Buddhism and Veganism Read online

Being a monk makes it possible for me every day to appreciate people’s generosity in supporting my life and practice. On our pilgrimage, except for the wild roadside greens we foraged, our survival depended entirely on good will offerings by people along the way.

  One foggy morning more than halfway on our journey, we reached Santa Cruz, California. I came up from a bow to see a young schoolgirl, perhaps nine years old, on her bicycle. She had stopped to stare at me while I bowed and to ponder what in the world I was doing on the sidewalk in front of her house. She silently watched me take three steps and slowly bow to the ground, as I traveled past her.

  I heard her ride away, and then several blocks later, I heard her bicycle approach again from the rear. She rode by and stopped and when I came up from a bow she opened her lunch box and held out a wax paper package. “Here, Mister, you better take this sandwich from my lunchbox. The way you’re going, you’re going to need it before you get to the corner,” she said. Lunch was particularly nourishing that day.

  “I reflect upon my conduct: have I truly earned my share?”

  Mealtime provides a regular opportunity to reflect on my behavior during the day. Are my words, thoughts and deeds a gift to my family, my team, my community or do I tend to leave behind a trail of troubles and burdens for others? Could this food I’m eating power me towards greater service and a wider circle of well-being wherever I go?

  This line of the Five Contemplations verse applies in particular to monastics, to men and women who have “left the householder’s life” and gone forth into the Buddha’s Sangha order. We depend entirely on others’ generosity for the food we eat. The food is given as free-will offerings by the laity to support the spiritual activities of the monastics who, other than their efforts to cultivate their practice, do not work to earn money for their daily bread. In principle, should the monastic reach success in his or her practice and get enlightened, the lay donor reaps the benefits of the merit that made the awakening possible.

  Monastics contemplate this verse to remind them to cultivate the Way, so that they can receive the support of others without amassing a debt that they would have to repay later, perhaps in a future lifetime as a beast of burden. A verse from the tradition says expressly:

  A single grain of donor’s rice,

  Is weighty as Sumeru [the Buddhist polar mountain], so they say.

  If I should take it and then fail to cultivate, I’ll pay it back in fur and horns someday.

  For members of the Sangha to accept alms, but not practice the Dharma, may create the karmic retribution of, in a future rebirth, becoming a beast of burden who must carry others’ belongings to repay the debt. Contemplating according to the verse helps put the mind in a space of humility and of striving to be worthy of donors’ kindnesses.

  Ajahn Viradhammo, a Mahathera in the Thai forest tradition, recalls an encounter that taught him the necessity of humility when receiving alms. As a brand-new novice monk in Thailand, he was still learning how to fold his robes and carry his alms-bowl. Living outside a farming village he had to walk through rice paddies to get to the houses where the food would be offered. He recalls the awkward way he stepped along the narrow borders of the paddy fields, a pale, sun-burned Canadian monk struggling to keep his saffron robe around his body.

  He saw that beneath his feet the neighboring farmer’s feet were sunk knee-deep in mud and rice seedlings. The farmer was wrestling with his water buffalo and sweating beneath his cone-shaped rice-straw sun hat. He caught sight of the young monk and with full deportment and deep respect, dropped the ox’s yoke, placed his palms together and made a profound half bow to him. As the monk continued to pick his way along the paddy-field margins towards the village, he noticed the farmer secure his ox, climb out of the field, kick-start a motorbike and hurry off.

  Twenty minutes later he arrived at the entrance to the village where he hoped to receive alms. He walked towards the first group of lay-people who stood waiting by their front gate. He was startled to see the same farmer from the paddy field, now with a clean shirt and combed hair, standing proudly with his wife and daughter. They were holding a silver serving bowl of steaming rice, prepared from an earlier harvest of the field he had just walked past, now cooked and ready to be offered for his meal.

  Connecting the effort he had witnessed just moments before and the generosity in the smiles of the young family who stood waiting for the chance to feed him made a deep and lasting impression on Ajahn Viradhammo. He reports that this encounter sparked a resolve to always be worthy of earning his share of food offerings.

  In the Thai Theravada tradition, as well as the Chinese Mahayana tradition, the monastics never say “give me” or “I want.” Asking for things out of personal desire makes one a beggar, a solicitor. Mendicants have the capacity to serve as a “field of blessings” because they are practicing monastics. The mendicant says, “I am happy to make myself available, should you care to practice generosity.” In this way the focus is on the resolve of the donor who wants to support the cultivator. With each offering, the donor “plants a field of blessings,” which he or she harvests in the cultivation efforts, the dedications, and the prayers and chants performed by the monk or nun who receives the offerings. The layperson gives material wealth and the monastic gives back the wealth of Dharma, as indicated by the teaching, “The giving of wealth and the giving of Dharma are equal in all ways, thus completing the Perfection of Giving (dana paramita.)”

