the great vegetarian debate

Exploring Theravāda's connections to other paths - what can we learn from other traditions, religions and philosophies?
beeblebrox
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Re: the great vegetarian debate

Post by beeblebrox »

clw_uk wrote: Whats that got to do with anything?
Hi Clw_UK,

Indeed... that was why I said it probably won't resolve the argument.

:anjali:
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Ceisiwr
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Re: the great vegetarian debate

Post by Ceisiwr »

beeblebrox wrote:
clw_uk wrote: Whats that got to do with anything?
Hi Clw_UK,

Indeed... that was why I said it probably won't resolve the argument.

:anjali:

Well its still open if it resolves the argument or not. I asked what your statement has to do with anything i.e. please clarify it, then we can see if it resolves the argument or not. :reading:
“Knowing that this body is just like foam,
understanding it has the nature of a mirage,
cutting off Māra’s flower-tipped arrows,
one should go beyond the King of Death’s sight.”
beeblebrox
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Re: the great vegetarian debate

Post by beeblebrox »

clw_uk wrote: Well its still open if it resolves the argument or not. I asked what your statement has to do with anything i.e. please clarify it, then we can see if it resolves the argument or not. :reading:
The samsara has no beginning nor end, yet the Buddha still taught liberation from it. Even when the Buddha stopped contributing to the samsara, it still goes on.

Do you think that this kind of reasoning can be seen as valid when we try to apply it to the market, where the killing is occurring to make the meat available? Especially if this killing still will always go on, regardless of whether we buy the meat or not?

Or maybe even more relevant... this argument about eating vs. not eating meat still will always go on. Do you think we need to be a part of it? Is it obligatory?

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Ceisiwr
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Re: the great vegetarian debate

Post by Ceisiwr »

The samsara has no beginning nor end, yet the Buddha still taught liberation from it. Even when the Buddha stopped contributing to the samsara, it still goes on.
Samsara is the spinning of the mind. Its a mistake to compare it with market forces.
Do you think that this kind of reasoning will be valid when we apply it to the market, where the killing is occurring to make the meat available? Especially when this killing still always will go on, regardless of whether we buy the meat or not?

As I said, in a small market it would have an effect. In a global market it doesnt.
Or maybe even more relevant... the argument about eating vs. not eating meat still will always go on. Do you think we need to be a part of it? Is it obligatory?
No of course not, but I would be interested to hear a response to you from my above post relating to my experience at KFC?
“Knowing that this body is just like foam,
understanding it has the nature of a mirage,
cutting off Māra’s flower-tipped arrows,
one should go beyond the King of Death’s sight.”
beeblebrox
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Joined: Thu Dec 31, 2009 10:41 pm

Re: the great vegetarian debate

Post by beeblebrox »

clw_uk wrote:
The samsara has no beginning nor end, yet the Buddha still taught liberation from it. Even when the Buddha stopped contributing to the samsara, it still goes on.
Samsara is the spinning of the mind. Its a mistake to compare it with market forces.
What are these "market forces"? Is that something like the "celestial forces" which make everything run?
Do you think that this kind of reasoning will be valid when we apply it to the market, where the killing is occurring to make the meat available? Especially when this killing still always will go on, regardless of whether we buy the meat or not?
As I said, in a small market it would have an effect. In a global market it doesnt.
I wonder if the Buddha or an arahant had any effect on the samsara?

What are "small market" and "global market" anyway? Is that like the difference in between the human world and the celestial heaven?
Or maybe even more relevant... the argument about eating vs. not eating meat still will always go on. Do you think we need to be a part of it? Is it obligatory?
No of course not, but I would be interested to hear a response to you from my above post relating to my experience at KFC?
It's your experience at the KFC. Nothing came to my mind to say anything about it... I didn't think there had to be. :)

:anjali:
beeblebrox
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Re: the great vegetarian debate

Post by beeblebrox »

I want to clarify that while I think these concepts of "buyer" and "seller," market forces, small and global markets still can be useful to discuss things... we should also take care that we're not carried away with these, as if they were something real. We should take care that they (the concepts) don't end up determining our own behaviors... especially in those situations where it's clearly unbeneficial.

I think this was one of the gists of the Buddha's teachings, more or less... the brahmins and ascetics got carried away with their different systems of viewing their own worlds. Over the time they allowed these systems to determine their own behaviors... to their detriments, and despite all the different kinds of dukkha that they ended up creating for themselves, and others.

