the great vegetarian debate

[Mkoll]

I don't think that's the message of the simile. The message is that a bhikkhu should regard the food he eats as though it were the flesh of his own child. This is the perception of the repulsiveness of food which leads to shrinking away from craving for tastes.

I don't think that the suttas I've quoted above instruct to have a sense of repulsiveness of food. I think they focus on what the proper intention is with which to eat. Given that so much pain, suffering, resources and efforts go into producing, transporting, preparing and procuring food, it is only right that we use food for wholesome purposes.

The repulsiveness of food is one of the seven perceptions leading to the Deathless as per AN 7.49.

You mean AN 7.46.

Dear binocular,

That is true, thank you for bringing the subject of intention to mind. The Buddha advised both: repulsiveness of food and intention/purpose of food (this is only for maintenance and continuance of body, not for beautification, etc.). He also advised to eat, chew, taste, and swallow mindful of the body and clearly comprehending as per the satipatthana sutta.

Is there anything else regarding food in the suttas that come to mind?

Yes, AN 7.46 thank you.

[nekete]

Of course there is nothing wrong in eating meat. But to eat meat before somebody has to kill the animal to be eaten. If nobody kills de animal nobody will eat meat. If nobody eat meat nobody will kill the animal(s).

I found from time to time dead gazelles killed in a traffic accident when I go to the countryside. No problem eating that meat (I don't eat it). And of course, if you eat it, eat it mindfully, and drink whatever you drink also mindfully.

What's the problem telling the person who offers you a piece of meat (and you know that the animal has been killed after been enclosed and mistreated, don't be hypocrite) that you are vegetarian, or that you think that the animals deserve to live. I can't understand this point.

We all know the torture and torment and martyrdom and agony animals suffers to become a 'piece of meat on your dish'.

Monk or lay, do something to stop this horrible slaughter: Go vegetarian.

[Alex123]

Of course there is nothing wrong in eating meat. But to eat meat before somebody has to kill the animal to be eaten. If nobody kills de animal nobody will eat meat. If nobody eat meat nobody will kill the animal(s).

If a human will not eat that animal, chances are that some carnivorous animal will. And that animal will not be killed in a humane way either.

[Dhammanando]

What's the problem telling the person who offers you a piece of meat (and you know that the animal has been killed after been enclosed and mistreated, don't be hypocrite) that you are vegetarian, or that you think that the animals deserve to live.

The problem, as I see it, is that it would be priggish and uncivil behaviour for a guest. Moreover, being a sort of gastronomic equivalent of ‘overriding normal usage’ such behaviour is conducive to needless strife (i.e. needless because vegetarianism is not a requirement of Buddhist sīla) and therefore at odds with the spirit of non-conflict (araṇa).


An old post from Dhamma Study Group:

• Sarah Abbot: “Actually, it was on the very first day I first met [Acharn Sujin] that I had another of those Great Non-Pampering experiences. This one was on an earlier trip in Sri Lanka with Nina too ... I’d been a super-strict vegetarian for a few years, right through university and beyond. We sat down at a table of delicious curries and I started enquiring about the ingredients of the soup and explaining what I could and couldn’t eat. I was shocked when K. Sujin just seemed to ignore these concerns - which of course came well wrapped up in a long list of humane justifications - and put some soup in my bowl and then a very little of every kind of food on my plate. Ever so sweetly she told me to eat it out of consideration for our hostess.”
  
  http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/dham ... pics/30929

[lyndon taylor]

Kind of like we're kindly being asked to support the American government, even though its killing a lot of innocent civilians in foreign conflicts, I'm not buying that arguement Dhamanando, any host that can't understand someone might want to refrain from killing and eating animals, especially if they're Buddhist, almost deserves to be insulted!!!

[Dhammanando]

Kind of like we're kindly being asked to support the American government, even though its killing a lot of innocent civilians in foreign conflicts,

In your analogy, if I understand you right ...

• ‘Dinner host’ = ‘US government’.
• ‘Offering a guest food of a kind that happens not to accord with her dietary preferences’ = ‘killing innocent civillians’.
• ‘The guest’s eating of that food for courtesy’s sake’ = ‘approving of the government in spite of its killing of innocent civillians’.

Don’t these parallels strike you as perhaps just a wee bit contrived?

• __________________________________________________
  
  Argument from analogy
  False analogy
  
  Several factors affect the strength of the argument from analogy:
  
  • The relevance of the known similarities to the similarity inferred in the conclusion.
  • The amount and variety of the examples in the analogy.
  • The number of characteristics that the things being compared share.
  
  __________________________________________________

any host that can't understand someone might want to refrain from killing and eating animals, especially if they're Buddhist, almost deserves to be insulted!!!

I believe the implied situation here is not one in which the host offers meat to a vegetarian out of sheer bloody-mindedness, but rather one in which she has no prior knowledge of her guest's dietary preferences and simply offers the kind of food she would offer to any guest. And so the question of whether a vegetarian's motivations are intelligible to her isn't really relevant.

