[Buddha-l] "Nature" and eating meat

[Stefan Detrez]

It's interesting and reflectively profitable to do some moral reflection on the case of the plane crash in the Andes. There, people were so desperate for food they started cutting lumps of meat off of the killed passengers. Something which at first seemed revolting, and maybe to some, even immoral, soon evolved into a situation which demanded such supererogatory solutions that eating dead humans' flesh was the only means to stay alive.  
Now, if we reason that keeping other (human) beings alive is virtuous, and the meat is provided by beings who were not killed for culinary purposes (what about the bodhisattva who had himself eaten by the lioness to feed her cup?), then one could claim that eating meat in this situation is not immoral, and can even be considered morally justified. The dead were put to use by helping people stay alive until other means of survival became available.  
Regarding the debate on 'onvercoming' human nature, it seems to point at a pretty universal aspiration in most religions and ideologies: leading a virtuous/politically/socially correct life is cutting off that behaviour which is illustrative of 'the animal' (sex, killing, egoism, possessiveness, impulsivity) in man.  
My personal opinion is that most of which is considered as a vice is actually that which erupts from basic needs for survival and which are Amoral, in contrast to IMmoral. The projection of 'immorality' is probably inspired by the socially, culturally, etc disruptive effects of these vices.   
Applied to the eating meat, one can say eating meat is only immoral insofar the animal is killed for entertainment purposes. The rest is, I'd say, Amoral.

Stefan
 
 2005/10/24, Joy Vriens <joy.vriens at nerim.net>: 
Jim Peavler wrote:

> I'm likely to get in trouble for this, but people often excuse things
> because they are "natural". Why is it more natural for a mountain lion  
> or a coyote to kill for food than it is for a human.