The only problem with this is that as soon as you are aware that microbes exist, it is impossible to use antibiotics without the intention to kill. The function of antibiotics is to kill bacteria. Personally I would take the antibiotics in the understanding that I am also going to take the results of the mixed bright and dark kamma that comes with the intention to kill them and thereby cure myself. Some Theravada monks I know have in the past taken worming medication to cure intestinal worms in the full awareness that they were killing living beings. I don’t think it is possible to pretend to ourselves in this way to escape the results of kamma.
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By your logic, every Buddhists should go vegan as soon as they are aware where the meat comes from.
I kinda like this reasoning, but lots of meat eater Buddhists will argue with you.
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Not at all. The difference is that meat eaters are not doing the killing. They are eating dead flesh, they are not taking the life of sentient beings. The transformation from sentient being to dead flesh has been carried out by someone else, that is their kamma, not the meat eaters. By taking antibiotics or worming medicine you are directly doing the killing of a living being.
Although not canonical, the background story to the first verse of the dhammapada has a blind arahant doing walking meditation. He kills some insects because he couldn’t see them and in the morning other monks having seen the blood (haemocoel I guess), complain to the Buddha that the monk has committed the offence of killing. The Buddha explains that it was unintentional because he could not see them. The implication is that had the monk not been blind, saw the ants, and stood on them regardless it would be intentional. This was my reasoning.
I have some thoughts on veganism in this thread: The Dhamma and Veganism/Vegetarianism
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If hiring an assassin counts as killing, then it’s obvious that the most important factor is intention. For meat, we just call the assassin butcher and the cook, and all the people you pay for the killing and the meat.
So if meat eaters can separate intention of killing animals when eating meat which they do not link to the killing, then similarly, people who take medicine can just dissociate the killing of microbes and healing. If one is not the case, then neither should the second one be the case.
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It doesn’t does it? Not to say that there isn’t any dark kamma involved in encouraging or paying another to kill, there is, but it is not the kamma of killing.
A meat eater usually just pays the shopkeeper, no one else.
The Buddha differentiates between animals (that the bhikkhu suspects have been) killed specifically for that bhikkhu to eat (assassination as you say) - this is not allowed and he contrasts this with animals that are not killed specifically for the bhikkhu (not assassination) - this is allowed.
Actually we don’t know where the shopkeeper got his meat from, it could be road kill for example. The supply chain in the UK is so poor that we don’t even know what animal we might be eating, or indeed if that vegetarian dish might actually contain animal meat.
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You might want to recheck the first precept here. Hiring an assassin counts as killing in any commonsensical way you look at it.
5 conditions to break the first precept:
- there is a living being (target)
- you know it is a living being (of course, or else you wouldn’t want the target dead)
- there is intention to kill (yes, it’s there in hiring assassin)
- there is an action to kill (the action is hiring an assassin)
- The being died as a result of that action. (if the assassin failed, then you didn’t break the first precept).
Who does the shopkeeper pay to get his meat? The money flows back to the butcher.
Be real, who really believes the meat you buy from supermarkets are roadkills?
On MN55, read my post on the threat you sent me. Thanks for sending it. The Dhamma and Veganism/Vegetarianism
At least we agree that road kill meat is ok to be eaten, but hardly practical, common, and have you ever heard of anyone eating road kill meat?
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One possibility that I think has been overlooked in this thread, is that instead of any prescience on the Buddha’s part, what if this doesn’t even come from Buddhism?
The practices described in the relevant section of MN12 seem to be very Jaina. Many scholars (most?) have understood the pre-Awakening ascetic practices to be Jainism. The Jains have many prohibitions around water, I think their monastics cannot accept boiled nor unfiltered water. The ahiṃsā (harmlessness) part of Buddhist doctrine, along with a whole host of other doctrine, might be borrowed from Jainism in the same way that the immaterial attainments were borrowed from the Buddha-to-be’s meditation teachers.
The monastic rule about not gardening I think is said to come from a negative reaction by a nearby Jaina community.
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I contest that the action of hiring an assassin is not the same as an action to kill. Are you suggesting that the assassin has no volition? That they are merely a chemical or mechanical process in this instance? If so, then I understand your reasoning.
My point is that I don’t know where it comes from or even if it’s meat at all. Traditionally we don’t eat horse meat in the UK. A few years ago there was an investigation checking the DNA of meat products and they found lots of horse DNA. I simply don’t trust the labels on food products.
Yes.
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@NgXinZhao @stu you guys went a bit off topic, may I suggest you to move the discussion to somewhere else?
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Dearest Stu,
It’s interesting that you mention that sometimes we don’t know where the meat comes from.
A Thai friend offers venison to me and I said no, knowing that her husband likes to go hunting. BUT she then explained that her husband skill is so poor that he never gets anything. However, on the way back from the bush, he always find a dead deer on the road killed by motorists. So, he just took the dead deer home and butchered it for his wife to cook.
