I don’t think you really address any of the points I made.
I also don’t think your interpretation of the ENT’s is correct.
I also happen to thin that industrial agriculture is profoundly problematic and needs to change, I just don’t think that the “individual actions” of the privileged are going to get it done, and I think that, as I mentioned in my post, a lot of the people who absolve themselves from their complicity in capitalism by personal choices like vegetarianism are actually just as drenched in the blood of the innocent as the rest of us, and often, again for reasons I outline, moreso.
Although any consumers may or may not have the chance or possibilty of buying any part of it but the precept only hold us responsible if it is specifically meant for us individually .
Vegans don’t think they are absolved from complicity in capitalism. They generally think something like “oof, it’s messed up how animals are treated and that we kill them when we could reduce so much suffering by eating plant foods” and then the align their actions with this ethical insight where possible.
Many people dislike vegetarianism and veganism because it makes them feel inferior. But the simple fact is, those who give up significant sense-pleasures like meat and cheese simply because they view harming living beings as bad, are making a morally superior choice.
Edit: To clarify, I am talking about ordinary people here.
Edit2: When I am saying morally superior, I don’t mean it’s the most superior choice possible. Rather, within consumer capitalism, it is relatively more moral to consistently buy plant products than animal products.
Why not delight in the ethical behavior of others? It’s much better to be honest and say “I’m not able to give up meat and cheese right now, but I probably should one day” IMO
Say there was a slaughter house called “Meat for Monks”. They didn’t kill animals for any individual monastic. Instead, they kill animals for the sangha of monks and nuns in general.
Do you think it would be acceptable for monastics to accept that meat?
Why not? As long as the meat is blameless, there is no different between a vegetable and any blameless meat.
Both are use to support the holy life.
As Buddha said:
“And how does a bhikkhu observe moderation in eating? Here, reflecting carefully, a bhikkhu consumes food neither for amusement nor for intoxication nor for the sake of physical beauty and attractiveness, but only for the support and maintenance of this body, for avoiding harm, and for assisting the holy life, considering: ‘Thus I shall terminate the old feeling and not arouse a new feeling, and I shall be healthy and blameless and dwell at ease.’ It is in this way that a bhikkhu observes moderation in eating.
Also as Buddha explained in MN 36 and can be proven by everyone that eating different type of food doesn’t make one to become holy /purified.
… I thought: ‘Suppose I take very little food, a handful each time, whether of bean soup or lentil soup or vetch soup or pea soup.’ So I took very little food, a handful each time, whether of bean soup or lentil soup or vetch soup or pea soup. While I did so, my body reached a state of extreme emaciation.
…
But by this racking practice of austerities I have not attained any superhuman states, any distinction in knowledge and vision worthy of the noble ones.
Hence the purification can only be done by practicing N8FP, not by choosing type of food to eat.
For the record, I don’t think it’s obvious what the implications are of doing something with an abstraction in mind (e.g., consumers, the sangha, etc.) vs. a specific individual.
Though there is the sutta where the Buddha gets a personal gift but says there is more merit in giving to the entire sangha (can’t remember which sutta).
On one hand, you could argue that the causal closeness of the act is what matters. Hence, it is worse to kill, slightly less worse to pay someone else to kill, not so bad to buy meat in the store.
On the other hand, you could argue that the ‘field of merit’ also matters. Maybe the animal agriculture business is a field of demerit and supporting it with money is bad kamma? It is a business dedicated to killing, an industry that brutalizes both animals and the workers whose job it is to kill 9-4, five days a week.
There is in fact something rather like this in real life, namely, occasions of mass gatherings of monks. In Thailand the commonest sorts would be when a living forest ajahn is celebrating his birthday, or a dead forest ajahn is being cremated, or when an outfit like Wat Dharmakaya is holding one of its extravagant jamborees.
Now there are some monks (I’m one of them) who always decline invitations to attend such mass gatherings. Then there are others who will attend but abstain from meat while they’re there, even if they don’t usually practise vegetarianism. Our reason, of course, is that we know it’s inevitable that large numbers of animals are going to be killed just to feed the hundreds or thousands of monks who are expected to show up, and so we believe that any meat offered is unlikely to be “pure in three respects”.
Nevertheless, it seems that ours is a minority opinion. The commoner view would be more like: “Even though the animals are being killed to offer to the assembled monks, they’re not being killed for me in particular, and therefore their meat fulfills the threefold purity criteria.”
