Animals: why did the Buddha remain silent?

Well he provided 5 percepts for the laity, didn’t he? Whether lay person keeps them or not - purely their choice. Besides, there’s “right livelihood” which afair includes disencouragement of making money on selling meat and living creatures.

Although I was born to Buddhist parents I became a practicing Buddhist only about 10 years ago. One of the first things I did was to give up eating meats and fish but continued to eat eggs. Ever since then I advocated strongly about the virtues being a vegetarian and I sort of looked at meat eaters with contempt.

Few years into my practice I developed dry eyes and my doctor told me that it was due to lack of some kind of ingredient in my body. And this ingredient is found in fish oil and I was advised to take one pill a day for the rest of my life. So just to save my eyes I had to reluctantly start taking fish oil.

Another couple of years into my practice I developed an unbearable sensation in my feet specially in the night. The first day I got it I almost ended up in emergency ward. But I held on till the next day and I visited my family physician who advised me to take a B12 injection once a month for the rest of my life because the feet sensation was caused by a deficiency of vitamin B12. Again, I had to continue taking it even though I realized later that B12 is made from pig’s meat.

Then came the Corona Virus. I could not get my monthly dose of B12 because the doctors were closed and the pharmacy that I approached refused to administer it. My feet sensation came back and as you have already guessed I had to start eating meat again after almost 10 years.

I spent a considerable amount of time contemplating my actions. It was not an easy decision. But I had to do it. Then I started to think why the Buddha advised against killing but not eating. Because even if one buys meat from the open market someone has to kill to sell. So by buying we are indirectly supporting killing. This is a paradox. So how can someone like me survive?.

Rightly or wrongly I had to make my own conclusions. We, humans and other living beings are together in this cycle of existences. Humans cannot live without meat because their genes are so conditioned by eons of transmigrating in various forms of life such as animals and humans. For example a lion cannot survive without meat and it is its kamma ripening. For humans too, at least those like me, it is kamma ripening.

This is perhaps why the Buddha said that there is only suffering in life. And the only way to end suffering is realising it in this very life and work towards ending it steadfastly keeping in mind the advice the Buddha gave in SN 12.63.

"What do you think, mendicants? Would they eat that food for fun, indulgence, adornment, or decoration?”

“No, sir.”

“Wouldn’t they eat that food just so they could make it across the desert?”

“Yes, sir.”
With Metta

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It’s actually common practice to supplement animal food with B12 (and other vitamins and minerals) since typical animal feed is some mix of corn and soy which is not what the animals would eat in their natural environments.

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Yet it seems that you want the Dhamma to be the way you like it, that it should provide answers to a life 2500 years later. It’s great to have a watercooler discussion about compassion and exchange ideas. But when it comes to the suttas we should find out what they say and about the context, not insist that they say something we believe is true.

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I think the Buddha’s rule was and still is right - I think that it is timeless and is still as applicable today as it was back then.

This seems to be largely inaccurate.

I would characterize the Buddha’s diet as “relatively random as long as it meets the conditions of what is considered allowable for a monk to eat.” Unless someone followed the Buddha around and saw what went into his bowl at the houses that he happened to stop by at, it would be difficult to support such a claim.

Characterizing the Buddha’s diet as mostly vegetarian and rarely non-vegetarian seems biased in favor of vegetarianism.

This could be better phrased as:
“The Buddha considers meat consumption to be an indirect violation of the first precept of not killing - only under those three conditions” (as mentioned in MN 55.5 or elsewhere).

I.e. the Buddha does not consider meat consumption to be an indirect nor direct violation of the first precept of not killing if it doesn’t not meet those three conditions - i.e. eating meat under those conditions is completely and 100% blameless.

I think one might need to develop the divine eye to see how someone who eats blamelessly does not actually reap any harm, while one who holds wrong views about eating meat (for example, if they hold that all meat consumption is harmful) probably does reap harm from holding wrong view.

However, this seems difficult to verify in one’s own experience unless they develop the mental skill of seeing the law of kamma in their own direct experience, I think.

This reasoning seems false and rejected by the Buddha. Instead, it seems that the Buddha claims that eating meat under the three blameless conditions does not indirectly nor directly cause the killing of animals.

Vegetarians and vegans often seem to misappropriate economic principles to support their view, I think.

For example, the purpose of the supply and demand curve is to determine price of the goods or services.

According to economics, when demand falls, the demand curve moves while the supply curve remains the same - the result is that price falls…not supply. Saying that reducing demand reduces supply is not in accordance with economics.

This seems very much false. The Buddha clearly seemed to teach that acting in accordance with the Dhamma-Vinaya does not create or cause suffering.

I do not think the Buddha put an arbitrary limit.
I think the limit was based on what actually leads to harm and what actually does not - regardless of whether it appears to or not.
It seems that the Buddha claims that eating meat under those three conditions is harmful.
It seems that the Buddha claims that not eating meat under those three conditions is beneficial.
I don’t think the limit determined by the Buddha is arbitrary in the slightest - rather, I think the Buddha had the level of understanding and wisdom to know where that limit actually lies in reality.
However, it seems that many vegetarians and vegans (including the Jains, etc.) did not trust his judgment nor agreed with the Buddha’s assessment regarding where that limit or line is.

