[chah]

Hello Lal, thank you for your welcome and your reply. If I may respond:
> But someone buying meat at the supermarket is not taking a life. That animal was killed by someone else days ago.

True, however to put it in a familiar phrase, and as you allude to a little later, when the buying stops, the killing stops too. Paying someone else to kill on one’s behalf does not absolve one of the karmic repercussions, although I believe they would not be as bad as the one who did the actual killing. I understand your point about the different levels of karmic repercussions, eg: hurting an Arahant is worse than killing an animal. However, killing an animal is worse than not killing an animal.

To address your point that by living we inadvertently hurt other beings, for example by driving, by walking in the garden, by boiling water. My understanding with regards to the taking of life, is that one should not take the life of a being that does not want to die, or equivalently, of a being that would suffer through the process of being killed. Obviously the animals killed for meat suffer during the process of their slaughter. However it is questionable whether the micro-organisms in water suffer when we boil the water. Bacteria lack the physiology of a nervous system to feel pain in the way more complex organisms do. Their behaviour also indicates that they do not try to avoid death the same way that mammals do, relying instead on their enormous numbers and average that some will always survive to propagate themselves. These points indicate that bacteria may not suffer in the same way that mammals do.

I have heard it argued that the precept against killing applies to beings with a central nervous system capable of suffering in a way that we would relate with, having a central nervous system ourselves. I think that is a good criteria to use and thus I myself do not count the bacteria in water being boiled as breaking of the first precept.

The above argument notwithstanding, your point that just by living we harm other beings is still true. However I believe we should take the approach of minimizing the number of beings killed. Refraining from supporting meat production, in the way meat is produced today does minimize this suffering.

>An uncountable number of living-beings are killed when a farmer prepares the soil for planting, and even when harvesting the crop.
The counter to this is that however many die when a farmer grows and harvests a crop, orders of magnitude more die when that crop is fed to animals who are then fed to humans, instead of feeding the crop directly to humans. This is because we must spend so much more resources to breed the animals to the point where they can reproduce and be ready for slaughter.

I would also like to draw attention to the point that although many animals do die inadvertently as we walk through the garden, drive to work, or even through the production of vegetables we consume, the death of animals raised for food is not inadvertent. Their deaths cannot be counted as inadvertent deaths, but as deliberate systematic mass-produced slaughter with a volition of greed for both money and the craving for flesh being the motivation behind it. I apologize if the words I use in the previous sentence sound rather harsh to meat-eaters. Nevertheless they are true.

[chah]

“Not Food But Evil Actions That Matter”

With regards to the title, can we agree that the taking of life (for any purpose, but in particular for the purpose of the enjoyment of the taste of flesh) is an evil action? Meditators know that giving in to cravings multiplies kilesas. Giving in to the craving for flesh is no different. Killing (or paying others to kill) to obtain that flesh compounds the bad karma.

Eating of meat itself, is ok, but how is one going to acquire that meat without killing, without condoning killing, without supporting/paying for killing?

If someone found a fish that was dead on the beach and chose to eat it, that would be an acceptable action according to the criteria given in the Amagandha Sutra, as it did not involve killing, binding, cutting, stealing, torturing etc…. However if an animal is killed so that it’s flesh is made available for consumption, for the pleasure of taste, that is not acceptable, to the animal at the very least, and neither according to the criteria given in the Amagandha Sutra.

In terms of the monks and alms, I understand the Buddha did not forbid eating meat because to do so would impose extra burden on alms-givers, cause the creation of bad karma amongst alms-givers and monks who break the rules and a monk should cultivate the mental attitude of accepting whatever comes into the alms bowl as part of the practice.

There is great merit in giving alms to the Sangha, and imposing such rules on forbidding meat could cause the loss of such great merit to alms-givers. The Buddha could have weighed the harm in losing such great merit for alms-givers, against the harm done to animals in being killed for meat and evaluated the latter harm to be the lesser of the two. This does not lessen the culpability in having animals killed for meat.

If one looks at the criteria given for acceptable behaviour (killing, hurting, harming other beings…) it is clear that meat procured through the industry we have today violates the criteria of “acceptable”, given in the Amagandha Sutra and in the overall spirit of Buddhism: Benefit sentient beings, do not harm sentient beings, purify the mind.

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