And so I suppose that for monks of this persuasion, a “Meat for Monks” abattoir would be unproblematic. Or at least it would be logically inconsistent of them to have a problem with it and yet be quite happy to show up for a forest ajahn’s cremation or a Wat Dharmakaya jamboree.
I dont think this hypothetical scenario apply . Normally slaughterhouse kill animals not really targetting any particular monk or nun or individual . The main theme of Buddha’s teachings are to end each individual suffering stopping the process of cycle of birth and death . It doesnt really (should i say) designed to end all suffering in the world , of course it does sounds unfortunately .
Ah great, now we are starting to accumulate some evidence!
Well I just brought that up because the presence of parallels is perhaps the strongest evidence we have of a text being an EBT. I know we have certain other signs that can help us establish what is not an EBT, like, if it has no parallels and uses some later language, or mentions a city or King from a later period and so on. But regarding this text, apart from the lack of parallels, I don’t know if we have any other indicators as to whether it’s an EBT or not. So any input on that for this specific text would be interesting.
Actually it would be awesome if there were a comprehensive list of what texts are and aren’t EBTs. Even a colour coded ‘map’ of the suttapitaka (and vinayapitaka!) with chunks shaded in different colours, that would be awesome. Like we could have green for EBT, red for non-EBT, and blue for ‘unconfirmed’, for example. I am not aware of any such list - do we have any?
It would even be cool to have tags at the top of each sutta on this site. Currently my only way of getting some idea is to check if it has any parallels, although even with that, I on occasion (as you can see above) click on the parallels and checking which portion of the sutta the parallel covers, which generally means running it through google translation (if I can’t find a translation in my library) which is at least enough to tell roughly which sections are included in the parallel.
But yeah basically when you say “I don’t know how you could come to that conclusion.”, just remember that my ‘conclusion’ was in fact a question, so my only conclusion was that I had no evidence that it was an EBT, so I remained unsure if it was an EBT.
Yeah I am also relatively unfamiliar with the vinaya. But your example is interesting. The monk received a sandalwood bowl and the result was that receiving sandalwood bowls was banned. But if what you say is correct, that the monks themselves made sandalwood ointment, then the Buddha receiving the sandalwood would make more sense to me.
Ok cool. That furniture, I assume that is a modern practice, rather than something from the suttas? Although even if it is, yeah that would imply if they are monks who follow the vinaya, then the vinaya presumably allows receiving such items…
Well it didn’t qualify for offering meat to the Sangha because they didn’t eat meat. Though yeah my list was also meant to be for lay people eating meat themselves, so if this family were Buddhist, that would qualify. But I have not seen any evidence that they were Buddhist. I’m not sure it’s really a ‘flimsy criterion’ to only include people as being Buddhist, if there is evidence they were Buddhist. They could be on a ‘possibly’ list but not on a ‘definitely’ list without evidence. Isn’t that how the evidence-based method works?
Ok thanks. I don’t actually know what the difference is between a wiki post and a regular post. If I have time I’ll try to look into it after going through all the new comments.
Really, better sources than the suttapitaka and vinayapitaka? I can only think of 2 possibilities that would be in the same ballpark, and that would be
Oral sources from the time of the Buddha from other sources, such as Jain of Brahmanical sources. I am not aware of any evidence in those on what Buddhists ate, but I would certainly be interested if anyone knows of any!
Archaeological evidence. But this excludes inscriptions, since inscriptions only started at a later time, and I cannot imagine any archaeological evidence even possible regarding what food Buddhist lay people offered, and for what they ate, well you’d have to establish that the remains of a house was a Buddhist house with only Buddhists living in it and that the identifiable food remains were left there from within that 45 year period the Buddha was alive and teaching, and narrower still, the period of time the Buddhist inhabitants were living there. That’s a lot to ask of archeology, and I think way beyond its limits, especially since they cannot go by inscriptions in that oral period.
If you look carefully, so far as I remember there was only one person I said bandit wasn’t Buddhist. I never said that if the text doesn’t report that they declared refuge, we therefore know they weren’t Buddhist! For me it’s simple. We have many lay people whom we know to be lay Buddhists, either because we see them take refuge, or because they are referred to as lay disciples, something we seem to see often. Or, they are specified of being of another religion. Or, they are unspecified. And what I have said is that if they are unspecified and we have nothing to clearly indicate they are Buddhist, then I say we don’t know. I do think this is a sound method.
Thanks for the details! I’m not sure if I’m following - perhaps you can help me out? So this is referring to:
“fine khādanīya and bhojanīya .”
