The Dhamma , Veganism and Vegetarianism

Discussion
176

I never used Kamma for these as I know well position of the suttas.

Just that for people basing morality only on Kamma, might be missing something useful.

A girl drowning in a river, one doesn’t have bad Kamma for not saving the girl for one has no intention to kill the girl, the girl is already dying due to other causes. Yet, most of us would say it’s heartless to not do whatever we can to help save the drowning person, if we can swim, and the current is not too strong to harm us, etc.

Sure, attaining to enlightenment is better than saving a drowning person. But then, how much time does saving that person takes away from the practise?

While on the path and after attainment, it takes about equal amount of time eating plant based food only vs eating meat + plants. It’s just the initial mental effort to do the switch, which I assure people after many years of being vegan, by now it’s almost effortless for me, more like natural. Arahants still has habits. Perhaps it’s easier to cultivate the vegan habit before enlightenment rather than after.

So the morality to consider here is greatest good for the greatest number, relatively. There’s no provision in the suttas that one must eat meat. There’s no provision which prevents one from going vegan. So there’s no conflict of deondology vs utilitarianism like in the trolley problem.

Thus going by for the benefit of others and oneself, which is environmental sustainability, able to face oneself when watching slaughterhouse videos etc, it’s logical to go vegan.

And your bugs get killed by plant harvesting thing still gets addressed in the same manner as in the previous discussion of what if plants are sentient. More plants gets harvested to feed animals than for humans, thus animal husbandry has more blame to bear. Minimizing it is still a good thing to do.

And for the health thing. If one is seriously facing the problem of iron deficiency and cannot get enough iron even after eating a lot of vegan food, then there is legitimate reason to resume eating meat. To use that as an excuse, turning a blind eye to the numerous other health benefits of going vegan doesn’t seems like being sincere about concern for health. If ever I heard of vegan facing nutrition problems, lacking iron is so not one of the problems. Whereas for meat eaters, we see heart disease, cancer etc…

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177

Ps.

Animal farmers are responding to lower demand for meat. It does makes a difference.

Anyway, saying the one person voice doesn’t matter is like the kid who throws star fish into the ocean, the old guy said to the kid, hey kid, you cannot save them all, give up. The kid said, well, my action means the world for this one, as he throws another one into the ocean.

Each person matters. If one doesn’t believe that then it’s like not being motivated to get personal enlightenment because one doesn’t see the difference it makes when one wants everyone to be enlightened. For everyone to be enlightened, each person has to do the work for themselves.

So too, to get enough people to make a big social change in veganism, each person has to first reduce the amount of meat eaten then go vegan. At least have one day a week going meat free. Start from there

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178

Mr. Jasudho. Nowhere did I write that I have a heart filled with metta. If I had a fully merciful heart I would not be speaking in this discussion at all, because simply presenting someone with a different opinion can be hurtful and create unpleasant cognitive dissonance. My heart and mind are filled with criticism of the methods of manipulating others with imaginary concepts of hell - I believe that here you have to have a heart filled with hatred to scare people with torment and torture. Criticizing hatred and delusion is fine. I think it is also possible to project one’s own hatred on others, but in this case it is not me who scares hell, but someone who scares me. I just call it unauthorized and dishonorable.

179

“And when it comes to the health issue. If someone is seriously struggling with iron deficiency and can’t get enough iron even after eating lots of vegan food, there is a legitimate reason to resume eating meat. Using this as an excuse, turning a blind eye to the many other health benefits of switching to veganism doesn’t look like a sincere concern for health. If I’ve ever heard of vegans having nutritional problems, lack of iron is not one of them. Whereas with meat eaters, we see heart disease, cancer, etc…”

Bhante. . I am not comparing a vegan diet with a meat diet, because defacto a diet can be composed in thousands of different ways - both one that contains meat and one that contains plants. I took one ingredient as a target, namely iron, although we could still talk about omega 3 fatty acids - dha and epa, and b12, because here too meat gives better results. These ingredients, on the other hand, are important in maintaining a healthy mind.

180

Just so we are clear, as there’s no bad kamma from merely eating meat, there’s not even any issue of going to hell for that.

The sort of unplesant feeling I would mention as the guilt you said is one where one sees slaughter house videos and still not yet a vegan. For sure, guilt is unwholesome mental state, and shouldn’t be cultivated. It’s just an useful check to examine why is there even arising guilt on that issue.