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Spiny Norman
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Re: the great vegetarian debate

Post by Spiny Norman »

clw_uk wrote: But yet he ate meat and never enforced it...
But wasn't the purpose of the 3-fold rule to reduce suffering and harm to other living beings? Isn't this an extension of metta?
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Re: the great vegetarian debate

Post by Spiny Norman »

Jhana4 wrote: "Monks, a lay follower should not engage in five types of business. Which five? Business in weapons, business in human beings, business in meat, business in intoxicants, and business in poison.

Customers make a business possible.
And if we buy meat from a butcher we're saying that there's no way we would get involved in butchery, but we're quite happy for somebody else to do it when it suits us? :shrug:
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cooran
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Re: the great vegetarian debate

Post by cooran »

Hello all,

Not sure if this article by Ajahn Brahmavamso has been posted before:

Vinaya: what the Buddha said about eating meat
http://www.dhammatalks.net/Books6/Ajahn ... g_meat.htm

With metta,
Chris
---The trouble is that you think you have time---
---Worry is the Interest, paid in advance, on a debt you may never owe---
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dagon
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Re: the great vegetarian debate

Post by dagon »

Jhana4 wrote:
clw_uk wrote:
Interesting that the Buddha classed meat production with such fine endeavors as arms dealing, the slave traide, the drug trade and making poison.

Yet he ate meat and didn't enforce a rule for vegetarianism. In fact the only time he is asked to do so, he refuses.


The demand for meat won't go away, and a lot of meat will end up in the bin, so there is no harm in buying it
The Buddha allegedly ate meat. There are disputes whether or not MN 55 and a similar passage in the commentaries have been translated correctly.
In the two version of the suttas I have found the part where the Buddha states he will eat meat is in parenthesis. I need to research what the parenthesis mean and I am following up on the source of the claim of the translation error. According to the monk who told me this MN 55 should have been translated as "I will eat almsfood if I can't tell if there is meat in it".

As to your second point I think your reasoning is at fault. Current cultural culinary tastes are not laws of physics, they can change. The second part of your second point seems to be saying we have to keep eating meet because if large amounts of people stopped all at once some meat would be wasted by being thrown away ( probably can be used for fertilizer ). That would mean you would have to keep perpetuating an unethical act to keep the results of previous unethical acts from being wasteful.

As far as ethics go, forget about Buddhism and forget about the suffering to livestock animals, many of whom are as intelligent as dogs or young human children. Meat production contributes more to the greenhouse effect of global climate change than the transportation industry. Do you have kids? Do you want them, their friends or your grandchildren to live in the future resulting from global climate change?

If you are interested in the future you should read this essay by an environmental journalist who states flatly he could care less about vegetarianism, but he gave up meat because he is aware of how it is contributing to global climate change and he doesn't want that future for him or his children:

http://www.audubonmagazine.org/articles ... arbon-diet
Methane is created in anaerobic environments and is naturally produced and emitted from wetlands and other natural situations. Mother Nature, however, is not the predominate generator of methane. Humans are. The decomposition of waste, the burning of biomass, the extraction of fossil fuels, the digestion of livestock, and rice cultivation combine to emit more than twice the methane emitted by natural processes.

It is this last source that Mr. Xu is focusing his research on. Most rice is grown in flooded rice paddies, mainly because the floodwater has no adverse effects on the rice plants but controls most weeds and pest insects. The flood water creates an anaerobic environment just right for methane production. Rice cultivation accounts for 17 percent of the anthropogenically produced methane.
http://www.princeton.edu/engineering/eq ... ture4.html

So if we were to be consistent in our arguments then we should also stop producing and eating rice?

metta
paul
Last edited by dagon on Thu Sep 05, 2013 1:31 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Spiny Norman
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Re: the great vegetarian debate

Post by Spiny Norman »

cooran wrote:Hello all,

Not sure if this article by Ajahn Brahmavamso has been posted before:

Vinaya: what the Buddha said about eating meat
http://www.dhammatalks.net/Books6/Ajahn ... g_meat.htm

With metta,
Chris
Thanks Chris. I thought this comment at the end of the article was interesting:
"Nonetheless, we may encourage vegetarianism and if our lay supporters brought only vegetarian food and no meat, well...monks may not complain either."
Buddha save me from new-agers!
Spiny Norman
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Re: the great vegetarian debate