Which translates:
“paṇītena khādanīyena bhojanīyena”
Out of interest, in that context, can we be sure that this adjective is qualifying both nouns, not just the first, or even for example, if the meal included fine staple or non-staple but not both, would it still be languaged in that way? I would guess maybe yes, but I am very ignorant of Pāli.
The Vibhaṅga defines finer staple foods as any of the nine foods mentioned in the rule, either on their own or mixed with other foods. Thus milk and milk-mixed-with-cereal would both be finer staple foods.
And yes some of them can be used as tonics but that doesn’t mean they are not bhojanīya, right? That presumably depends on their usage, no? Tis source is explicitly saying milk mixed with cereal = finer bhojaniya.
And this seems to be the actual vinaya quote?
There are these finer staple foods: ghee, fresh butter, oil, honey, sugar/molasses, fish, meat, milk, and curds.
Also the texts themselves seem to be confused as to whether to define these as bhojaniya or khādaniya:
For example:
Milk and curds are classed as “finer staple foods” under Pc 39, but in other contexts they fit under the definition of non-staple food. All other dairy products—except for fresh butter and ghee when used as tonics (see NP 23)—are non-staple foods.
So this seems to be saying that for example, rice with curd would be finer bhojaniya, and spinach with either ghee or paneer added, would be finer khādaniya. Isn’t that the case?
In my experience, Buddhists typically do it out of compassion for the animals and renunciation, not because of some strict socio-economic consequentialism. In fact, you’d be surprised at how many secular veg*ns do it for just the same reasons.
The land use of meat (and dairy) being unbelievably huge, I find it difficult to sustain that sort of comparison.
Doesn’t the “seen, heard, suspected” rule refer to killing for specific people? All meat is killed for consumption unless it’s roadkill or animals who died of sickness or age. So if being killed for consumers would violate that rule, then monks wouldn’t be allowed to eat the vast majority of meat that is offered in monasteries. There are many ways vegetarianism could be supported based on the EBTs, so I’m not sure I understand the point of (mis)applying a monastic rule to lay people.
To my mind, the problem is not that individual action can’t be effective, the problem is exaggerating the effect of consumer choices and downplaying the responsibility of big corporations. Greenwashing, economic inequality and consumer-focused climate activism are pushing ALL of the blame on consumers while also stripping them of meaningful choice. If you’re able to go vegan, then obviously it’s a wholesome choice purely from the standpoint of not consuming the flesh of another being. But AFAIK there is no EBT basis for the idea that societal change should be a major motivator for personal choices, especially when the impact is minimal. It’s great if it happens to also help the environment, but the impact of developing wholesome qualities seems clearly more significant than the nano-scratch my flexitarianism might put on climate change.
Of course. But it’s also not so simple. With the merging of so many big corporations, not giving your money to the meat industry is nearly impossible to avoid absolutely. Of course, buying literal meat is the most direct way of “contributing” to meat production. But even buying a Pepsi is not entirely divorced from it. Pepsico also produces ready meals that contain meat, so your money is still going to a big corporation that’s engaged with the meat industry.
In the end, we all have to make the best choices we can according to our means. But I also think its fair to say that consumer responsibility is overemphasized and dietary choices are not usually simple.
I take it you mean the meat at the store, which comes from killing living beings who don’t want to be killed.
It would be more accurate to say these animals are killed for profit, since a lot of food is wasted, and often is throw in the trash, allowed to go bad, rather than being given away.
By consumer I mean a participant in a developed economy. In a subsistence economy, most animals will be killed for food by the people who raised that animal, like on a farm.
In modern developed economies, we have these peculiar system of trading little notes with numbers on them (money); animals are killed typically by corporations (factory farming) to generate profit.
This system is very different from the time of the Buddha. I don’t think it’s obvious what the kammic consequence of consumer choices are (i.e. what kamma do individuals make when they buy stuff in a capitalist economy?).
I can’t remember the last time I bought a Pepsi, but in any case it is good to avoid the fallacy that if you cannot be perfect, it’s no use even trying. Any harm reduction is good.
The main reason I don’t like a lot of vegetarians is because they steadfastly refuse to acknowledge any of the rational interrogation of their reasoning or address any of the specific arguments made against their reasoning. This is irritating.
Then they literally say they are superior to other human beings.
Then they literally accuse other people of dishonesty.
To repeat one more time before I give this thread up as a lost cause.
Industrial agriculture, and industrial capitalism more broadly, causes great harms to living beings.
