[Buddha-l] Victimized vegans

[[DPD Web] Shen Shi'an]

Unacademically but spiritually speaking, Buddhists are supposed to
believe the Buddha taught that truth should be accepted wherever it is
found. If a text falls apart and is jumbled together such that it makes
truthful sense - it is still truth. Whether it is meant to be read that
way is another issue of course.

Of course, on trickier issues, the individual has to decide if it is in
line with the Noble Eightfold Path.

What I know is this - If the Buddha, for some reason, needed to buy a
pre-cooked meal at a supermarket,  I don't think he will buy a slab of
meat - because he is unlikely to (indirectly) support a trade he
condemned in any way - butchery, sale of meat. 

"A lay follower should not engage in five types of business. Which five?
Business in weapons, business in human beings, business in meat,
business in intoxicants, and business in poison." - AN 5.177
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/ptf/dhamma/sacca/sacca4/samma-ajivo/index
.html 

Is supermarket meat "pure meat"?:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/thedailyenlightenment-realisation/message/
252 

"Mahamati [Bodhisattva], if no one eats meat, then no one kills living
beings for food. Because there are people who wish to eat meat, if they
have no meat to eat they will go everywhere to buy meat, then the others
who wish to earn money will kill living beings and sell the flesh to the
meat eaters. The killings are for the buyers, thus the buying is the
same as the killing." - The Buddha (Lankavatara Sutra)

-----Original Message-----
From: Erik Hoogcarspel [mailto:jehms at xs4all.nl] 
Sent: Saturday, 12 May, 2007 4:23 PM
To: Buddhist discussion forum
Subject: Re: [Buddha-l] Victimized vegans

Richard Hayes schreef:
> On Friday 11 May 2007 10:27, Erik Hoogcarspel wrote:
>
>   
>> With all respect, but the Lanka itself is not a consistent text
written by
>> one author, let alone that it contains words of the historical
Buddha.
>>     
>
> Surely nothing could be less relevant than the authorship of a text.
What 
> matters is whether the text gives good advice for the elimination of 
> eliminable forms of suffering and offers cogent reasons in favour of
its 
> conclusions. The Lankavatara does offer some good advice on some
points and 
> offers some conclusions without good arguments in their support. It
deserves 
> criticism, but surely it deserves more intelligent criticism than that
it was 
> not the word of the Buddha. 
>
> Mind you, Erik, you can ignore this entire message, since it is not
the word 
> of the Buddha and may well be inconsistent. And, if momentariness is
true, it 
> was not even the work of a single author. 
>
>   
Generally spoken you're absolutely right as usual, but in this case I 
was just following the thread. The quote from the Lanka was used as a 
counter argument for my suggestion that the Buddha only prohibited 
eating meat in case the animal was slaughtered just for the meal.
But I'd like to take up another aspect. You suggest that the value of a 
text depends solely on it's interpretation. So do you deny the relevance

of historical data, like Richard Rorty ? If a text falls apart and 
children sample the pages which are not numbered and put them together 
in a new order, which allowes another consistent reading, would you 
consider this text or the voice in it an authority on the subject?


Erik


www.xs4all.nl/~jehms
weblog http://www.volkskrantblog.nl/pub/blogs/blog.php?uid=2950
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