Why I'd argue meat-eating in and of itself isn't immoral

[Rainbow Mage]

As a Buddhist, why would you refrain from questioning the Buddha's dharma and the guidelines you mentioned? Is not this a part of detachment? Just because these guidelines work well in one culture and time period doesn't mean they work well now. You seem to have missed this part of my post:

I think eating meat is still permissible for a Buddhist in this time period and culture, that is why I do not question it. It has nothing to do with not questioning the Buddha's dharma.

 

[Rainbow Mage]

You should buy a chicken and let it loose in the backyard and chunk rocks at it until you hit one good time to listen to the noise it makes and watch the feathers fly all over the place. Then clean it, and eat it.

Why should I do that? For one, that is against Buddhism, to slaughter the animal yourself, and for two that's inhumane slaughter.

 

[Gloone]

Why should I do that? For one, that is against Buddhism, to slaughter the animal yourself, and for two that's inhumane slaughter.

Someone has to kill the animal before you eat it. Why have someone else do it if you wouldn't do it yourself?

 

[Rainbow Mage]

Someone has to kill the animal before you eat it. Why have someone else do it if you wouldn't do it yourself?

Like I said, no bad karma on my part if someone else does it, technically.

 

[EverChanging]

I think eating meat is still permissible for a Buddhist in this time period and culture, that is why I do not question it. It has nothing to do with not questioning the Buddha's dharma.

Actually, you ask here why you would reconsider when it's in line with the Buddha's dharma and monks:

Why should I reconsider when it's perfectly permissible within the Buddha's dharma to eat meat, and monks have always agreed it is by the guidelines I mentioned, even to this day.

So I think it has everything to do with not questioning the Buddha's dharma. What about the way that meat is produced and consumed in factory farms makes you think that it does not violate ahimsa? Would you actually compare the Buddha's alms to factory farming? Would you say that eating meat from alms in the Buddha's time is as destructive to animals and the environment as factory farming today is?

We must consider our current circumstances when vowing to uphold ahimsa. We should not turn the Buddha's actions into idols. We don't live in the same culture or time in history.

 

[EverChanging]

Like I said, no bad karma on my part if someone else does it, technically.

That's so superstitious and mechanical, though. If you buy meat from factory farms, thus supporting those types of businesses financially, you are affected by the meat you are eating, the conditions it was raised in, the stress, the unnatural chemicals and hormones pumped into it. You are affecting the environment, too. Do you really think karma won't get you? Or us? Consider global warming, for instance. We're bringing this on. Your actions will have consequences and thus karmic value for you in your life. What you choose to eat is very important in this regard, as everything is interconnected. Pushing the icky behavior off on someone else doesn't mean there won't be consequences. Where you put your money is very powerful and has far reaching consequences.

 

[Gaura Priya]

Like I said, no bad karma on my part if someone else does it, technically.

From a Hindu perspective, any form of association with meat includes the preparer or farmer, the butcher, the deliverer, the store owner, the cook, and the consumer. Any form of support to these things are considered part of the meat-eating process and still acquire that negative karma.

The Manu Samhita states that although there is no sin in meat-eating, wine and women, there is a great spiritual advancement for those who abstain from such things. And in the Srimad-Bhagavatam or Bhagavata Purana, which is considered authoritative for many Hindus, meat-eating is a symptom of Kali Yuga in direct defiance to daya, or compassion.

It's making an excuse, when Vaishnavism, Shaivism, the rest of Hinduism, many sants and yogis, have all advocated a vegetarian diet from the very beginning as the best form and way of living. Mahayana Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism, all denominational aspects of Sanatana Dharma have not removed this principle of daya, or compassion, in Hinduism, and generally entails vegetarian eating.

After all, Krishna in the Gita has mentioned rajasic foods, and have always been associated traditionally with onions, garlic, and freshly butchered meat. The very fact that children are frightened at killing animals is a subtle testament of the unnatural reality of meat-eating.

 

[Valjean]

Animals have neither choice in their diets nor insight into the consequences of their carnivory. This puts them into a different moral category from us humans, with an entirely different karmic residue.

We humans can excuse our diets by pretending to an animal's dharma, but how then do we explain the moral consideration we pay our own species? What qualities do we have that puts us in a unique and special moral category?
Why may we take the life of a cow or chicken with impunity, but risk the gravest consequences and moral opprobrium if we exploit our own kind in similar fashion?

 

[Rainbow Mage]

Animals have neither choice in their diets nor insight into the consequences of their carnivory. This puts them into a different moral category from us humans, with an entirely different karmic residue.

