Geshe Soepa Answers Questions from Mexico About Vegetarianism

1) Is there anything to be done regarding the killing of animals for food? Aren't their deaths just their karma? Though Hinayana, Mahayana, and Vajrayana traditions agree that eating meat should be avoided, there are still many debates and questions on this issue. Some people think that there is nothing to be done regarding killing animals because their being murdered comes principally from the animal's own karma. I think that, according to real Buddhist philosophy, that is a wrong view. It is good that people believe in karma, but they are misinterpreting its functioning. Animals have good karma, bad karma, so many different types of karma, and all of them depend on conditions. If there are bad conditions, then bad karma ripens; if there are good conditions, then good karma arises. All sentient beings have not only one karma: they have so many good karmic seeds and so many bad karmic seeds. What ripens depends on conditions and also the strength of the karmic seed. Thinking that it is useless to save animals is a contradiction to Great Compassion. As a practitioner, one must engage in animal liberation and animal welfare. If you hold the idea that since everything depends on karma it is not necessary to help in liberation practices, then you are not practicing compassion. It is good to believe in karma but that view is a contradiction. If you believe in compassion, you need to practice liberation. We must help in all the ways we can. 2) Some monks say that if you buy meat in the market or the grocery store that there is no negativity in that action. Is that correct? Those monks have never read the Lankavatara Sutra of the Kalachakra Tantra. When I was young, I also had this view, I thought it sounded quite logical. But later, when I read the sixth chapter of the Lankavatara Sutra, the seventh chapter of the Angulimala Sutra and the Kalachakra Tantra, I recognized that I had incorrect ideas. In the Lankavatara Sutra, Buddha says: Hey, Mahamati, if no one eats meat in any way whatsoever, then no living beings will be killed for its sake. Mahamati, innocent living beings are killed for the sake of their value; killing for other reasons is rather rare. That is the logical explanation given in the Lankavatara Sutra. Buddha's reasoning is very logical, more logical, I would say, than the monk's arguments. The Lankavatara Sutra also offers the following reasoning: if we say that a person who sponsors the building of a stupa accumulates lots of merit even if he or she did not actually build it, how can we say that one who pays money for meat does not accumulate any negativity because he did not directly commit the murder? That is a logical contradiction, because the same logic applies in both cases. Therefore sponsor and builder have the same merit; consumer and killer have the same negativity. That is the what the Lankavatara Sutra expounds, following Buddha's logic. The same issue is discussed in the Kalachakra Root Tantra and its commentary. There it is said that if the butcher accumulates negative karma, the eater of that meat also has negative karma because the consumer is the indirect condition to that killing. Without consumers, butchers would not kill animals. In Lama Drugpa Kunleg's commentary on the Kalachakra Root Tantra he expressed that the consumer creates even more negativity than the producer in this case. In the same way His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama has also said that if human beings did not exist on this world, animals would enjoy an almost complete freedom because nobody would kill them.

