[Buddha-l] Re: Buddhist pacifism

[Mike Austin]

In message <1129511331.7820.4.camel at localhost.localdomain>, Richard P. 
Hayes <rhayes at unm.edu> writes
>On Mon, 2005-10-17 at 00:23 +0100, Mike Austin wrote:
>
>> The Buddha recommended eating but warned against killing. Eating meat is
>> not bad karma - because there is no harmful mind, no harmful word and no
>> harmful action. Killing to eat or ordering others to kill to eat, is bad
>> karma.
>
>Of course if someone gives you some meat, eat it. Or if a rabbit jumps
>into your cooking pot and offers himself as a gift, eat it. But buying
>meat is a way of ordering others to kill animals, unless you're naive
>enough to think people would go around killing animals if there were no
>market for the meat. And stealing it isn't much to be commended.

Of course,  any actions that one undertakes in an interdependent society 
must form part of the causative process of anything that happens in that 
society. Whether this is the same as saying all these actions are karma, 
in the sense that they will ripen on individuals, I don't know. It seems 
rather unlikely to me.  If one buys meat, it is the intention and action 
of the butcher etc. that determines if he kills. No order is given. Such 
an order would be just an imputation from the butcher's side.

Many years ago, before I encountered Buddhism, I used to live in a small 
hotel  where I was working in south Germany.  The hotel had a fish tank. 
One could select a fish to eat.  I couldn't do that, but I felt OK about 
ordering fish or meat on the menu that did not have to be killed for me. 
This was my instinct at the time, and it still is. Reading that karma is 
occasioned by actions through one's three doors - body, speech, mind - I 
think it is a reasonable approach.

-- 
Metta
Mike Austin