[Buddha-l] on eating meat

[Stephen Hodge]

Dear Mike,

> Meanwhile, any other references out there ?

The main sutras to deal with meat-eating belong to the tathagata-garbha 
class.  In particular, the Angulimala-sutra and the Mahaparinirvana-sutra 
cover this topic.  I have not yet translated the AS but here is one of the 
passages from the MPNS.  Elsewhere therein, the Buddha says that he views 
all beings as his only son, as should bodhisattvasd, and to eat meat would 
thus be tantamount to cannibalism.

Best wishes,
Stephen Hodge


"I stipulate that you should not even eat meat blameless in three respects. 
Even those meats apart from the ten [forbidden] kinds should be abandoned. 
The meat of corpses should also be abandoned. All creatures sense the odour 
and are frightened by meat-eaters no matter if they are moving around or 
resting. If a person eats asafoetida or garlic, everybody else feels 
uncomfortable and alienated - whether in a crowd of many people or in the 
midst of many creatures, they all know that that person has eaten them. 
Similarly, all creatures can recognize a person who eats meat and, when they 
catch the odour, they are frightened by the terror of death. Wherever that 
person roams, the beings in the waters, on dry land or in the sky are 
frightened. Thinking that they will be killed by that person, they even 
swoon and die. For these reasons bodhisattva-mahsattvas do not eat meat. 
Even though they may appear to eat meat on account of those to be trained, 
since they do not actually eat ordinary food so how much less so meat !
        Noble son, when many hundreds of years have elapsed after I have 
gone, there will be no once-returners, non-returners or arhats. In the age 
of the Dharma's decline, there will be monks who preserve the vinaya and 
abhidharma and who have a multitude of rituals, but who also look after 
their physical well-being, who highly esteem various kinds of meat, whose 
humours are disturbed, who are troubled by hunger and thirst, whose clothing 
looks a fright, who have robes with splashes of colour like a cowherd or a 
fowler, who comport themselves like a cat, who assert that they are arhats, 
who are pained by many hurts, whose bodies will be soiled with their own 
faeces and urine, who dress themselves well as though they were sages 
(muni), who dress themselves as wanderers (sramana) though they are not, and 
who hold spurious writings as the authentic Dharma. These people destroy 
what I have devised - the vinaya, rites, comportment and the authentic 
utterances that free and liberate one from attachment to what is improper, 
selecting and reciting passages from each of the sutras according to their 
inclinations. Thus there will appear [so-called] wanderers, sons of 
Shakyamuni, who claim that, 'According to our vinaya, the Blessed One has 
said that alms of meat-stuffs are acceptable' and who concoct their own 
[scriptures] and contradict each other."