It is due to the existence of humans that butcheries and factories kill millions of animals every day in order to provide meat for humans to use. Therefore, humans are a big condition for the suffering of animals. Desire for meat is what makes animal hell! Although it is not directly killing, consuming meat is a way of indirectly killing animals. Therefore to completely give up killing you need to give up eating meat. That is the most beneficial; that is the correct practice of loving kindness. Furthermore, if you are Buddhist, and you have taken refuge in the Dharma, you have made the commitment of not harming any being, either directly or indirectly. If you eat meat or even if you just buy meat, you are indirectly harming animals, therefore, if you have taken Refuge eating meat is a contradiction and is not correct. If you are Mahayana, you respect and practice Great Compassion. Eating meat would be totally contradictory because Mahayana practitioners believe that all living beings have been their parents, siblings, and children numberless times. Eating beef or chicken would be the same as eating your father or mother. This explanation is not my opinion. It comes from the seventh chapter of the Angulimala Sutra. Furthermore, the sutra states that if you believe that all living beings have Buddha nature or Tathagatagarbha, then eating meat is completely out of the question. If you want to eat meat, the sutra asks, why don't you eat your own flesh? If you say you don't want to eat your own flesh because it is too painful, how can you bear inflicting that pain on other beings? The desire for other beings' meat instead of your own is a self cherishing concept that comes from attachment. You believe that your happiness is more important and that the happiness of others does not matter. That thinking is completely wrong. You are allowed to be happy, but you are not allowed to give others pain. It is a unjust view that has no equanimity. Moreover, the Lankavatara Sutra also states that if you eat meat, you cannot get rid of anger and therefore cannot completely develop Great Compassion, Wisdom, and shamata. 3) Regarding Tsog practice, some Highest Yoga Tantra practitioners say they need to use meat and alcohol in order to fulfill their commitments. Why do Highest Yoga Tantra practitioners need five meats and five nectars? Highest Yoga Tantra is the antidote against concepts, which means that pure and impure are simply concepts and there is no intrinsic difference between them. The five meats and five nectars function as an antidote against concepts. The Kagyu master Gampopa said that if when doing Highest Yoga Tantra practice if you offer meat and blood from an animal that was intentionally killed, even if you invite the deities, they will not come. Other texts say that if you offer meat from an animal that was intentionally killed then the dakinis get angry and bad spirits instead of deities come. According to Kamalashila, if you eat meat, you will never attain shamata or shin. However, around the 19th century, the Rim Lama, Za Patur Rinpoche explained that it is correct to offer meat as long as it comes from natural death. When you have high concentration and high realizations, you can transform these meats and nectars into pure substances. If you can do it, you can offer them. However, if you do not have these kinds of realizations it is better to use substances that do not contain meat or egg for your Tsog practice. Lama Atisha used to offer molasses instead of meat, and yogurt instead of alcohol; Dregung Chenawa, a guru of Lama Tsongkhapa, used cheese and yogurt. For us it is better to follow this tradition. His Holiness the Dalai Lama, at a large gathering of ten to twenty thousand monks and nuns in Bodhgaya also suggested using black tea as an offering when he saw large plates of meat being used for Tsog practice. 4) Some Theravadan monks claim that according to the Vinaya teachingsthe nuns and monks law monks should eat whatever is given to them when begging. Is this true?

This is not true. When given food, the monk or nun should ask whether it is fresh, if it has meat, and if this meat comes from an intentionally killed animal or from one that died of natural causes. If the monk has diabetes he should also ask if the food has any sugar. It is not correct to eat whatever is given. It is necessary to make a detailed analysis of the Vinaya in order to understand this. Buddha composed himself the laws for nuns and monks. In the beginning, monks and nuns did not have any laws because they behaved correctly. But 13 years later some monks' morality started degenerating so Buddha gradually began making the Vinaya law. At the beginning when talking about meat, Buddha only prohibited eating human flesh. Afterwards he banned five meats, and then ten, and then twenty. Then, when Buddha got old, he prohibited all healthy monks from consuming meat of any kind as is shown in the Great Nirvana Sutra and the commentary of master Shantideva in the Siksasamuccaya. However, Buddha gives permission for sick monks and nuns to take four medicines (alcohol medicine, garlic, eye medicine made from bear hide, and meat medicine) and eat three pure meats from animals that have not been intentionally killed. Devadata criticized this decision and said that not even sick monks are allowed to eat meat. In his commentary to Vinaya, Khedrub Je, disciple of Lama Tsongkhapa, says that sick monks have permission to eat meat as long as they are able to view meat completely as medicine; if they are driven by desire or see meat as food, Vinaya does not give them permission to eat it. 5) Some non-Buddhist people think that we do not need to feel compassion towards animals because they believe animals were created by God for human consumption. Is this true? A scientific and logical examination will show this is not true. It is evident that animals want happiness and not suffering. You can see that they suffer when they are killed. I respect Jesus and I do not think that Jesus ever encouraged animal consumption. I think later commentaries done by academics misinterpreted Jesus' teachings. If God created animals in order to be devoured by humans then you must believe that God created humans in order to be devoured by dinosaurs, lions, tigers, and cobras. Do you believe that? We need an impartial, logical analysis of this topic. 6) Some people may think that killing one animal, a cow, for example, is better than eating vegetables. They argue that the death of one animal can feed many people while many animals die when harvesting vegetables. What about this argument? This argument is incorrect. When a big animal is killed, the wrong motivation of killing is present from the beginning; whereas when vegetables are harvested and many insects die, there never was the intention of killing, and their deaths were inevitable. That is the main point. You can choose between killing or not killing. Also, when one large animal is killed, so many millions of bacteria, insects, and beings that depend on that animal die in the process. I decided to do more research about this subject so I looked into the Buddha's sutras. In Chapter 7 of the Angulimala Sutra, there is an interesting explanation. Concerned about the living beings, Manjushri asks Buddha how to lead a completely pure life. When we drink water, harvest vegetables, or even walk down the road, we will kill countless beings without knowing it. Buddha answered him that the Buddhas are completely pure beings and their body has no bacteria or pollution; Arya beings are just slightly polluted; but ordinary beings are polluted by nature. At this moment, it is impossible for them to lead a completely pure life. Although it is inevitable to kill in samsara, it is possible to abandon killing intentionally. If you have the choice, do not kill. That answer comes from the Buddha and is very logical. 7) Some people are concerned about giving up meat and egg because they think that they will not