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Are plants sentient?
If microbes are sentient, plants should be sentient, because plants share molecular michanisms to singnal transduction. They even communicate with nearby plants and microbes.
But according to EBTs some people believed plants are sentient, and they are one-facultied beings (ekajīvī) beings.
Now at that time (the use of) a rains-residence for monks had not come to be laid down by the Lord. So these monks walked on tour during the cold weather and the hot weather and the rains.
People looked down upon, criticised, spread it about, saying: “How can these recluses, sons of the Sakyans, walk on tour during the cold weather and the hot weather and the rains, trampling down the crops and grasses, injuring life that is one-facultied (ekajīvī) and bringing many small creatures to destruction? Shall it be that those members of other sects, whose rules are badly kept, cling to and prepare a rains-residence, shall it be that these birds, having made their nests in the tree-tops, cling to and prepare a rains-residence, while these recluses, sons of the Sakyans walk on a tour during the cold weather and the hot weather and the rains, trampling down the crops and grasses, injuring life that is one-facultied and bringing many small creatures to destruction?” (Allowance to enter the rains)
This was never confirmed by the Buddha. If microbes are sentient there is a higher chance of plants being sentient. However, molecular level signal transduction is not that organized to be sentient eventhough there are some similarities.
There may be some microbes that are sentient, not all of them. Ex: Zooplanktons, Nematodes
How to find the margin?
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Hi,
This thread reminded me of a couple of verses by the buddhist logician/writer Dharmakirti since it talks about count of "kita"s - worms/insects/tiny organisms;
He is writing about Buddha’s knowledge (whether he is a sarvajna - one who knows everything) and if Buddha is an authority to be trusted.
Dharmakirti can be very sharp and witty as these verses will show.
You can see the Sanskrit verses quoted in this link along with the translation:
V31 therefore his knowledge concerning what has to be practised should be examined; As for the complete knowledge of the count of insects(kitas), where would we use it?
V33 Whether he can see things at a distance or not, he sees the desired truth/fact(tattva). If one who sees at a long distance is an authority(pramana), then come, let us worship vultures(grdhra).
Sharing because they are witty that’s all; No rudeness intended, nor any dissuasion of enquiry.
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This term may mean microbe in modern Chinese, but originally it meant small creeping things like insects, worms, and the like. Nobody knew single cell microbes existed before the microscope was invented. This passage likely meant tiny creatures like insect larvae that you wouldn’t notice unless you look closely.
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I guess for me it’s all about perception of suffering. I can’t know for sure that anyone/anything suffers (apart from myself), but I can know if I perceive suffering in another. I choose to call that perception of suffering ‘sentient being’.
In the experiments we can firstly see the ecoli scurrying away from chemicals that are at a concentration that are toxic for it. Then in subsequent experiments we see that the ecoli has ‘remembered’ that ‘feeling’ and becomes ‘frightened’ at a lower concentration of the chemical and scurrys away before harm can be done. On that basis I wouldn’t do the experiment a second time, but of course many experimenters would.
I don’t know if structures equivalent to the nano brain in ecoli has been found in plants. It wouldn’t surprise me. But for me, when I perceive suffering external to my own and find out that my actions are the cause, I try to stop. I’m not always successful, but I do try.
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What makes E. Coli more animal-like? Or it is more plant-like? There comes the problem.
It is only the mobility?
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No. A compass needle is mobile. For me it is memory and fear.
If that so, plants would also be so called sentient beings. We are just not advanced enough to study their memory and fear. We cannot claim plants have no memories or fear without studying them. They got simple reactions too. Would that make them sentient?
About signaling…
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Yes. That’s right. I completely agree with you. We need to do the experiments. I don’t know if they have been done with plants. They have been done with ecoli and we have also found the mechanism which is super cool.
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As buddhism never consider plants as sentient beings we have to admit that the mechanisms which happens in the most primitive sentient being are much complex than these so called memory and fear found in plants and bacteria.
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I think that the Buddha of the EBTs was an excellent teacher who gave a view of the Dhamma to the potential student that they would understand according to their personal knowledge and also embedded in the general culture and knowledges of the day. Maybe if he was giving teachings today he would embed them in the (predominantly scientific) culture and associated knowledges that we share today (as well as homing in on the personal knowledge of the individual)?
What is your definition of ‘sentient being’? Mine is ‘that in which I perceive suffering’. This view is, of course, highly subjective. But it does help with my contemplations into the great extent of suffering in the world. It wouldn’t surprise me if it turned out that ‘suffering’ (and hence ‘sentient being’) was a fundamental aspect of the universe.
Do you happen to know if there is a definition of ‘sentient being’ in the EBTs? 
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