms as this one. What, really, is the difference between a gilded cage and one that isn't?
But whoever walking, standing, sitting, or lying down overcomes thought, delighting in the stilling of thought: he's capable, a monk like this, of touching superlative self-awakening. § 110. {Iti 4.11; Iti 115}
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