[Buddha-l] on eating meat

[Joy Vriens]

Hello Hugo,

> Rites and rituals is one of the fetters that have to be broken:

I think the fetter is the attachment to rites and rituals or illusions
relating to rites and rituals. I don't think it is the things one is or
can be attached to that need to be broken. I was very much against rites
and rituals a couple of years back and seem to be changing position on
that subject.

E.g. concerning eating meat, I am thinking about
animist hunter cultures in which some rituals may be performed for the
sake of the slaughtered animal and how actually this is perhaps a saner
attitude to killing and eating animals than to be very cold and rational 
about it like in our
contemporary civilisation with its industrialised slaughterhouses, where
we can buy the meat nicely cut up and conditionned or even ready to eat, 
totally cut off from the traumatising reality of killing animals etc. 
Rites and rituals can function as a sort of reminder or reactualisation 
of important information, like the awareness that we owe something to 
the animal whose meat we eat and that being creatures ourselves it is a 
form of cannibalism.

> 3. Silabbataparamasa means "adherence to wrongful rites, rituals and
> ceremonies"...in the mistaken belief that purification can be achieved
> simply by their performance.

I have been told that some Buddhists believe that by sitting cross 
legged at certain times of the day in certain places, concentrating on 
their breathing and by thinking that everything is impermanent, 
imperfect and impersonal they can achieve nirvana.

Joy