Q&A w/BC: The virtuous vegetarian

BC:

I’m going to say that the dilemma of not killing is common to all precepts, commandments, or ethical rules. There is no way for any ethical system to provide a fool-proof guide to telling what is right or wrong in all circumstances. This is true of Buddhist precepts as well. But let me first clear up just what the Buddha said about eating meat.

There is no across-the-board requirement or even recommendation of vegetarianism in early Buddhism. The first of the five standard precepts prohibits attack or killing of “breathing things,” which a butcher (or worker in a slaughterhouse), hunter or fisherman would certainly violate regularly. However, many people eat meat without ever killing. Even though doing so is implicated in killing by others, it is not explicitly prohibited in the early texts. However, a general prohibition against eating meat is observed in East Asia. It is listed among the “Bodhisattva Precepts” in the Brahmajala Sutra. Although this text has a Sanskrit name, scholars have determined it is actually of Chinese origin. Modern Zen centers in America are invariably, at least in my experience, vegetarian.

The Buddha was, nonetheless, sensitive to implication in killing, rather than killing itself, in a couple of contexts. He significantly restricted meat consumption for the Sangha, whose diet depended on what food was offered to them by householders. Here two principles came into conflict: On the one hand, monks and nuns are expected to accept graciously whatever is offered (effectively, beggars should not be choosers). On the other, he apparently seems to have felt that monks and nuns should not be implicated in killing by consuming meat. He therefore established a compromise: A monk or nun can in general accept and consume meat if it is offered, for instance, from what the family is eating at home in any case. However, they cannot accept or consume meat if they have any reason to suspect that the meat was killed explicitly in order to feed monks or nuns. This is a rule in the Vinaya, the monastic code.

When I was in Myanmar in 2009, shortly before my ordination, I traveled with my teacher (Ashin Ariyadhamma, abbot of our monastery in Austin, TX) throughout Myanmar, staying primarily in monasteries. At each monastery we visited, U Ariya introduced me to the abbot, and I offered the three traditional bows at his feet. Each time U Ariya would explain in Burmese that I was priest in a Mahayana tradition, but was about to ordain as a Theravada bhikkhu. In every single case the local abbot offered me some advice, generally based on his misunderstanding of some aspect of Mahayana that he felt I needed to rid myself of. But on one occasion I was surprised that the abbot offered the following advice,

“Don’t eat meat!”

Already a vegetarian, and aware of the typical Theravada provision about accepting whatever is offered, I chose to play devil’s advocate, “What if a layperson offers it to me, shouldn’t I accept it graciously?”

“If a layperson offered you a glass of whiskey, would you drink it?”

“No.”

“Don’t eat meat!”

Parenthetically, on another occasion we visited a very prominent 94-year old abbot. In his case, upon hearing U Ariya’s explanation of my desire to change traditions, rather than offering advice, he looked very confused, then said to me in perfect English,

“Mahayana is perfectly good Buddhism.”

Another example in which behavior falling short of killing is restricted applies to householders as part of right livelihood. A wrong livelihood is one that is not conducive to practice. One’s livelihood compels one to repeat actions over and over, that therefore have a huge influence on upholding or making progress in practice. The significance of mere implication in others’ breaking certain precepts is thereby magnified. Accordingly, the Buddha characterized professions like manufacture of weapons, raising animals for consumption, human trafficking, and involvement in the alcohol industry as wrong livelihoods.

Garry, your points concerning the necessity and naturalness of meat consumption are well taken, as well as the important distinction between killing for food and killing for sport. I’ll even add a couple of points: There would be no Buddhism in a vegetarian Tibet. Plant-based agriculture is too meager to sustain the human population. Animals domesticated for food production have thrived historically throughout the world: chickens and cattle abound, because people eat them. However, the animals raised today on factory farms are often subject to far more cruelty that the victims of hunting for sport.

But let’s zoom out to get an idea of the bigger picture. The ethical questions you note with respect to meat are, I think, in the nature of virtually all precepts to one degree or another. This goes for Buddhist precepts, Christian commandments, civic laws, etc. In my intro to Buddhism (BLBP) I call precepts “rigid and porous.” They are rigid in that they fail to acknowledge exceptions, or the kinds of circumstances you note, in which they become counterproductive, harmful, or non-negotiable. They are porous in that they fail to cover all the circumstances that could use a bit of ethical attention. Precepts constitute a kind of shotgun, hit-or-miss approach to ethics. If they are made less rigid (adding a clause such as, “… unless greater harm results”), people will become very creative in imagining greater harm when they simply find the precept personally inconvenient. If they are made less porous, they become so numerous that no one will remember all of them.

The value of precepts is to offer simple rules thumb that apply relatively reliably to a wide swath of ethically charged circumstances, in which ethical choices might otherwise be overlooked or require more deliberation than available time. They produce benefit, but are not a reliable calculus that tells us what to do in every circumstance.

Notably, there are two words for precepts in Pali. One is sīlāni, which simply means ‘behaviors.’ The other is more interesting: sikkhapada, which means ‘training step.’ We follow the precepts partly because most of the time they provide beneficial results, but primarily we use precepts to train multple levels of ethical sensibilities. In Buddhist practice, a precept gives us an opportunity to consider our own motives and needs, the consequences of our alternative choices (especially for others), how alternative actions might make us feel (glowing with compassion, remorseful for what we’ve done?). We thereby learn to engage in our ethical choices more conscienciously.

Just a couple of days ago I was in a store chatting about the weather with a friendly cashier. She said that she had gone pheasant hunting with her dad earlier that sunny day. I asked if she knew how to prepare pheasant for eating, and was surprised to hear that she didn’t even know if they were going to eat the ones they had bagged. If she had the precept about killing firmly in her mind, she would have raised questions that in fact not not occurred to her. Likewise, an ethically equipped person who wants to rid their house of pests is less likely to undertake extreme measures, like destroying an entire ant colony, and more likely to find clever ways of eliminating the problem, such as finding and plugging the entrance by which ants find their way into the house with a bit of putty. Like other matters of Dhamma, we take precepts seriously, but hold them loosely.

For the Buddha, every action (kamma) we undertake, every choice we make, has a potential ethical value. Ethics is an art, something we train in until our choices becomes second nature, internalized to the extent that we find ourselves making beneficial and satisfying ethical choices spontaneously and intuitively, without recourse to rules, or even thought. For the Buddha, ethics already has a firm basis in human psychology: what is skillful (kusala) or unskillful (akusala) is defined in these terms. Advanced practice is centered around perfecting this art by putting it to use in our lives under the guidance of Dhamma. “Training steps” are simple Dhammic nuggets of wisdom that provide some direction in many situations that tend to cause thorny problems. Other things we must pay close attention to are how the consequences of our choices play out, what intentions (personal motivations) underlie our choices, how our choices or its consequences make us feel (good? remorseful? cringy?). Ultimately we must also take up wisdom practices in order to discover how our habituated but faulty ways of framing the world (for instance as revolving around a fixed self) affects our behavioral choices. All of these factors become integrated as we advance in practice and become a beacon of virtue.

In the modern world, excellence is an important concept. We produce virtuoso musicians, excellent actors and athletes, brilliant scientists, martial artists, navy seals, snipers, perfect empoyees that know how to compete in the neoliberal marketplace. The contribution of mindfulness has even played an important role in achieving excellence seemingly across the board. However, modern society provides few opportunities to achieve excellence in virtue. This is where Buddhism has its greatest potential.