As the Buddha taught over two and a half thousand years ago, there are many benefits to following a vegetarian lifestyle — both for us and for other beings as well. In recent years, the world has become a very unbalanced place. The human consumption of meat directly causes, no doubt, part of this imbalance.
In industrialized countries, the meat industry is guilty of causing substantial environmental problems: methane gas produced by cattle contributes to global warming; acidic pig feces pollutants subterranean aquifers; over-fishing is emptying the oceans of their fish; livestock have recently even spread severe and fatal illnesses to humans!
Not only are we hurting our environment by raising meat, but we hurt ourselves when we eat it. We hurt ourselves in two ways:. First, eating meat is contrary to our inherent Buddha-nature, which is, in essence, a love for all sentient beings throughout space; Second, eating meat is unhealthy, especially in the long term.
Therefore, my appeal to you is this: give up eating meat from today onwards; if you feel you cannot do that, eat less meat. It might take several tries to give up eating meat, as all habits are hard to break.
Skip to content. Illustration by Lasha Mutual. Do Buddhists and monks eat meat? The Common Problem: The unfortunate truth is common to all cultures and faiths, which is a lot of misinterpretation of the teaching of holy religions worldwide.
Venerable Geshe Phelgye saves hundreds of goats just before being slaughtered. We touch on how eating meat is viewed in the different schools of Buddhist thought. We will take a brief look at the different customs with regard to meat eating across the belief system. Ethics is a field of thought and action that seeks to find the best and most moral way to act in any circumstance.
Buddhism has its own specific set of ethics that help inform the teachings and practices carried out within the tradition. Buddhist ethics is of a set of views that are agreed upon and lived by those of us taking the path towards Enlightenment. For the Buddhist, ethics and morality play a huge role in the very foundation of the belief system.
These guidelines for how to live a right and just life are key tenets across all forms of Buddhism. In some ways, Buddhist ethics should be considered a code of conduct that followers subscribe to when they accept the teachings.
Harmony, compassion, restraint, and avoiding doing harm are huge parts of the ethical system of Buddhism. This extends beyond just actions with other people. When the Buddha taught to do no harm, he did not just mean harm to fellow humans. He meant to do no harm generally, to any life.
This extends the ethical system to non-human living beings. For the Buddhist, do no harm applies to plants and animals as well as people. Nonviolence is at the very core of the Buddhist ethical system.
This is true across all types of Buddhism. To the Buddhist, living a just, ethical, and moral life is a conscious commitment that we make. This means that it takes a conscious effort to live in accordance with the tenants set forth by the Buddha and other important teachers.
A Buddhist who wishes to achieve enlightenment must internalize not only the teachings, but the spirit behind the ethical system. This is what they rely on when it comes to make the right or moral choice in a given situation. The ethical tenets that Buddhist commit themselves to extend beyond their thought and relations.
They will inform how one interacts with others in the commercial realm. Some Buddhists are vegetarian , eg Chinese monks and nuns. This is because the Buddha taught that compassion and loving-kindness should be given to all creatures. It is also clear that meat cannot be eaten without the violence of killing and this is against the principle of ahimsa.
Other Buddhists do eat meat and the texts of the Pali canon do not specifically forbid eating meat. Instead, the Buddha is depicted there ruling that monks and nuns can only eat meat if the animal was not slaughtered specifically to feed them. In some modern Buddhist countries Buddhists who want to eat meat are happy if the animal is slaughtered by a non-Buddhist abattoir worker.
Some Buddhists believe that meat should be eaten only for medicinal purposes and then only when the animal has died of natural causes.
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