Eating meat not in terms of Killing but in terms of Stealing

The Watercooler
4

Understood.

One main thing lay people must do is realize they are lay people, and not monastics. The second I think is realize that a lot of the Buddhist teachings are filled with allegory and contradictions that are meant to get one thinking. For example, I have been to many temples, of really all traditions, and there are flowers there that were clearly picked, and maybe even sniffed.

Also, if we are speaking logic there really is no logic in:

(i) as long as I did not kill, someone did not kill specifically for feeding me and also I did not see or hear the killing, I can eat meat; (I know this is in the suttas, but I just quoted your version)

When an animal is butchered, meant for consumption by humans, who those humans are is irrelevant to the butcher. So thinking to oneself “the butcher didn’t butcher this for me, Richard, so it’s fine” is certainly not logical, if anything it is something silly to tell oneself so one can enjoy a cheeseburger. This is like Bhutan importing meat, but not slaughtering meat in their country, it really lacks logic, but beams with “Buddhist virtue” or something along those lines.

I don’t think you are confused, because the topic of eating animals is heavily debated in Buddhist communities. My recommendation to people is to do their best to reduce their meat consumption, if you purchase meat do your best to source it from farms and places that somewhat honor that animal or treat it with respect. The best thing we can do is honor the Earth for the food it bestows upon us, whatever our diet may be, and understand that no matter what we consume (even vegetables) comes at a cost. All we can do is focus on doing the best we can. Buddhism is not about whipping oneself because they eat meat once in awhile. Personally, I do well on a vegetarian diet, and I know the world will never go vegan. It is also illogical to think that. There has never been a vegan indigenous culture, and I doubt during a period of intense and immense consumption and self-centeredness, that everybody is going to start caring about animals or saving the planet, which by the way veganism will not do.

I think it is honorable for people to consider these actions like you are pondering here, and believe me, that hair is split all the time on this forum and in other Buddhist communities.

2 Likes
5

Well, not stealing is one of the 5 Precepts. That is one problem.

Far, far, far, fewer of each, as in billions, if not trillions.

That has to matter for people who have a genuine concern instead of looking for rationalizations or arguments.

Sutta: Wrong Livliehood

AN 5.177

“Monks, a lay follower should not engage in five types of business. Which five?

  1. Business in weapons
  2. business in human beings,
  3. business in meat,
  4. business in intoxicants,
  5. business in poison.

“These are the five types of business that a lay follower should not engage in.”

You can’t have a business without customers. If you are stealing meat, you are still creating a demand for it.

I haven’t found any opinions in the suttas about which social media platform is the best replacement for Twitter. There are many contemporary concerns we have to make decisions for on our own.

The U.N. has a report stating that livestock production contributes more to the greenhouse effect than transportation.

1 Like
6

Is the deva an Ariya? Because you’re implying the deva has more wisdom than the Buddha. Wouldn’t the Buddha, who has the highest wisdom, not eat meat if it was breaking a precept? You’re appealing to the deva’s authority over the Buddha’s.

Also, if sniffing a flower is stealing, then isn’t eating plants also stealing? building a house with wood? clothes from cotton? Therefore we must steal to live.

I’m not sure if that sutta supports your conclusion. What does “Engaging in business” mean here?

It could mean

  • Owning a business as a shareholder
  • Operating a business as an employee
  • Buying from a business (your conclusion)

It could just mean that the Buddha is saying don’t work for businesses that cause you to break the precepts, such as working at a slaughterhouse will require you to kill animals, but maybe being an accountant at a slaughterhouse is perfectly fine? Or working in the military could require you to kill people but working as a nurse in the military is perfectly fine.

What if the slaughterhouse is operated by AI or by automation, is then engaging in such businesses fine?

We don’t know the scope or detail to draw generalized conclusions from that sutta alone.

1 Like
7

It is important to note, this is factory farming. There is a big difference between factory farms and a small regenerative farm with the appropriate amount of animals for the size of the land that is being farmed. There is something called carrying capacity that is relevant in many applications.

