Filed under: Writings
A Section From : The Red Thread – Buddhist Approaches to Sexuality
The Buddhist notion of desire is not limited to sexual desire; it encompasses all sensual desires. Desire is usually described with ten similes: it is said to be like a dry meat bone, a piece of meat for which many birds are fighting, a torch made of straw carried against the wind, a pit full of burning coal, a dream of a beautiful landscape, borrowed things, a tree laden with fruit on which it is dangerous to climb, a slaughterhouse, the point of a sword, a snake’s head.
Filed under: Writings
By http://www.quietmountain.org/dharmacenters/buddhadendo/vege.htm
Vegetarianism is itself a rather minor topic within Buddhism, yet it generates controversy beyond its importance. In examining the single subject of vegetarianism we need to bring in other seemingly unrelated subjects: how is Buddhism adapted to new languages and cultures? What or who is a monk? How did the Mahayana and Vajrayana scriptures expand on the Pali records? What is the teaching on killing? Researching these questions is not an exercise in selecting passages from the sutras to justify a preconception. Rather it is an exercise in understanding the intention and reasoning of Shakyamuni Buddha.
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: Writings
By Norm Phelps. New York: Lantern Press, 2004. 208 pages. Paperback. ISBN 1590560698.
The first precept of Buddhism forbids the taking of life; eating flesh requires killing animals. Buddhist ethics are rooted in compassion, and animal industries in the West are shockingly cruel. So why do so many Western Buddhists eat meat, and even defend the practice? In The Great Compassion: Buddhism and Animal Rights (Lantern 2004), Norm Phelps explores Buddhist ethics in relation to dietary practices.
There is little point in discussing Buddhism, compassion, and diet if one does not know about animal industries, so Phelps provides a brief historic view of factory farming, along with statistics and an explanation of common practices in several animal industries, such as dairy, broiler hens, eggs, veal, beef, and hogs. “Ten billion cows, pigs, sheep, goats, chickens, ducks, and turkeys are killed for food and fabric. Of those, nine billion are chickens. Worldwide, 48 billion land animals are killed for food and fabric, of whom 46 billion are chickens, ducks, turkeys, and geese”(3). And their deaths are often only the end, Phelps reminds us, of dismal lives at the hands of people who view farmed animals primarily as commodities, not as sentient beings.
Filed under: Writings
By Lambert Schmithausen : The Status of Animals
Still, even against this attempt to establish ecological ethics on the intramundane level, one serious objection can be raised: the objection that the positive evaluation, in the “hermit strand”, of (wild/intact) nature as an ambiance might seem to have, more or less, lost sight of suffering in nature. The more so since in many canonical texts, and mostly in those which may be characterized as rational discourse, animals and existence as an animal are so negatively evaluated that efforts to preserve them appear highly problematic.
