Chapter 47: The Scenario of Vegetarianism
The Scenario of Vegetarianism:
Vegetarianism
is a lifestyle that many people practise without a limit to specific religion or
belief. As for the non-spiritualists, practitioners
may feel humanely responsible not to harm and consume other living beings. In term of Buddhism, vegetarianism is based
on the Lord Buddha’s regulated discipline or vinaya which prohibits
monks and laities from killing. Thus,
meat eating or consuming is believed to be a forbidden as well. Other than this, there is also the local creed,
culture and tradition which are jointly adopted into Buddhist practice. So, most Mahayana Buddhists practise
vegetarianism as they believe that killing animals and eating meats are wrongdoings.
With respect
of Theravadian Buddhist monks, the come-about of vegetarianism is always referred
to the Tipitaka or original Buddhist scripture memorised and written down from
generation to generation of Buddhist era that Venerable Devadatta, a kin of
Lord Gotama Buddha, is the first one who proposed to the Lord Buddha to prohibit
members of Buddhist monastic communities from eating meat and become
vegetarians with an aim to gain popularity out of his political scheme. However, the Lord Buddha declined, but he
allowed Buddhist monks to feel free to choose whether they wish to be a
vegetarian or not whereas the given advice is that if Buddhist monks feel regretful or uneasy with the meat which lay people killed animals in order to offer to them,
they should refuse to eat such meat.
In the
modern days, as the world of Buddhism has sprung into three major sects namely
Theravada, Mahayana and Vajrayana, the attempt to encourage people to become
vegetarians is fostered not only by Mahayana Buddhists but also spiritualists,
humanists, and health care practitioners worldwide, no matter what their
reasons for being vegetarians are. The
vegetarianism has been widespread even out of the domain of Buddhism, but it
still always raises the concern whether vegetarianism is the Lord Buddha’s
teaching and regulation.
In term of
Dhammonomics, the scenario of Buddhist vegetarianism can be explained with a
graph showing the relationship among various factors ranging from the ‘y-axis’
which represents the number of people who consume meat, ‘x-axis’ which
represents the number of livestock killed for food, curve (s1) which is the
supply of meat, curve (d1) which is the regular demand for meat, and curve (d2)
which is the new demand for meat where their intersections reflect the two
equilibriums which show the number of gifts of lives occurring when more people
become vegetarians.
To conclude,
although many Buddhists still believe that they are not sinful for eating meat
because they do not commit livestock killing by themselves, it is more likely
that slaughtered animals suffer from the pain and have revenge upon killers and
people who eat their meat. Also, if
people become vegetarians, the demand for meat will drop accordingly, causing
the automatic day-by-day decrease in number of livestock being killed for foods. Therefore, vegetarianism is also a direct way
to practise the virtue of mercy and compassion which people of the world should
be aware of, for the sake of humanity which everyone can do irrespective of
their beliefs.
By Pirajak Tisuthiwongse (Pittaya Wong)
Dhammonomics Inventor & Dharma Wizard
27 September 2022
www.Meditation101.org