We humans can excuse our diets by pretending to an animal's dharma, but how then do we explain the moral consideration we pay our own species? What qualities do we have that puts us in a unique and special moral category?
Why may we take the life of a cow or chicken with impunity, but risk the gravest consequences and moral opprobrium if we exploit our own kind in similar fashion?

Like I said, we have to ask ourselves is destruction a necessary part of existence. This isn't an ideal world and I don't pretend it is.

 

[reve]

Why stop at particular meats? You could eat each other when you die, and rats and cats when they die. Why kill them? they will die sometime - eat them then like the carrion you are. Or open your eyes to what you are really eating. It is not a nice lamb chop. it is the rib of a terrified and brutally killed creature - as cruel as any concentration camp could devise ready for the oven. An enlightened person would never eat meat. Why does the Dalai Lama when he knows it is wrong (see his book on ethics for the Millenium). Answer: he is not enlightened is he as he cannot resist temptation. Eat what you like - it is true.YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT.


By the way you can grow vegetables anywhere if you have fuel (wind will do) and water. It can be organic too. They have now devised places where thousands cows will stand in a tiny box for years on a big roundabout, milked on time and seemimgly content. How wicked is man? Hunting is killing for fun (some idea of sport!). We have vegetarian ancestors, it is in our genes. We have hunters in our genes too, and mass murderers. You need to separate them out to move on.

 

[Rainbow Mage]

Reve I find it amusing that you compare eating meat to hunting animals for sport.

 

[reve]

Hi P2bg

Not really comparing them, linking them. My posts are a product of garbled rants. Hunting I particularly detest as I live in England and was brought up going to Hunt Balls. We have a fox family that lives in our garden why would anyone set a pack of dogs loose on them. But I can imagine they would set a pack of dogs loose on me too and the unemployed and homeless, old and disabled if they could still get away with it. These are people who join the army from school. Love boxing and shooting. And no meal is complete without some blood soaked meat. I put up with them as they protect me from gang violence and invasions. But if we were all a bit more peaceable it wouldn't hurt. It begins by stopping the daily holocaust of innocent souls estimated at around several billion a day. Quite appalling and completely unnecessary as far as our survival is concerned. Vegetarianism is one of the main answers to Global Warming and World Famine but like wind power is not acceptable to the ones who decide who to award nuclear contracts to and who should have enough money to eat.

 

[Rainbow Mage]

Hey I wouldn't complain about a vegetarian society either. As I've said in several posts, a vegetarian society is ideal to a Buddhist.

 

[no-body]

I think eating meat is still permissible for a Buddhist in this time period and culture, that is why I do not question it. It has nothing to do with not questioning the Buddha's dharma.

Because of time period and culture? So a Buddhist born in Nazi, Germany.... ?

 

[Rainbow Mage]

Because of time period and culture? So a Buddhist born in Nazi, Germany.... ?

A Buddhist born in Nazi Germany? What are you talking about?

 

[no-body]

A Buddhist born in Nazi Germany? What are you talking about?

What should time period and culture have anything to do with it? You can validate some evil stuff with that kind of thinking.

 

[Rainbow Mage]

What should time period and culture have anything to do with it? You can validate some evil stuff with that kind of thinking.

That's certainly true, I agree

 

[Valjean]

How about peoples like the traditional Inuit (Eskimos), who lived in a region where agriculture was impossible and had no more dietary choices than a tiger or wolf?
Would this be an example of a "time period and culture" where carnivory was proper?

 

[Jacksnyte]

The bottom line here, is that in order for a physical life-form to live, it has to take sustenance from another life-form. One MUST kill to live. One MUST take the life of another being to live. If you are vegetarian, or even vegan, you still have to kill to live. It has been proven again and again that plants respond to emotion, and have a form of consciousness. There is absolutely no way to live a life of literalistic ahimsa. It simply is not possible. What truly matters is one's INTENT. My Choctaw ancestors had the (IMO) correct idea. Treat all your food with the respect and reverence that the life force and consciousness in it deserves. Eat consciously.

 

[Rainbow Mage]

The bottom line here, is that in order for a physical life-form to live, it has to take sustenance from another life-form. One MUST kill to live. One MUST take the life of another being to live. If you are vegetarian, or even vegan, you still have to kill to live. It has been proven again and again that plants respond to emotion, and have a form of consciousness. There is absolutely no way to live a life of literalistic ahimsa. It simply is not possible. What truly matters is one's INTENT. My Choctaw ancestors had the (IMO) correct idea. Treat all your food with the respect and reverence that the life force and consciousness in it deserves. Eat consciously.

I agree