Now, Ānanda, gifts to the following persons may be expected to yield the following returns. To an animal, a hundred times.
From MN 142
Does this mean every meal you give to a stray animal you adopted counts as an individual gift? What’s the negative impact of buying meat to feed them if they’re obligate carnivores?
Well, it doesn’t tell us how the maths works. May be it is if I can feed 100 ants for that many days, the amount of food back to me maybe 100 times of the total amount I gave, which could be very little, as I might give crumbs. Or maybe it’s counting fullness? If 100 ants are full for 100 days, maybe I get 1 million days of being full then. Could be somewhere in between as well.
As long as it’s not meat that is still alive, as usual for the non-vegan argument, no bad kamma done. Or meat that was alive, but because of one’s order got killed and so on. Negative impact on environment, on supporting meat industry etc, it’s the same as the argument for veganism. It’s bad. Not bad kamma bad, just normal, non moral causation bad.
Usually, by just donating the leftover food we have, it’s already enough for wild animals.
Yeah, this is definitely something that I see a lot more in Asia than in the USA. Pigs and chickens and dogs and cats and goats and so on here in Thailand are kept in no small part because they take care of the leftover food and overgrown weeds and so on. Sometimes we need to buy specialty animal feed or medicine for our pets here, but that’s not their main diet (from what I see domestically. Obviously, industrial farms are a different story, and even domestically that’s changing as Thailand “Westernizes”… but I digress)
I was curious if there was a bad kamma Sutta equivalent to the one I referenced that might explain the magnitude. I disagree that it’s not any bad kamma. It’s certainly less than the butchers who performed the killing, but buying meat is equivalent to having it killed on your behalf so it has to have some negative kammic effect.
I’m not worried about it more than I was intellectually curious once I read that Sutta. I adopted the stray cat with the intention of helping the cat and if I decided to rehome them to avoid the kamma of meat buying then I would just be offloading the kamma to someone else which doesn’t seem right so I’m ok with absorbing some bad kamma. We definitely (probably?) won’t adopt any animals again to avoid this situation though.
Can you cite any sutta that says buying meat is bad kamma?
There is one in the sutta nipata by a previous Buddha who clearly said eating meat is not the carrion (metaphor for bad kamma), but described many defilements as carrion. SuttaCentral
And I say this as a vegan. By your thoughts, it seems that you’re also a vegan.
Perhaps you’re thinking about MN55? It’s triple clean rule. So buying meat, without seeing, hearing or suspecting it being killed fulfilled the triple clean rule.
There are suttas that say telling someone to kill on your behalf is bad karma, and I think vegans usually extrapolate from that because buying is effectively paying someone to do it for you. But it is definitely somewhat indirect.
Yes indeed, it feels like a bit cheating for the delayed death vs demand timestep.
If a devotee asked for meat, which causes an animal to be killed due to the demand (like live seafood restaurant); then it’s killing and bad kamma, but current killing is for future customers, so buying meat which was already killed doesn’t produce bad kamma.
Why be so attached to kamma, when the timestep wise, current killing is for future demand and current buying is from past killing, how much difference is there to current buying leading to future killing?
@NgXinZhao It’s like @Khemarato.bhikkhu said, I am a vegan and I equate buying meat with having it killed on my behalf because that’s the only reason the animal was killed - for consumers to buy it. The Buddha lists selling meat as wrong livelihood so I can’t see logically why buying it would be good.
I think most importantly too is that my conscience tells me it’s wrong and I suspect that is an advance warning system for what consequences we will have to face when the signs of kamma appear at the time of death. But that’s just personal opinion. It feels lighter and more uplifting to listen to the conscience than to ignore it.
Curious what kind of stray animal you have adopted that is an obligate carnivore?
Asking because, there are people where I live that keep lions and tigers as “pets”… 
If the intention behind keeping the animal was to earn good kamma, yet now you find yourself distressed because of your inability to provide what it needs- perhaps it might be best to let it go?
Certainly, it might be best not to push one’s personal dietary preferences onto the poor animal one has chosen to keep captive. 
Especially if that will have health consequences for the defenceless being.
This is the problem of Samsara in a nutshell isn’t it?.. you’re dammned if you do, you’re dammned if you don’t!
We have two cats that were both strays. One came to us directly, and the other was from a shelter. I’m not distressed about it but it’s cause for reflection on future pet ownership. Someone who had an NDE said they during their life review they saw the impact of rescuing a cat that came to their home for help and how grateful the cat was, but did not mention the animals that were killed to provide that help so I acknowledge it’s not black-and-white.
Kamma is intention, it is possible to buy meat without intention of killing, due to cognitive dissonance. But of course, not easy for vegans to do so.
As compared to cats being natural hunters, they would commit bad kamma for trying to survive on their own. So feeding cat meat actually helps the cat not to commit bad kamma, provided if one can manage to make the cat not venture outside and do some killing on their own. Even within the house, cats may hunt for rats, lizards etc.
It does seem from the suttas that I’ve found mentioning it that from the perspective of dhamma and kamma the act of buying meat itself is not considered unwholesome, as you mentioned in an earlier reply. So I think that settles it from the Buddhist point of view unless anyone can find one I missed. But I’ll continue to stay a vegan since it’s still logical that if consumers didn’t buy meat the commercial butchers would stop killing them.
It is not my intention at all to discourage veganism. I am vegan too. Yes, normal causation, economic causation, and environmental causation of meat leading to global warming are all still good reasons to go vegan.
Sorry, I shouldn’t have thrown that last sentence it, it wasn’t meant to imply you thought I shouldn’t stay vegan but was needless chatter.
Sometimes, I find that my cat gives me a lot more than she receives from me.
I reflect on all of her good qualities during meditation. She has never killed a bird or a mouse in her life even when I let her out in the garden. She doesn’t have that hunter instinct. Also, she is very generous and so kind. She adopted a stray cat one day. Or maybe the stray cat adopted her. Every time it was raining, my cat would meow so loudly for me to open the door so the stray could come inside away from the rain. And my cat would save her food for the stray, making sure he has enough to eat. She would look at him with the please expression on her face when the stray was eating her food. Not only that, every time I got stressed, she would give me a good love bite to tell me it’s time to chill. She likes it when I am quiet and meditate. I noticed she especially likes Bhante Sujato’s voice when he does guided meditation. She would want to jump on my lap and meditate with me. She doesn’t do this normally. Gosh, I’m so proud of her and her wholesome qualities.
I guess in her situation as a cat, she is not vegan. But at least she doesn’t have the intention to kill. Maybe our pet can be our Dhamma friend in some way too.