I think the answer is no.
I think the Buddha thinks the answer is no.
I think vegetarians and vegans think the answer is yes.
We all reap what we sow and this seems to include both the views that we hold and the actions that we undertake in accordance with those views. I have found betting against the Buddha to be a bad idea.

Also, to answer the question in the title of the thread:
Why did the Buddha remain silent?
I think that he actually didn’t remain silent at all. He seemed to directly address the issue.
I think the real problem is that vegetarians and vegans seem to cling so tightly to their views that they seem to anxious to justify their vegan and vegetarian views at all costs - they seem to go so far as to try to find flaws in the Dhamma-Vinaya of the Buddha rather than trying to find the flaws in the vegetarian and vegan arguments…which are indeed flawed on multiple counts primarily due to the short-sighted speculative nature of reasoning upon which they are based (“buying meat seems to me to cause the killing of more animals”) rather than a deeper, long-term view, such as that afforded by developing the divine eye to see kamma in operation related to the action of purchasing/accepting meat.
Thus, it seems to me that vegans and vegetarians are unwilling to see, acknowledge, and accept valid criticisms against their views, and seem to prefer to portray the Dhamma-Vinaya as being incomplete, deficient, or flawed in some respect instead.

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I don’t think that’s the case. The Vinaya origin story for this rule doesn’t actually give a reason. In the one place from which a reason might be inferred, the Jīvakasutta, it seems that what makes pavattamaṃsa “pure” is the absence of certain kinds of unwholesome kamma in the donor:

“Jīvaka, he who kills a living creature on purpose for a Tathāgata or a Tathāgata’s disciple stores up much demerit in five ways: In that, when he speaks thus: ‘Go and fetch such and such a living creature,’ in this first way he stores up much demerit. In that, while this living creature is being fetched it experiences pain and distress because of the affliction to its throat, in this second way he stores up much demerit. In that, when he speaks thus: ‘Go and kill that living creature’, in this third way he stores up much demerit. In that, while this living creature is being killed it experiences pain and distress, in this fourth way he stores up much demerit. In that, if he proffers to a Tathāgata or a Tathāgata’s disciple what is not allowable, in this fifth way he stores up much demerit. He who, Jīvaka, kills a living creature on purpose for a Tathāgata or a Tathāgata’s disciple stores up much demerit in these five ways.”

The avoidance of indirectly causing death doesn’t seem to be germane to the matter. As I remarked recently on Dhamma Wheel to someone who was suggesting that non-complicity was the rule’s aim:

In Iceland I once stayed for a couple of nights in an outhouse on an eider duck farm owned by a gay Lutheran priest and his Thai Buddhist partner. On the afternoon of my arrival the priest took me on a tour of the farm on his snowmobile. At one point a line of ducks waddled across our path and the priest jumped down from the snowmobile, grabbed one of them and stuffed it in a sack. Then with a big grin he informed me that he’d be offering it to me for lunch the next day and asked me how I’d like it cooked.

Now if I had remained silent at that moment, the duck would have been killed, I would have been complicit in its killing (albeit in a dhammic rather than a strictly vinayaic sense) and the duck’s flesh would have been unallowable for me.

But suppose the priest had not informed me of his intention to kill the duck for me? In that case the duck’s flesh would still have been unallowable for me but there’s no way I would have been complicit in the duck’s killing. In Vinaya, as in secular law, the only sense of complicity that can apply after the fact is where one tries to assist the perpetrator in escaping the consequences of his action (i.e., by helping him to evade arrest and prosecution in the case of secular law, or by concealing another monk’s offences in the case of Vinaya).

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Right, because I voiced disagreement with you, therefore I am not honest with the text. I am reading into the text my own feelings and ideas, and I “want the Dhamma to be the way I like it”. You, however, are the fountain of objectivity and have developed mind reading skills too!

Oh well. I probably should have heeded the warnings of the Buddha in the Sutta Nipata against these sort of discussions, because of the inevitable ego and group dynamics involved. Ultimately there is no one to blame but myself. Goodbye.

That’s a nice observation.

It is consistent with the EBTs idea of kamma IMO; the Buddha and his monastics are a powerful field of merit, doing a negative act (killing) in relation to that creates bad kamma.

It makes me think of MN 57 “The Dog-duty Ascetic”. Perfect the dog-duty and get rebirth as a dog, but do it with wrong view (“By this precept or observance or mortification or spiritual life, may I become one of the gods!”) one risks rebirth in hell.

I.e. it’s the same actions, but the view that is acted from determines the outcome.

There’s also a sutta (which one I don’t remember right now) where a Brahmin thinks he is better than the Buddha because he eats a specific type of food, while the Buddha eats all kinds of food. IIRC, The Buddha explains that is whether one eats the food with lust or not that matters.

E.g. when I eat my vegan bean enchiladas, I’m eating that with the same attachment to the pleasure of food as when I ate meat. It would be very odd of me to think I’m purifying my mind by picking the vegan Ben & Jerry’s over the dairy one.

So from a spiritual practice point, IMO it makes sense that the important part is whether one eats with attachment to sensual pleasure, not so much the material composition of the food. Which perhaps explains why the Buddha didn’t disallow meat in itself.

I still think there are good worldly reasons to avoid or reduce the consumption of animal products though. And, I think it can be an act of (worldly) good kamma to avoid meat out of compassion for animals, so long as one doesn’t think “by not eating meat, I’ll become an arahant!” or something like that.

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