Post by Spiny Norman »

dagon wrote: So if we were to be consistent in our arguments then we should also stop producing and eating rice?
No, because feeding grain to people directly is much more efficient than feeding that grain to animals and then eating them. You can feed 6-8 times more people if they eat the grain and not the animals which are fed on the grain.
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dagon
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Re: the great vegetarian debate

Post by dagon »

Spiny Norman wrote:
dagon wrote: So if we were to be consistent in our arguments then we should also stop producing and eating rice?
No, because feeding grain to people directly is much more efficient than feeding that grain to animals and then eating them. You can feed 6-8 times more people if they eat the grain and not the animals which are fed on the grain.
The argument that not eating meat would be beneficial to the worlds food supply is sound as far as grain fed animals goes. The arguments that factory farming/feed lots not only bring about more suffering and are an even worse producer of greehouse gasses than more natural models of farming is beyond dispute in my mind. If we look at total food production there are areas that are unable to support grain/vegetable production which would be able to support livestock. If other chose to eat cattle it is not my concern as long as i am not expected to eat burnt bovine bodies.

What my concern is that when an issue is raised as part of this discussion we should be consistent in our approach - the subject of greehouse gasses was raised by some one else which is what i was addressing.

metta
paul
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Re: the great vegetarian debate

Post by Jhana4 »

Almost all meat production comes from factory farms which uses grain based feed. There is land that can't grow food for humans, but that can grow grass for cows. However, that type of land exists in only a tiny amount and could only produce food for an insignificant number of people.

I read that in the book "Eating Animals" by Jonathan Safran Foer. The author did his own fresh research and the author paid a professional fact checker to review his book before he submitted it for publishing.
In reading the scriptures, there are two kinds of mistakes:
One mistake is to cling to the literal text and miss the inner principles.
The second mistake is to recognize the principles but not apply them to your own mind, so that you waste time and just make them into causes of entanglement.
dagon
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Re: the great vegetarian debate

Post by dagon »

Jhana4 wrote:Almost all meat production comes from factory farms which uses grain based feed. There is land that can't grow food for humans, but that can grow grass for cows. However, that type of land exists in only a tiny amount and could only produce food for an insignificant number of people.

I read that in the book "Eating Animals" by Jonathan Safran Foer. The author did his own fresh research and the author paid a professional fact checker to review his book before he submitted it for publishing.
Beef production tends to be concentrated, with the top six producers—the U.S., the European Union, Brazil, Australia, Argentina, and Russia—accounting for about 60 percent of global production. Significant shifts among producers have occurred over time. Cattle production worldwide is differentiated by animal genetics and feeding methods, resulting in differing quality types. Cattle are basically residual claimants to crop or land resources. Those countries with excess or low-value land tend to grass-feed their cattle herds, while those countries with excess feed grains, such as the U.S. and Canada, finish cattle with a grain ration. Grain-fed cattle have more internal fat (i.e., marbling) which results in a more tender meat than forage-fed cattle of a similar age. In some Asian countries such as Japan, which is not a grain surplus country, tastes and preferences have encouraged feeding grain to cattle, but at a high cost since the grain must be imported.[15][1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle_feeding

Grain feeding cattle is a waste of food resources, uses petrochemical in a wasteful and damaging way to the environment.
Livestock on grazing lands. About 60% of the world's agricultural land is used for grazing some 360 million cattle and more than 600 million sheep and goats. Grazing animals supply about 10% of world production of beef and about 30% of sheep and goat meat. For an estimated 100 million people in arid areas - and probably a similar number in other zones - grazing livestock is the only feasible source of livelihood.

The great advantage of livestock grazing is that it converts to useful products resources what would otherwise be wasted. In the process, grazing animals play a positive environmental role: they improve the diversity of grasses by dispersing seeds, and break up the soil crust. This is why arid rangelands are a dynamic and highly resilient ecosystem, provided the number of people and animals that the land can support remains in balance. Indeed, the ability to recover after drought is one of the main indicators of long term environmental and social sustainability in arid grazing systems.
http://www.fao.org/ag/magazine/9809/spot4.htm

You statement is correct for the USA and some other counties but not all by any means.

metta
paul
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