Hi DavidDavid N. Snyder wrote:Hi baratgab,
I copied and pasted the above excerpts from a couple of posts of yours in other threads. Given your wish to ordain and your vegan diet and wish to remain vegan, how would you do that in regard to the three-fold rule? I congratulate your wish to ordain, but I am curious how it can be done and remain a vegan. I have heard of some monks who go on alms rounds and receive vegetarian and non-vegetarian foods and then when all the food is placed before all the monks for the noon meal, the vegetarian monk chooses the veggies. But what if there were not enough veggies or if meat juices and meat pieces were included in the veggie dishes?
Thanks for the question. Yes, I'm aware of this problem. To outline my attitude, I have to say that I started, and I still follow this path with a universal respect for rational wisdom and compassion. If, regarding what is written about right conduct, something doesn't fit with my perception of wise and compassionate conduct, I feel that to be a real follower of the Dhamma, I am obliged not too take these things just for faith, but to follow my best intuition of wisdom and compassion. For me, this is the proper faith: commitment to the spirit of the Dhamma, instead of faith in the words that are written. Fortunately, there is not much divergence, as far as I see.
Regarding the divergence of meat-eating: Going forth and at the same time starting to devour the flesh of other sentient beings is simply not a path that I am willing to follow. If this would be the only option I would prefer to practice as a self-sustaining hermit, living on plant-foods that are cultivated with no-dig permaculture methods. To be honest, I already semi-started this path, but I ended up deciding that I should give another try to the ordination, because setting up such an environment needs a lot of worldly work and enthusiasm.
So, in the first phase of my planning I asked several people about the possibility of living on fleshless dana in Sri Lanka, and all of the answers were encouraging. I even asked a native, senior Sri Lankan monk, who is openly vegetarian, and who likes to wander and go on pindapata on his own. He said that being a vegetarian monk is not a problem there. He even offered his personal assistance in finding a kind teacher and a good place to practice.
With eating milk and eggs as dana I don't have much problem, even though I know their influence on the health of the body. Also, I have an understanding for poor people who live in rural areas, and have only foods with meat to offer. I think Buddha's instructions and attitude are related specifically to a culture like that, and they are rather problematic to prescribe for today's modern societies; let alone the modern monasteries, where monks don't go on pindapata, lay people buy the foods specifically for the monks, and then later the monastery's guests cook the food in the kitchen... But to back to your question, if there will be little pieces of flesh in my food, probably I will just make peace with that. The point is to uphold values that are pointing towards my perception of higher compassion and wisdom, not to aspire for some sort of perfect personal purity.
I am just noting that this entire topic arises because the world is changing. Vegetarianism slowly starts to symbolize a form of higher morality in the western countries, due to our progressive understanding of human responsibilities towards nonhumans. There are more and more monks and lay people who cannot reconcile the going forth and the monkhood with eating flesh. It will be more and more controversial and stone-age like to uphold an attitude in monastic Buddhism that doesn't give any meaningful concern to flesh-eating. My personal view is that bhikkhus should rejoice in this change towards non-violence and should support it in their own accord; rather than striving to preserve this doctrine of indifference that is now timely to pass.
Regarding the issue aversion, I will deal with it in the same way as I am now dealing with it as a lay person. I can't see much difference: Switching from the company of flesh-eating lay people to the company of flesh-eating monks. Of course I have to note that there is very little chance that I will seek monks who are utterly indifferent to this issue as my teachers, since I consider this as a sign. But just like in the lay world, having the perception that someone is not the brightest or the most moral doesn't constitute aversion in itself. Some humans are like this, and some humans are like that... This is the nature of things. Also, I plan to live mostly alone, without associating with any specific monastery.Sanghamitta wrote:I would like to add a question baratgab. As the majority of your fellow monks will be eating meat, chicken and fish when offered. how will you maintain an attitude of non aversion, when you apprantly consider those items to be non food which you equate morally to human flesh ? Even if you are able to technically avoid eating them yourself. It seems to me that you will be going into the monastic Sangha with a view of food dana very different to what I have been told is the norm. I have heard Ajahn Sumedho stress the importance of not picking and choosing during Dana meals.
As for Cittaviveka in England, I was a guest there for one month, and at that time the norm of the meals was that monks and lay guests, one after the other, gone to the kitchen, and personally selected foods from the tables full of different dishes. Symbolic pindapata with rice was only practiced on some festival-days. Dishes with meat were normally labelled as such. This was in harmony with the guest monk's reply to my specific question about being vegetarian as a monk; he wrote to me that it is not a problem, and meat-foods are labelled. I also discussed this issue with Bhante Sujato of Santi Forest Monastery, Australia, and according to his reply, they use the same way of serving; the Bhante was vegetarian even in Thailand, as far I know. Also, Bhante Gunaratana's monastery, the Bhavana Society, is a vegetarian place; you can read this specifically on their website. What is more, the new project of the Cittaviveka nun, Ajahn Thanasanti, called Awakening Truth, also directly encourages people to give vegetarian food. I recently read on the Burmese Pa-Auk Forest Monastery's website that they too serve vegetarian meals. The examples are practically everywhere; of course most "traditional" theravadins are more interested in keeping the idea that vegetarianism is still controversial and discouraged.
As an anecdote, while I was in Cittaviveka, one time somebody brought a lot of fried meat slices, and placed on a platter on its own (such prominent meat-serving was very rare; they were usually just bits and pieces in some dishes). To my satisfaction - and to my surprise, to be honest - most of the meat remained on the plate after the visit of the whole Sangha.