It is important people reflect on this and really think about it. On my property, I have chickens and the amount of waste they create is a benefit to the system since there is enough of it to be balanced out by other parts of the system (i.e. poop being nitrogen, and wood chips or leaves being carbon from my site being mixed to essentially make compost). I am sorry to say but a big factory pumping out fake meat pollutes more than my chickens.

Factory farming, since it is based on capitalist principles, is extractive and has no concern for the carrying capacity of the environment those animals are in, thus creating excess wastes that cannot be managed by humans. The only goal is to make profits by driving down costs. Doing the right thing costs money.

If humans are to manage the environment and Nature in a way that is restorative, it requires us managing animals since there is no ecosystem where animals are not a part.

Also millions and millions and millions of bees die every year in forced labor for conventional agriculture systems, vegetables included. So, just think on that as well.

People not composting and throwing their food waste in the trash is a huge issue as well, and adds plenty of emissions, so we need to understand our footprint is a challenge with many divergent sub-sections that must be looked at, not just our diets.

2 Likes
9

I am happy to check the reference out to better understand what you mean, but if factory farming in the united states was based on socialism, or anything close to egalitarian principles, big corporate entities wouldn’t farm above carrying capacity to maximize profits per acre while creating waste fields and washing it down stream.

There is no presumption of any individual being affiliated with any political theory in my statement. I am speaking of capitalism as purely a market system.

Also, most of the kind of farming I am speaking of happens inside large complexes, not outdoors, or at least minimally outdoors. So, I don’t see the value of land decreasing because farmland in the USA has historically always went up in value, despite the use type.

10

Because they don’t bear the costs of waste, watch the video I linked, he explains how this happens. It’s not free market if someone, with the power of coercion, usually the government, takes responsibility instead of the entity who is the owner of that property.

The video I linked will elaborate on this further, and better than I could type it.

Waste has to go somewhere, even the air, and he proposes that they pay for this air pollution as well, instead of the government paying for it.

11

I will certainly watch it. Although his book Water Capitalism: The Case for Privatizing Oceans, Rivers, Lakes, and Aquifers has me shaking my head a little bit. Since he says in the synopsis, “the tragedy of the commons: when something is unowned, people have less of an incentive to care for it, preserve it, and protect it, than when they own it”. This is insane to me since property rights is a relatively new invention in the history of human beings, and during that short history we have essentially caused ecological devastation that is just beyond anything imaginable 10,000 years ago. But then again, we have the internet and cool cars. Maybe it was worth it.

I am not a capitalist, so, maybe I am bias. But I am going to listen to this lecture.

12

But what does this have to do with free market? “We” here often includes government subsidizing industry and therefore pollution.

13

Quite honestly, maybe I have to listen to your reference material, because I am not only going off topic, but I have no idea what you are getting at. I am just making statements that have nothing to do with any markets, except the fact that the “free market” has lead us here–to a place where people are more concerned with their diets than the amount of crap they purchase off Amazon or the amount of kids they have, or how much they drive when they could use alternate forms of transportation. All I am getting at, is the diet thing is such a big thing in Buddhism, and really, there are a lot of activities in life we need to look at with concern and see where we can do better. If you are saying government subsidizing industry is bad, I agree. I don’t know what else to say. Native Americans had no claim on “owning” the land, yet they treated it with respect and honored it. Capitalists don’t want there to be Commons anymore because they don’t want you to go in and get free firewood, they want to sell it to you instead. People managed forests long before the capitalists, out of reverence. I just get confused when people get grouped in with anarchist thinkers, then go on to claim somebody should own the ocean. It is weird, but then again the internet is strange and maybe I am all wrong.

Call my posts rhetorical rambling, or whatever, but I digress.

14

The point is that it’s never been a free market because the government has always had a hand in tipping the scales in their favour, whether it’s the corn syrup industry, tobacco industry, milk, or whatever. But yes, let’s not derail this thread further, I would watch the video to get a better understanding so that you could get a better and more effective counter argument. I’m not saying you should agree, only that you should understand the issue better so that you could defend your beliefs better. You could DM me if you’re still interested.

15

I agree. I don’t understand what issue I am even countering. But hey, again, the internet is a strange place.

