The Angry Baker and I belong to an organization that attracts a fringe, newage, neo-hippy demographic. (Thinking about it more carefully, I guess the AB and I are the fringe; the neo-hippies are the mainstream.) The organization has a mailing list, and sometimes we get pretty strange invitations.Most recently we received the following:
Just wanted to let everyone know that my friend [Len Tuckwilla] will be selling some of his organic, free range and locally produced chickens in a few weeks. His farm, called [Nirvana Farms], is [somewhere close by]. After having tried a lot of different "organic" poultry I think his is by far the best. Also he is a Buddhist so I think his chickens must lead happy and peaceful lives. He charges $[X.XX]/pound and you can get whole chickens or chicken pieces, either fresh or frozen. [Emphasis mine.]A Buddhist? A Buddhist? A Buddhist chicken farmer?
Listen and receive enlightenment, Children of Woo! For after reciting the Threefold Refuge do we recite the Five Precepts, the first (first!) being "I undertake the precept to refrain from destroying living creatures."
Buddhists are vegetarians, you anencephalic morons. Do you guys store bong water in your craniums?
Edited to add: OK, while Buddhists are not strictly vegetarian, they are not supposed to kill for food. I.e., chicken butchery is out.
9 comments:
Buddhists are vegetarians....
Actually, there's a long tradition in Asia of non-vegetarian Buddhists. Monks are expected to be vegetarians (I only know of one exception, and that was political, not theological), but the blanket injunction against meat never really took hold for lay persons.
Economics, more than theology, accounts for most of the vegetarianism in world history.
Ahistoricality - thanks. I knew that the monks were strict vegans (even to the point of not eating root vegetables because that kills the plant). However, the Buddhists of my acquaintance are all vegetarians; maybe I know some Buddhists who are also nonvegetarians and never made a note of it. But that first precept is pretty clear.
I still think these people are too stupid to live.
Actually, the regimen you describe sounds more like the Jain tradition -- absolute non-harm -- than most Buddhist traditions. Buddhist monks often do a little food gardening to supplement their begging rations; I admit that I've never read anything about their gardening practices, but what I know about Japanese food suggests that they will eat root vegetables (the most famous of the Japanese pickles, the takuan, is a radish pickle [yellow] named after a monk who supposedly invented it). I haven't really run across descriptions of Buddhist monks eating cheese or eggs: neither of those foods are very common in East Asia.
Buddhists in the US tend to be either immigrant-descendants (in which case they probably don't talk about their Buddhism much) or converts, and converts are notoriously orthodox (and talkative) about precepts and principles and the like.
That said, I have to admit that you're right about one thing: anyone who equates Buddhism with extra special care for food animals is pretty much just making it up as they go along.
As far as I'm aware, Japanese Buddhists, including monks, do eat meat. Certainly meat is very common there, and most of the people call themselves Buddhists.
Really, Buddhism is such a diverse faith/philosophy that you can't generalize like this.
(Of course, none of this has anything to do with the intelligence of the comment. But it helps to not spread misinformation.)
AP,
But if he trains chickens to commit suicide on a regularly scheduled rotation, then he can keep his supply steady. It's probably not feasible, since they don't have fingers to open the little pill bottles, but I'm just sayin'.
Ah, but by questioning, you deny your own chicken-nature, AP.
(I tried to type that with a straight face. Really.)
Tibetan Buddhists consider that farm animals have the karma of having that birth, unlike wild animals. So they consider it less sinful to kill a farm animal than to catch a non-farmed fish; they are helping it work off its karma.
Incidentally, the Dalai Lama eats meat on doctor's orders because if he tries to go vegetarian, he gets sick.
The Buddha refused to require monks to be vegetarians. Asserting vegetarianism is asserting ego, which is contrary to the teachings. Vegetarianism is widely practised in in many Buddhist circles, but it is not required.
HH the Dalai Lama consumes meat on the advice of his physician. He has written on this extensively, particularly for puritan influenced westerners who will take everything to the nth degree. He acknowledges that vegetarianism does make a an ideal towards which one should strive, but not to the exclusion of one's health, and certainly not when it becomes a way of reinforcing one's persona or sense of superiority. The Dozgchen Ponlop Rinpoche has given talks in which he condemns the omnivores in the room for the murder in which they participate. As they start to shrink and look ashamed, the vegetarians in the room start to glow. At which point, Rinpoche turns on them pointing out the murder of countless millions worms and slugs and grubs and bugs for the production of grain and soy and veg. In a belief system in which all life is present, there is only the goal of limiting harm to others, and compassion for those whom who do harm.
A Thai Buddhist friend laughs at my vegetarianism, and tells me that it's clearly a Hindu accretion. But of course, a Hindu friend regularly points out to me that the Buddha had himself been raised a Hindu, and came out of that vegetarian context. Ahistoricality's references to Jain practices seem very apt here, but you will meet both Hindus and and Indian Buddhists who follow rules like these. Chinese Buddhists decline to eat onions and garlic, but not because it kills the plant so much as it disagrees with Chinese ideas about health and medicine.
A good monk should walk round with the begging bowl and eat what is placed in it, with thanks and humility and consciousness of its origins.
All that said, the slaughter of sentient beings for food is widely frowned upon across cultures. Tibet and Ladakh are to this day populated with Muslims who had the socially required role of butchers, not unlike the Jewish bankers of European history.
From my Mum (who, while not Buddhist, grew up in a Buddhist culture, and who is not my Mom): "There is a famous Buddhist saying: 'The instant you let go your butchering knife, the instant you can become a Buddha.'" She bemoans the fact that Asian cultures (including hers) tend to take a very "adaptive" view of religion and spirituality: "...Most people take religion at face value and do their own interpretation of what Buddhism means, [which] may explain why there are plenty of self-proclaimed Buddhists in the world."
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