Expert: Justin Choo - 5/18/2005

Question
I have been told that it does not matter if you eat meat or not. I personally do not. The reason they stated was that no matter what you eat some sort of being was harmed in the harvest. This seems wrong to me because isn't karma based on intention? The intention to harm another is there when you eat animals but not vegtables. Another reaason that they gave was that here are many products made from animals that we need to use such as soap, which in some cases is made from animal fat; but isn't one of the main buddhist ideas is that if you can't help at least do no harm? Any way I guess the question is: is it o.k. or not to eat meat, and why?

Answer
Hi Jack,

Thank you for asking me.

I shall come straight to the point. It is OK to eat meat.  It is not wholesome to kill life intentionally.

The dietician will tell you that you are what you eat.  The fashion designer will tell you that you are what you wear.  The Buddha told us that we are what we think, speak, and act.  You see the difference?

The world is surrounded by good and bad things.  It is the very nature of this world to be such. That was why the Buddha led us to SEE the real nature of this world.  Once we realize this truth, we will gradually come to terms with this contradiction, the dichotomy of good and bad.  The Buddha referred this as "Dukkha".  It is always this Dukkha that we have to live and contend with.  If you watch the National Geographic programme, you will see this Dukkha overpowering our lives.  Every moment, when a life lives, another life has to be sacrificed.  This is great Dukkha.  But we are blind to this fact.  We ignorantly think that we can live without others dying for us.  I shall not go further giving examples to convince you of this truth.  The real exercise to realize this truth is to free our mind of all our preconceived ideas, and to open our minds, and then to think and observe rationally whether we can really survive without any being dying for us.  No amount of reasoning or argument will convince you of this fact unless you step back, relax your mind, let your intellctual faculties take a rest, and watch National Geographic!  This is not a joke.

Coming back to a more down to earth explaination.  The idea of not eating meat is to avoid KILLING.  When we eat meat we are eating DEAD meat.  Of course there is some justification to say that we are encouraging others to kill when we eat meat.  If anyone feels that way, then there is no commandment from the Buddha that you must eat meat.  By all means eat only vegetables.  One thing for sure, you will be very healthy.

Now we come to the analysis of what constitute "Killing"?  A person will be fully responsible for the killing if the following 5 conditions are fulfilled:
1 His knowledge of a living being.
2 His knowledge that the living being is alive.
3 His intention to kill
4 His act of killing.
5 The being is dead as a result of his act.  

So you see, eating dead meat is not killing!  

Smile from justinchoo :-)