get proteins in their diet. What can they do? I think we should look for some good examples. India has over 1 billion inhabitants, more than 500 million of whom are very religious and traditional; they do not eat meat at all. They only eat vegetables and fruits and many different kinds of lentils and seeds. If they ate meat they would get sick. They are very healthy and have long lives. Last year, a vegetarian man in India celebrated his 119th birthday. There is also a very famous Tibetan Lama Chatral Rinpoche who was born in 1913. He is a vegetarian who practices animal liberation. There are many good examples, but these are just two. There are also some examples in the animal realm. Vegetarian animals such as elephants and turtles are very strong and can reach 150 or 200 years of age. Non-vegetarian animals like dogs, cats, tigers, and lions are strong in their youth, but soon get weak and die, reaching 20 years at most. Animals that are not vegetarian have short lives. You can check this. After the second World War, scientists thought that meat protein was the most healthy and best for the diet. Scientists have changed since this time because of health problems that the consumption of meat, eggs, milk, sugar, alcohol, and tobacco has caused. Many Western doctors and scientists now say that vegetable protein is of a better quality than that which comes from animal products. Meat and eggs have proteins but they are not of good quality as they also bring many illnesses. High blood pressure, liver sickness, heart problems, breast and uterine cancer, and bad memory are all linked to the consumption of meat. Eggs can transmit hepatitis. To ingest a lot of milk is not good either. It can cause digestive problems as well as bone issues. Even chicken meat can bring untimely menstruation to young girls. If they eat a lot of chicken, girls can have menstruation as young as 8 or 9 years old. Therefore it is best to give these foods up. If you also avoid alcohol, tobacco, soft drinks and junk food, it will improve your physical and mental health. It is also important to be skillful with nutrition and eating if you become a vegetarian. Vegetarians and vegans should learn to cook healthily and to take care of themselves. Otherwise everywhere there are processed foods, unhealthy fats and sugars, and portions that are too large-especially in restaurants. One should take responsibility for their own cooking and health. I hope this composition raises interest to understand what the Buddha explained about eating meat. This debate and discussion will never finish. I will continue to read about and analyze this topic and will answer questions and write articles in the future. I hope that this will help people and animals mentally and physically.

=== Colophon: This text was composed by Geshe Thubten Soepa, in January, 2013 in Uruapan, Michoacan, Mexico. Transcribed and edited by Alejandro Garca. Edited again by Geshe Soepa and Robert Baptist in February 2013.