Filed under: Buddhist Quotes
I do not see any reason why animals should be slaughtered to serve as human diet when there are so many substitutes. After all, man can live without meat. It is only some carnivorous animals that have to subsist on flesh. Killing animals for sport, for pleasure, for adventures, and for hides and furs is a phenomenon which is at once disgusting and distressing. There is no justification in indulging in such acts of brutality.
Filed under: Buddhist Quotes
Whenever I visit a market and see the chickens crowded together in tiny cages that give them no room to move around and spread their wings and the fish slowly drowning in the air, my heart goes out to them. People have to learn to think about animals in a different way, as sentient beings who love life and fear death. I urge everyone who can to adopt a compassionate vegetarian diet.
From Fund for the Animals speech 1998
Filed under: Buddhist Quotes
In every country in the world, killing human beings is condemned. The Buddhist precept of non-killing extends even further, to include all living beings.
From Interbeing: Fourteen Guidelines for Engaged Buddhism (1983)
Filed under: Buddhist Quotes
We must look deeply. When we buy something or consume something, we may be participating in an act of killing. This precept [non-killing] reflects our determination not to kill, either directly or indirectly, and also to prevent others from killing.
From Touching Peace: Practicing the Art of Mindful Living (1992)
Filed under: Buddhist Quotes
Vegan Ch’an Master Hsu Yun (Xu-yun), at 113 years old in 1952
Whenever possible, a Buddhist should abstain from eating meat. But where vegetables are plentiful, there is no reason to eat meat.
Filed under: Writings
By Grace Chen
Illustrated by Lin Chien-ju
I have been telling this story to almost everyone I see. Back in April of this year, my cousin from Boston called me up and said, “Grace, I’m coming to Los Angeles. What do you want me to bring for you?” I immediately thought of the yummy frozen Maryland crab cakes that a friend had once brought for me, so I said, “Why don’t you bring me lobster? I love lobster.” Of course, when I told my cousin that, I was just joking.
Although lobster was my favorite food at that time, I didn’t really think that she would take what I said all that seriously. The next day, my cousin flew in from Boston to visit me. As I opened the door to greet her, I found her standing there, carrying two big boxes and looking very exhausted. I asked her, “What did you bring with you? She said seriously, ”I brought two live lobsters for you. Didn’t you say that you love lobster? I carried these two lobsters with me all the way from Boston because you told me that you like them. I thought to myself, “Oh-oh!. She actually listened to what I said? How could she listen to what I told her? I was just joking. How can I eat two live lobsters? What shall I do?”
Filed under: Writings
By Lin Ching Shywan
I have been a strict vegetarian for more than four years now. When I first gave up meat, quite a few of my friends and relatives expressed concern; most people seem to have the idea that vegetarian food lacks adequate nutrients. And being vegetarian can be a more than minor inconvenience with the amounts of meat and fish that people now eat.
Chinese have a traditional notion that foods that are “warming” in nature, like meat, are important for building up physical strength; so in the minds of some of the older generation, one could not possibly get all the nutrition one needed form the “cool” bean greens, white radishes, and so forth that vegetarians favor. In their book, the only things that strengthen the body are foods like tiger phallus, snake blood, stewed chicken and crab in wine.
Before taking the big step, I didn’t give nutrition, convenience, or building up physical strength a second thought, since my reason for becoming vegetarian had nothing to do with any of these. I became vegetarian because of my belief in Buddhism.
Filed under: Writings
By Ronald Epstein
Almost daily, the elderly Chinese American woman hurried into the San Francisco temple, bowed to the Buddhas, put her offering of food on the altar, lit incense, tidied up the temple and rushed out the door.
After watching this routine for many years and getting to know her a bit, I complimented her one day on her piety and sincerity.
“Oh, no, no,” she replied. “You don’t understand. My husband and I are in a terrible business. The monk here, who is my spiritual teacher, told me that we should sell it or we will face horrible karmic retribution, but we just can’t seem to extricate ourselves. I just try to create a little merit to help us, but I know it is not enough.”
Then I learned that she and her husband owned a Chinatown delicatessen famous for its barbecued poultry.
Filed under: Masters' Teachings
By Thich Nhat Hanh
“Aware of the suffering caused by the destruction of life, I undertake to cultivate compassion and learn ways to protect the lives of people, animals, plants, and minerals. I am determined not to kill, not to let others kill, and not to condone any act of killing in the world, in my thinking, and in my way of life.”
Life is precious. It is everywhere, inside us and all around us; it has so many forms.
The First Precept is born from the awareness that lives everywhere are being destroyed. We see the suffering caused by the destruction of life, and we undertake to cultivate compassion and use it as a source of energy for the protection of people, animals, plants, and minerals. The First Precept is a precept of compassion, karuna – the ability to remove suffering and transform it. When we see suffering, compassion is born in us.
Filed under: Buddhist Quotes
I have enforced the law against killing certain animals and many others, but the greatest progress of righteousness among men comes from the exhortation in favor of non-injury to life and abstention from killing living beings.