Vegetarianism and Veganism are legitimate chooses for individuals to make
Those choices, at least currently appear completely ineffective at changing anything about capitalism and appear, at least currently, to be a comfort to capitalists by shifting what should be a collective political issue to a personal moral one, and worse, to one where those who could be leading all of us towards a less harmful society to instead shrilly harangue their “inferiors” to change their personal behaviour.
It does. So would you say it’s good to reduce agriculture, then? Knowing that 70% or so of the Europe’s grains (more in the US), and 95% of the world’s soy is grown to feed to animals. That’s also why most forest are chopped down, to grow animal feed or make pastures. Especially in Brazil.
If everybody stopped eating meat and dairy (which you are right will probably never happen) agriculture would be massively reduced. A landmass the size of Africa would befreed up for growing back forests, they’ve estimated.
That’s why your rice field example also doesn’t hold in aggregate.
I’m not one who would call others inferior, and wouldn’t say you should make the same choices as others.
But imagine living 300 years ago, and there was slave trade all over your country. But you had a choice to step away from it, without significantly altering your life. It would do almost nothing to the system as a whole, but at least you personally know you are less directly involved. Would you make that choice if possible?
It’s not all about changing the system, is what I’m saying. Especially Buddhists can know how important personal intention is.
Also, all change starts small, starts with individuals. Some people think they can be a start to change. Others may despair and think their change makes no difference. I think both positions have some validity.
But in the case of meat consumption, things ARE actually changing. Many meat industries are diverging into plant based alternatives and soy milks and such. These guys aren’t dumb. They do it because they can see the change. Most places now have vegan options, which even a decade ago wasn’t the case. There’s even a 100% vegan Burger Kings now in London, I head. You might say, go eat there and your money still goes to Burger King, which is engaged in killing. Or you might say, go there and send the message that we need more vegan establishments. Give money to their vegan department rather than the meat one.
(That’s also why @woodrow’s Pepsi example isn’t a great argument. If you buy a Pepsi drink, you signal the company to make more Pepsi, not to make more meat-based meals. They aren’t in the meat industry for fun, using their drink sales to fund it. They do it because people buy the meat. If less people did, they’d make less. Of course ideally you’d buy drinks from somewhere else that isn’t connected to killing at all, but by buying drink you are not responsible for somebody else’s meat meal. At least not half as directly.)
Your positions are valid concerns. But I think they also underestimate the power of the individual, and the power of the collective will even of a relative minority. It’s also not about changing things 100%, but even if you can be part of just a 1% change, that’s still a good thing. A step in the right direction.
In a capitalist system all the power is with the consumer. Companies do what people want, and they’ll do it as cheaply as possible as the law allows. They won’t continue if people stop desiring their products. Where did all the typewriter factories go? People didn’t want them anymore, so they stopped producing them. They weren’t doing it for fun. It was just for money. It’s the same with meat and dairy. People have the power to change what is produced with their buying habits. That’s one good aspect of the capitalist system. But if you wait for companies to change themselves, you can wait forever.
(By the way: I gave examples of soy meat replacements, but in case somebody wants to argue those are not the most efficient either, you don’t need them. In many places peoples have been effectively vegan/vegetarian for thousands of years without them.)
Jains , harekrishna , some taoist and some buddhists are vegetarian . How many percent would that be ? I dont think muslims and most christian will buy into this .
It seems eating too much soy meat or other artificial meats would trigger health concerns .
That seems again an all or nothing position, which me and others have been saying is not what the issue is about. It’s about reducing harm, even just individual contributions. It’s not about ending it in total, although that would of course be nice.
I said the landmass the size of Africa is hypothetically cleared up if everybody became vegan. I also said I know that won’t happen. But you can still have an idea what it would mean if say 10% more people stopped eating meat / dairy. Or just all Buddhists. It would still be a big impact, is my point. ALso somebody raised the issue that eating rice uses land, so why even try to be vegetarian? Well, because it uses way less land in general.
Unlike eating meat? … Perhaps let’s not get into the health thing, because that’s where meat doesn’t have the greatest reputation either in general. And as I said, you don’t need those replacements. I myself never get them nor do many others who refrain from meat. And they’re doing perfectly fine. Those replacements mainly exist for reason of taste, not health.
I understand , what maybe the question here is , if Buddha doesnt even concern why His disciples make an issue out of it . I am not agaisnt vegetarianism or being a vegan or whatever but should it be an issue particularly for us buddhists to undertake it as the responsibility . One suggestion , why not instruct attendants to inform all lay people to just offer vegan foods from now on ! Or better still make an public announcement so that all those wants to offer from now on offer no more meats .
