Moonpointer : Buddhist Vegan Fellowship

Buddha’s Final Teaching on Avoiding Meat & Fish

Most people today are fond of meat and they would not welcome any suggestion to give up meat-eating. Neither would most people among this congregation. The suggestion would be more embarrassing to some monks than to lay Buddhists for we understand that they are rather reluctant to accept strictly vegetarian meals. Some monks are said to have deprecated vegetarianism as a practice advocated by Devadatta. Some contend that eating only vegetables makes no difference because to take delight in doing so means craving. This is true. Eating without due reflection or mindfulness tends to produce craving regardless of the kind of food one takes. However, the nature of craving is not the same and this is evidenced by the inability of many people to avoid eating meat. Some do not like meals that lack chicken, pork, mutton and so forth, a fact that points to their excessive attachment to meat.

http://aimwell.org/assets/sallekhasutta.pdf

(135) A Shorter Classification of Actions

Young man, a certain woman or man destroys living things, is fierce with bloody hands, engaged in destroying living things without compassion. On account of that action, accomplishment and undertaking, after death he decreases, is born in hell. After death, if he does not decrease and is not born in hell, and if born with humans, wherever he is born, has short life. Young man the behaviour of destroying living things, being fierce with bloody hands, engaging in destroying living things without compassion, is conducive to be born with short life.

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Solitude is happiness for one who is content,
who has heard the Dhamma and clearly sees.
Non-affliction is happiness in the world
– harmlessness towards all living beings.

A disciple of the Buddha should have a mind of compassion and cultivate the practice of liberating sentient beings. He must reflect thus: throughout the eons of time, all male sentient beings have been my father, all female sentient beings my mother. I was born of them, now if I slaughter them, I would be slaughtering my parents as well as eating flesh that was once my own. This is so because all elemental earth, water, fire and air – the four constituents of all life – have previously been part of my body, part of my substance.

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Let him [the householder] not destroy, or cause to be destroyed, any life at all, or sanction the acts of those who do so.* Let him refrain from even hurting any being, both those that are strong, and those that tremble in the world.

* One who buys butcher’s meat or poultry violates this gatha. For, by paying the butcher for meat he has killed, the buyer shares his misgiving to some extent by “sanctioning” his act.

What the Teaching is Not

“Whereas some ascetics and Brahmins, feeding on the food of the faithful, remain addicted to the enjoyment of stored-up goods such as food, drink, clothing, carriages, beds, perfumes and meat, the ascetic Gotama refrains from such enjoyment.”

Translation by Maurice Walshe pages 69 and 70.

Chapter 6 : The Forty-eight Secondary Precepts – (3) On Eating Meat

A disciple of the Buddha must not deliberately eat meat. He should not eat the flesh of any sentient being. The meat-eater forfeits the seed of Great Compassion, severs the seed of the Buddha Nature and causes [animals and transcendental] beings to avoid him. Those who do so are guilty of countless offenses. Therefore, Bodhisattvas should not eat the flesh of any sentient beings whatsoever. If instead, he deliberately eats meat, he commits a secondary offense.

Translated by the Buddhist Text Translation Society in USA

Chapter 7 : 3rd to 5th Paragraph

“O Kasyapa! What is “complying well and discussing”? For example, a person comes and puts a question to the Buddha-World-Honoured One: “How can I be a great danapati [giver], not throwing my money away?” The Buddha says: “Should there be any sramana, Brahmin, or any person who seeks to posess [but] little and is fully contented and will not accept or store any impure things, give such a person a maid or servant. To one who practises pure actions, give him the lust of a female, and to one who does not drink [alcohol] or eat meat, give drink and meat; to one who does not take meals after noon, give him a meal after noon; to one who does not use flowers and incense, give flowers and incense. Such donations give rise to rumour and the fame will fill the world. Not a penny is spent. This is “complying well and discussing.”

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Chapter 8

{244}*1 At that time Mahamati the Bodhisattva-Mahasattva asked the Blessed One in verse and again made a request, saying: Pray tell me, Blessed One, Tathagata, Arhat, Fully-Enlightened One regarding the merit and vice of meat-eating; thereby I and other Bodhisattva-Mahasattvas of the present and future may teach the Dharma to make those beings abandon their greed for meat, who, under the influence of the habit-energy belonging to the carnivorous existence, strongly crave meat-food. These meat-eaters thus abandoning their desire for [its] taste will seek the Dharma for their food and enjoyment, and, regarding all beings with love as if they were an only child, will cherish great compassion towards them. Cherishing [great compassion], they will discipline themselves at the stages of Bodhisattvahood and will quickly be awakened in supreme enlightenment; or staying a while at the stage of Sravakahood*2 and Pratyekabuddhahood, they will finally reach the highest stage of Tathagatahood.

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