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181

I was more concerned with those 1000 years of hell for butchers. I think that statement was unfortunate. Because even a murderer of people supposedly had forgiveness from the Buddha. I think let’s channel our compassion in different ways in the first place. Some people stand up for animals and others stand up for people in this discussion. I think the wisest thing to do was not to recover at all on this topic to be on everyone’s side, but my way of gaining knowledge has always been to confront different opinions. It’s time for me to keep quiet and take up meditation.

182

I hope you are aware that Buddha is not God in Buddhism and thus cannot alter the course of results of kamma for beings. People reap what they sow.

Also, I can recommend:

Sāsanārakkha Buddhist Sanctuary – Monk Training Centre and Retreat Centre (sasanarakkha.org)

183

It was no statement of mine, but a link to a handful of suttas presenting what is a pretty standard EBT (and commentarial) position on the kamma of professional slaughterers, in the context of a discussion on professional slaughterers.

184

Personally, for me, these words about hell have no value, because it can’t be verified. I think every religion has a carrot and a stick. The only question is whether it’s worth letting yourself be manipulated. In my opinion, one should question the holy books and test for oneself whether something brings healthy results or negative results. In the case of being an animal killer, it’s definitely not very good for the mind, which is why the slaughterhouse videos have a bad effect on us, because we get into the same perspective.

Sex and killing, can only be attractive to a person who is possessed by desire. We are fortunate that we are not hungry and one way to satisfy ourselves is not to kill, I think most people if they had no choice would have to reach for this kind of aggression to survive. In the People’s Republic of Poland, a lot of people lived in the countryside, where people had their animals, and when the time came, they were killed. My grandmother also had to pull the head of a chicken, which then ran without it - I know this from my mother’s story. In spite of this, they didn’t have much guilt in them, because those were the conditions. As if they got a human being, a vegan, he would try to create guilt or scare the hell out of them - creating meditation obstacles. This is not Buddhist in my opinion. IMO Teaching meditation is Buddhist.

I think that Buddha, despite not being a god, forgave people and had a great influence on them. To meet the Buddha and his teaching is not neutral. I think instead of scaring people with hell or showing slaughterhouses, more is done healthy by teaching meditation. One leads to obstacles in the mind, and the other leads to eradicating any blemishes.

185

This is the logical fallacy of:

Appropriately named the Nirvana fallacy, since it basically states that since a perfect solution is not available, then it’s justified to do x.

If fewer people purchase meat, the less amount of meat the grocer orders from the slaughterhouse and then the lesser amount the slaughterhouse kills. When I was younger I remember hearing that only about 1% of Americans were vegetarian. Now it’s 5% which results in much less killing of cattle, chicken, etc.

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186

False equivalence.

Most of us don’t have much control over which country we live in. We were born and raised in a certain country and emigrating to a new nation is not easy; you need to find work, learn the language (in many cases), adapt to the culture, etc.

We choose what to eat everyday, sometimes multiple times per day, for those who eat more than one meal. Monks don’t choose, but most of us are lay people who must make a choice.

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187

I find much value in monastics speaking on issues like this. One of the reasons I value Sutta Central is because I get to hear how monastics live and think. One of the great insights of Buddhism - IMHO - was the relationship between monastics and lay practitioners. One of the advantages for me as a practitioner is seeing what monastics choose to speak about and what they say on those issues. I think sharing those thoughts is very much being “monkish.”

As a lay practioner I think I can learn much from this.

Sadhu, Bhante. :pray:

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188

Do you believe that Kamma isn’t about morality, or do you defend that it’s about morality but is insufficient to determine everything? As if there were moral statements that we can only find out because of principles alien to the Dhamma.

Indeed, it wouldn’t be regarded as intention to kill, but it could still point to other intentions that are themselves unwholesome. A person who didn’t do anything would probably have the intention to watch the death of the little girl. This would be bad Kamma even though it isn’t against the precepts. However, if the person actually got frozen because of panic, then it was indeed just a lack of intention, which doesn’t result in any bad Kamma. Furthermore, the person is losing a great opportunity of generating good kamma.

IMHO, Kamma is the bedrock of Buddhist morality, and I fear adding extraneous ideas depends on the assumption that kamma is inherently flawed or problematic. It took a while for me to accept since I used to be secular, but, once I did, it makes a lot of sense. There’s no need to reinterpret it or take some other theory.

Having compassion belongs to the practice is seen a good Kamma.