[lyndon taylor]

Would you offer the same kind advice to Jews and muslims, that they should just swallow their traditions and eat pork if offered them by a host? killing innocent civilians=killing innocent animals, sorry you don't see any connection.

Frankly in addition to being vegetarian for religious reasons, I'm also a vegetarian for my own health, and I'm damned if I'm going to be concerned about a hosts feelings serving me food that is bad for my body and the state of mind I want to cultivate, frankly meat eaters have a long way to go to develop sensitivity on these issues, its the vegetarians that seem to be bending over backwards making allowances for meat eaters.

[Ben]

Although a vegan, i am with Ajahn Dhammanando on this issue. Some things are more important than maintaining a dogmatic adherence to one's dietary preference t at every single meal - developing gratitude, sympathetic joy at another's meritorious action of offering Dana, and renunciation of one's own wishes and desires are cases in point.

[cooran]

Well said, Bhante and Ben. I agree.

With metta,
Chris

[Dhammanando]

Would you offer the same kind advice to Jews and muslims, that they should just swallow their traditions and eat pork if offered them by a host?

No, because in this case they are doing as their religion commands them. Theravāda Buddhist vegetarians, on the other hand, by eschewing meat are at best undertaking a sort of supererogatory virtue (assuming that their motivation is to not contribute to the market demand for meat), not one that is actually required by their sīla.

killing innocent civilians=killing innocent animals, sorry you don't see any connection.

It wasn't in fact specified in the earlier post that the host is serving meat from an animal she has killed herself, but merely that she is serving meat.

I'm damned if I'm going to be concerned about a hosts feelings...

You make my point for me: "priggish" and "uncivil".

[lyndon taylor]

What part of Not Killing do you not seem to understand. The comparison to the Government killing is the slippery slope we go on when we say some killing is OK where other is not, such as its OK for our host to kill animals, or the government to kill Afghans, but not ourselves, we have no part of it. What you don't seem to comprehend is not all vegetarians are the same and practice vegetarianism for the same reasons, the Buddha's logic as applied to accepting meat from hosts may work for some vegetarians but certainly not all or even most, in my opinion from a debating sense its really a very poor arguement put forward, kind of like saying if you're not doing any killing and you're in the military, you're not contributing to others killing, when in fact you may be feeding the soldiers or healing their wounds so they can kill more.

The precept is to not kill, and come to an understanding of how you can refrain from killing and contributing to killing, not to make petty little excuses to not take responsibility for your actions and blame someone else for all the killing.

PS I'd like a quote from the scriptures, Dhammanando, where the Buddha says offending ones host is a greater crime than killing a living being. Seems like you've got your priorities backwards, Not Killing is the most important precept of all, and the biggest one in terms of proportion, not offending ones hosts doesn't come into the precepts, if it even comes into the vinaya.......

[tiltbillings]

PS I'd like a quote from the scriptures, Dhammanando, where . . .

That is either Ven Dhammanando, or Ajahn Dhammanando.

[Dhammanando]

The precept is to not kill, and come to an understanding of how you can refrain from killing and contributing to killing,

The diminution in the killing of animals that some vegetarians hope their dietary practice will conduce to could only come about if the said practice were to be undertaken by sufficient numbers. One single person’s undertaking to purchase no meat will not have any discernible (that is to say, measurable) effect on the market or on the animal-slaughter that market demand generates. A vegetarian may nonetheless comfort herself with the thought that although her refusal to purchase meat has no discernible effect on the market, at least she is not personally contributing to it. We can surely agree on this much, right?

But when it comes to a guest’s refusal to eat her host’s meat (which is what the present sub-section of the thread is concerned with), not only will this not have any measurable effect on the market, it will not have even an unmeasurable effect on it; there is no possibility of its having an effect of any kind on the market, for the guest’s refusal will not cause the purchased meat to become unpurchased. That being so, the sole effects of her refusal will be an insulted host and some wasted food.

[Dhammanando]

I'd like a quote from the scriptures, Dhammanando, where the Buddha says offending ones host is a greater crime than killing a living being.

Then I suggest you direct your question to the proper quarters, which is to say, to some Buddhist who actually holds such a view.

[lyndon taylor]

Perhaps, if you eat three cows a year, 50 chickens and a few pigs, perhaps becoming a vegetarian would lower demand by about that much, so the farmer would cut back on how many animals they breed etc. However the point is some of this is also about the vegetarian, who doesn't want to be eating animal hormones or antibiotics fed to animals for their own health, so refusing meat from hosts is the best option to them. Part of the whole reason there are so many meat eating Buddhists, is meat eating Buddhist monks recommending meat to their followers, so their karmic footprint of animal killing is much greater than the amount of meat they actually eat. Likewise a Monk that makes compassionate pleas for vegetarianism is likewise having a greater positive karmic footprint against killing more than just the animals he is not eating.