16

I see what you mean and totally agree that what’s important is for us to do our best. Thank you very much for sharing your wisdom.

You are right. Thank you for helping me come to senses. Greatly appreciated.

2 Likes
17

I find Bhante Sujato’s essay helpful for this topic: How Early Buddhism differs from Theravada: a checklist

Its a long read but well worth it. The part that addresses meat consumption is under “the bare minimum”.

2 Likes
18

I don’t know the technical term for what is going on in this sutta, but I think it’s fundamentally problematic to base any doctrinal theories off of it. When I read this sutta, especially in the context of all the other suttas that precede it, it’s clear to me that the deva is trying to startle the monk into better behaviour. Not lay down a new doctrine about theft.

3 Likes
19

Although many suttas specify (or imply) ‘stealing’ as ‘taking what is not given’ as far as I know, I agree with you that the point of this sutta is to bring the monk back to practice. I guess I was overanalyzing it. And you are right; taking things out of context is risky.

1 Like
20

The Pali actually says ‘business in living creatures’. It is the commentary that interprets this as referring to human beings. But the same commentary glosses ‘business in meat’ as ‘raising pigs, deer, etc., and selling them’ (sūkaramigādayo posetvā tesaṃ vikkayo). So a more consistent translation would be either ‘business in living creatures’ + ‘business in meat’ (as @sujato renders it) or ‘business in human beings’ + ‘business in meat and living creatures raised for meat’ (as per the commentary).

This is an intriguing sutta with no known parallels, and could well be an expression, along with some of the Jātakas, of the more ‘abolitionist’ side of the early Saṅgha(s).

21

This missed out breeding pets for sale. It’s still trading in living beings.

Or capturing monkey to sell to universities for lab experiments. Or capturing whales, dolphin to sell to sea world. Or capturing birds to sell to people who wishes to do liberation of living beings practice.

Or breeding horses to sell to horse racers.

22

Not only that, but these types of feed lots have intensive capital investments into them in terms of optimizing use of land, which is the classical economic definition of that resource. And then, of course, there are the intensive capital investments into optimal use of the bodies that we are eating, and to a fair extent discarding apriori as waste, since not all the bodies come up through the system as “market grade.”

However, this isn’t a discussion to continue here. It’s too off topic. But you are right. Thank you.

1 Like
23

That is the commentarial interpretation, which restricts ‘business in living creatures’ to humans; some contemporary translators follow suit, but do not generally specify that, by the same token, ‘business in meat’ also includes raising and selling the animals.

There seems to be no other occurrence of satta-vaṇijjā in the Canon. Perhaps it was restricted to humans because somebody thought that non-human ‘living beings’ were already covered in ‘business in meat’.

24

The thing about stealing (taking what is not given) is that it relies on a concept of ownership and that concept is a (mainly secular) legal or cultural construct. So the precept sits within a framework of the society that a Buddhist happens to be residing in at the time. That is, you have to know the rules of ownership to know if the action you are undertaking is stealing.

Did the lotus flower have ownership of it’s scent in the culture of that monk at that time? We will probably never know for sure, but it’s also probably reasonable to assume that it didn’t.

Do animals have ownership of their bodies in current cultures around the world? In general I think the answer is no, and humans are the ones who normally have ownership rights over animals. Taking the life of an animal could in fact be stealing from a human, if a human had made a legitimate (in a legal and cultural sense) claim to that animal.

Should animals have ownership of their own bodies? That’s certainly something that needs a discussion in our various cultures, I think. This would also bring up areas such as the governance of responsibility for animals actions. Currently, if my dog causes an accident, then I’m responsible because the dog belongs to me.

Should a Buddhist sell or buy (or own) an animal? Not all trade in animals is as negative as you suggest. It seems reasonable that if the culture that you live in requires you to own and sell an animal in order for you to look after it (such as obtaining a dog from a rescue centre), then both the rescue center and the person who rescues the dog, will be required to trade in that animal. I think that it’s got to be based on the intention of the parties involved and the constraints of the society we live in, no? There are other good pairings that require trading in animals in my country such as Guide (seeing eye) Dogs and Therapy Pets.

1 Like