I promise this isn’t the source of my objections at all. I’m just trying to expose my ideas in an objective sense instead of protecting my current died. In fact, I used to have a vegan diet for a while simply because the restaurant I used to go had delicious vegan meals. I don’t even understand why people like meat so much, tbh. I could become vegan for the sake of flavor alone, but, since I don’t believe there’s any reason to go vegan, I just eat anything.

Arahats don’t have attachment to habits, so I think it would be the other way around.

Getting enlightened makes a difference to me, so it makes sense. If I can help others to achieve that as well, then it will make difference too. The reason why I don’t agree with activism is that it goes like, “if everybody thought like you, then there would be no change…” But the point is that what I think doesn’t change what other people think. Ultimately, the actions of the other people buying and trading in the meat industry that will determine whether or not veganism will win. If I had the power to influence billions of people, then, ok, my action would be relevant. While I’m just a random dude, my action won’t determine anything. Basically, the result is already determined by the majority, whether or not I belong to it.

189

In my argument, I implicitly assumed that having the power to move to another country wouldn’t make them generate bad Kamma by deciding to stay. Do you think it would?

190

No, I don’t think it would be bad kamma to stay. Even with the financial means, it’s still a big upheaval and difficult task to move to another country. It’s no way comparable to choosing what to buy at the grocery store or restaurant about what to eat for lunch. There are so many options nowadays about what to eat and plenty of nutritious items available for vegetarians and vegans.

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191

So we agree.

For sure, I totally agree that it’s harder. However, the difficulties don’t change the classification of whether an action is wholesome or unwholesome. For example, killing is bad Kamma even if their life is threatened. So, if veganism is unwholesome these days, so should it be in the past. The fact that it became easier doesn’t change anything.

192

I agree. I don’t think it’s unwholesome to stay in your home country, not just because leaving is difficult, but we can’t be expected to be responsible for everything our government does. There are nationalists and the war machine in almost every nation. But our own personal actions, we can be responsible for. We don’t need to buy a live chicken or lobster and take it home and kill it, even if for eating. There are plenty of less violent, more wholesome options.

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193

I would rather call it the samsara fallacy and the microscale fallacy (Don Quixote). Assuming that an insignificant change, makes a difference because from the micro scale it seems that the numbers should be more favorable, when you look at one selective aspect of reality (meat-eating stats and supply), you forget or blind your eyes to the fact that those unkilled animals end up back in samsara and so will suffer perhaps even worse than they did in that cage. Ultimately, giving up meat saves no one. Especially from the perspective of the cosmos where the numbers of animals killed are so huge that this act of not eating meat is less than a drop of water in all the oceans and less than a grain of sand from all the deserts. In fact, Nivrana’s fallacy sounds to me like an excuse to be an activist on a given topic that is important to us even in the face of meaningless action - moreover, from a Buddhist perspective, it is better to engage in the work of liberation, because then some being is saved when he attains Nibbana.

194

Have you heard of critical mass theory?

Everyone makes a step a difference to reach critical mass, then it would change the world. Also, if you see the views of this topic, there’s 3.9 thousand views, say only 10% has read your views of not being vegan, you already influenced 390 of them. What if you also join in the bandwagon, and everyone else who comments also joins in the bandwagon, so much so that people actually ask. Am I the only one here who’s not vegan? Opps, I better look into how to be vegan. It’s the trend now. So it spreads, from one forum to another, from one community to another, until critical mass is reached for the whole world.

It just makes a difference of whether one is leading, or following.

Just like slavery of humans was disgusting and not condemned by the Buddha, but we would support the freeing of slaves and I think a lot of us would rather think we would be the leaders in freeing slaves if we were back in those times. Rather than having to wait for a Civil war in USA for slaves to be freed, or some laws in other parts of the world.

So too, I think conventional morality in terms of social justice sometimes goes beyond kammic based morality. And while I generally would claim that Budddhist morality is superior to superhero morality, Buddhist morality is not aimed at social justice, so much so as individual liberation. And thus when discussing social justice issues, it becomes short changed when we apply only the notion of kamma, without taking into account compassion, utilitarianism etc.

Reasons to go vegan: For environment, for loving kindness to the animals in cages, due to be slaughtered in the past, present and future, for better health personally. For being able to watch a slaughter house video and not feel bad in anyway.

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195

This is a strange thing to say. Since the Buddha never advocated veganism, was he deficient in compassion? I suppose the vast majority of Theravādins are also lacking in this regard.