There is, however, great disagreement within Buddhism about whether and when it might be acceptable for Buddhists to eat meat in accordance with this precept. That is, there is a a great deal of controversy about what the words mean. Most Thai Buddhists think that eating meat is generally OK, and does not violate the First Precept, although the Santi Asoke Buddhists believe that they should normally follow a vegetarian diet. Outside of Thailand, most Buddhists are Mahayana followers and believe that the First Precept means they should not eat meat. There is a very real disagreement here. Both groups cannot be right - at least one group of Buddhists is wrong in their understanding of their First Precept. Who is right and who is wrong? What is the correct way to understand the words of the First Precept, "abstain from taking life"?
I won't present my argument here, but my own opinion is that a correct understanding of the Buddhist precept that followers "abstain from taking life" means that in most cases, although not all, Buddhists cannot eat meat. To make it a bit more real and specific, I think it does mean that Buddhists living in Bangkok should not eat meat because doing so causes both serious suffering and needless killing of animals and therefore violates the First Precept.
I suspect that at least some people disagree with me, so please feel welcome to present your reasons. And if you agree with me that Buddhists should not normally eat meat, please also present your reasons. I didn't give my reasons here because I would prefer to wait and see what reasons people have for opposing my thesis, which I will then support. Another reason is that my supporting reasons are in a 2,571 word essay I've written, which is much too long to paste in here. I also have one more reason, which will become apparent over the next few days, for not including my support in this post.
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One of my main reasons for thinking that the First Precept requires that Buddhists not normally eat meat is that the words abstain from killing must be defined to take account of both the Buddhist emphasis on intention, which is also consistent with our normal understanding of who is responsible for an act, such as a killing.
ReplyDeleteFor example, when a godfather orders his bodyguard to shoot an enemy, it is true that the bodyguard pulls the trigger of the gun, but the real intention that caused the killing was the godfather's. There would have been no killing without the godfather's intention, and like the gun, the bodyguard is a tool that the godfather uses to make his intention real. The bodyguard is guilty of murder, but our legal systems rightly hold the godfather who is the real cause of the killing guilty murder as well, or of conspiracy to murder, or of other serious crimes. The godfather is definitely not innocent of the killing simply because he did not pull the trigger of the gun himself, but paid someone else to do it.
Similarly, when people eat meat, it is their intention to enjoy steak more than rice, chicken rather than beans, or pork instead of potatoes that causes the killing. The butcher only kills the cow, the chicken or the pig because of the customers intention. He is only a tool to satisfy the Tops supermarket customer's lust for animal flesh. It is the customers acting on their desires by paying others to kill animals for them that really cause the killing, not their hired servants who are paid to kill in their place. If the customers did not have the intention that the animals be killed, and if the customers did not actually pay other to kill the animals, then they would not be killed. Tops executives would not waste money producing goods that could not be sold because there was no demand - it is the demand that drives the killing, not the killing that creates the demand. Hence, when correctly understood, eating meat normally violates the First Precept of Buddhism.
There are some cases where I think the First Precept does allow eating meat, which the Buddha very sensibly did not therefore ban, but neither did he ever say that it was normally OK to eat meat simply to satisfy a lust for killed animal flesh rather than eating much healthier vegetables and other plants when they are readily available.