I think the true source of irritation for meat eaters is that they know deep down that there is something unethical about where their food comes from. Meat eaters engage in all sorts of argumentation to dissolve the dissonance they feel.
Just to be clear, I say this because I went through the same attempts to not feel bad about buying animal products before I went vegan.
For example, “no ethical consumption under capitalism” is a favorite among meat eaters who are on the center-left to left politically.
It’s like saying there’s nothing wrong with buying sex from people enslaved in human trafficking because “there’s no consent under patriarchy” and we need mass political movement to change gender relations and why should my personal choice of buying sex from enslaved people matter?
But it’s so much simpler: you have some money and you have to exchange that money for food to live, who do you give your money to? The most ethical choice is obviously the industry that causes the least amount of harm.
I mean, you have to eat. We can’t ask people not to eat because it’s bad to participate in capitalism. But that doesn’t mean choices made under capitalism are exempt from ethical scrutiny either. Harm reduction, etc.
You can do this and also advocate for broad social change, be anti-capitalist, etc. Most animal rights activists are anti-capitalists.
Given our current food system, veganism is a morally superior choice about how to get food in developed economies. There are choices in other arenas of life too. Like, studying to get a good grade on an exam is a morally superior choice to cheating. Not cheating on one’s partner is superior to having an affair, etc.
Like, to anyone who is making ethically superior choices to me, I’m not afraid to acknowledge those persons as ethically superior. I say sadhu! – I’m glad there are people who are more skilled in goodness than me in the world! I hope I become more skilled over time as well
Edit: Just to be clear, I’m not sure how much veganism counts in the grand scheme of things. Maybe it’s very small compared to e.g. being generous or being kind to other people, I honestly don’t know. But I still think it’s a better attitude to praise anyone who does a good deed out of a good intention.
I think this topic is going off on a tangent here so I’ll try to bring it back to some of the OPs questions.
Archeological evidence?
I don’t think you can exclude inscriptions entirely, they can still help you get an idea what the society was like at the time of the Buddha which wasn’t too long ago. I found this quote interesting…
The Emperor Ashoka says in his edict on pillar No. 5:
“King Devanampriya Priyadansin speaks thus. (When I had been) anointed twenty-six years, the following animals were declared by me inviolable, viz. parrots, mainas, the aruna, ruddy geese, wild geese, the nandimukha, the gelata, bats, queen-ants, terrapins, boneless fish, the vedaveyaka, the Ganga-puputaka, skate-fish, tortoises and porcupines, squirrels (?), the srimara, bulls set at liberty, iguanas (?), the rhinoceros, white doves, domestic doves, (and) all the quadrupeds which are neither useful nor edible. Those [she-goats], ewes, and sows (which are) either with young or in milk, are inviolable, and also those (of their) young ones (which are) less than six months old.
That makes me wonder what happened to the goats outside these exemptions?
Obviously he was speaking to a wider audience of different faiths, but it does indicate that some meat consumption, at that time at least, was the norm.
Pastoralists existed in India along with more sedentary crop farmers as they still do in some locations. Although the Gangetic plains would have been more conducive for growing crops, I do still think people did rear animals for dairy and meat. Not in modern industrial levels for sure, but I do think enough to help the populations grow in times of drought and conditions unfavorable for rearing crops like Ven Sunyo mentioned above.
The Harappan archeological sites have revealed evidence of animal husbandry. These bones have been noted to have come from both the early (3200-2600BCE) to mature (2600-1900BCE) phases. I know this was a long time before Buddhism and I’m not a historian by any stretch, but I presume these practices migrated along with the population as they dispersed further east and south after the Harappan civilization gradually disintegrated. But unlike the north western regions with their drier conditions efficiently preserving biological remains, I think you would be hard pressed to find similar sorts of evidence in the Gangetic plains. Now trying to connect animal remains, if any, found in the Magadha region with a Buddhist household is going to be almost impossible like you mentioned. If anyone has been to South Asia, you would know that any food waste is quickly done away by nature’s recyclers- the multitude of dogs, cats, birds and rodents that live close to human establishments.
[As an aside, in arguing about what goes in our mouths, lets also remember to be mindful about what comes out of it ]
Perhaps let’s not get into the health thing, because that’s where meat doesn’t have the greatest reputation either in general. And as I said, you don’t need those replacements. I myself never get them nor do many others who refrain from meat. And they’re doing perfectly fine. 
Those replacements mainly exist for reason of taste, not health.