Is the Logic of Vegetarianism a Problem in Buddhist Thinking?

As a recent vegetarian, one of the difficulties I deal with is limiting my choices of food. I’ve learned that true ritualized vegetarianism, the kind found in Buddhism that was meant to spare violence against animal life does not stop with the partaking of the flesh of an animal. It challenges us to go beyond this prohibition and consider the manufacturing facilities where diary is also produced. I started thinking about this when my wife recently brought to my attention the fact that dairy cows, even on so-called organic farms, are often treated harshly and their non-milk producing male offspring born on such farms are destroyed.

This kind of violence is not a direct concern in Buddhism. One obvious reason may lie in the fact that the early texts dealt with cycles of life (samsara) in which mass-production facilities did not exist. For overall efficiency, even on organic farms, which face growing demands for their products as healthier alternatives, disposing of the young and violently beating non-compliant animals is much easier than it would have been for a subsistent farmer living in South East Asia, even several hundred years ago, whose family relied on the lives of its livestock. Buddhism is often charged by its Western cousins with not “towing the line” when it comes to modern ethical issues. And there may be truth to this. But my reflection is also non-scholarly, and it is certainly something I will be exploring in the days to come.

Violence in such situations depends much more on where you get your products rather than right-to-life issues that come with slaughtering animals. Production awareness goes into very difficult areas, one such being our patronage of any company who participated or participates in some kind of evil. It is what we call in Christianity, sins of omission and sins of commission, and it assumes in the first that there is a standard of evil one must recognized universally. On a real level, Buddhism has this too. After all, one’s skillfulness (kosala), instead of morality, is often spoken of, and is part of the very fabric of life. Since there is no supreme lawgiver, the law is all that is front of us.

We might not be able to talk about right or wrong and only intentionality, but then we could appeal to any such argument to make our case for eating meat as well!

For example, I did not intend to kill any animal, but now that the meat is in front of me, I will eat.

While one might take pause here, it should be made clear that Tibetan monks would traditionally eat whatever was given to them in their begging bowls (patta). While many villagers are conscientious to provide vegetarian meals for the monks today, we know historically that this did not always happen, but on occasions portions were meat. Furthermore, legend tells us that the death of our historical Buddha occurred when he accepted what was put in front of him (a plate of spoiled food). Siddhartha knew what it was, but since gratitude was thought a more skillful action than self-preservation, he chose the former path and died.

So is the logic of vegetarianism a problem in Buddhist thinking? Only insofar as we must expand it to cover the whole range of nonviolent activities. And this inevitable mucks the waters.