  “Of the poisons of the mind the most destructive one is greed.”

  Greed, anger, and delusion are known as the Three Poisons, three toxic products of our minds that have the power to harm relationships, misuse resources, and foster the worst traits in humanity: insatiable craving and selfishness that can lead to corruption and injustice, violence and grief. Through the Five Contemplations, lunch becomes my place of personal transformation, by watching my thoughts and replacing the tendency towards greed with thoughts of sharing generosity and sufficiency, by replacing anger and hatred with thoughts of patience and loving-kindness, and by waking up delusion with bright awareness. World peace arrives from transcending greed and anger one thought and one bite at a time.

  While bowing on the highway along the coast of California, I was pelted by the wind of passing cars and trucks. Each vehicle, zooming by at 70 miles per hour, stirred up a strong tail wind as it passed, like a wake behind a boat. In that wind tunnel, the scents and energetic atmosphere inside each vehicle wafted along in the vacuum behind it. Because freeways are places we rarely stand or walk, much less bow, few people are aware of this reality, but let me assure you that a bubble of tobacco smoke, perfume, garlic, or ripe fruit fragrances, as well as music, voices, anger and emotions float along behind for minutes after vehicles pass by, bathing any passersby in a cloud of scents, sounds and feelings. During strawberry harvest in Southern California each open-top transport truck that passed sent us to a strawberry heaven for a brief moment.

  Of all the passing vehicles and their individual worlds, the most unforgettable were the livestock transport trucks, carrying cattle, sheep and pigs to feedlots, stockyards, and slaughterhouses. You may have seen those trucks, bare metal with slots on the sides to allow the animals to breathe, and a slanting bottom to allow removal of the waste. Each passing “death truck” left a cloud of scent and emotion that enveloped me for minutes as I bowed along the roadside. The feelings of fear, desperation, anger, grief and misery that poisoned the air were palpable. The smells generated by all those sensitive nervous systems jammed together in their last ride haunt me to this day.

  Since meat-eating is a choice, giving life or taking life is also a choice. These fellow creatures were being subjected to this fearsome torment by choice, out of human’s greed for flavor, not because of need. In the truck were living, breathing citizens of the planet, beings with mothers, children, cares and feelings. By the end of the ride they would become rump roast, sirloin, slim jims and big Macs. With each death truck that passed on the
highway I vowed that I would do my utmost to help make humans more conscious, to wake everyone up to the choices we have at the dinner table, and to end the destruction caused by greed.

  An antidote to greed is giving and sharing. With each meal that is free of death and cruelty, I experience gratitude for the chance to eat harmlessly. I fill my needs without participating in the economy of the death trucks. I can season my lunchtime with happiness. Replacing steak with beans may cause a brief loss of sensation for my taste buds, but, for the animal who doesn’t get slaughtered, I have saved him from torment, terror, and pain.

  Further, a verse by Song Dynasty poet-monk, Cloud of Vow says,

  For countless years the bitter stew of hate goes boiling on;

  Its enmity is ocean-deep, impossible to calm.

  To learn the cause of all this killing, terror, bombs and war,

  Listen to the cries at midnight, by the butcher’s door.

  The poet takes the issue deeper, connecting the violence generated by slaughtering animals with warfare. Butchering animals for food sparks an emotional and physical response in the bodies and minds of the sentient creatures designated as “food” by humans. That negative energy returns and seeks vengeance. Killing begets killing, and as countries mobilize their weapons, soldiers are sent to war and the cycle of violence churns on.

  The suffering inflicted by mechanized abuse and slaughter is caused by our desire for flavor at the expense of the animals we kill for food. Substituting plants, while respecting all creatures’ will to live, is a positive action that moves society towards well-being and a peaceful life for all beings.

  “As medicines cure illness I take only what I need”

  One Buddhist perspective suggests that, ultimately, all food is medicine, and that the purpose of eating is merely to prevent the disease of hunger. If we don’t eat, we starve and die, so food keeps us alive. Chefs and gourmet eaters might object that this view eliminates the joys of good eating and perhaps so. Nonetheless, contemplating food as medicine cuts through the desire for pleasurable flavors that rationalizes cruelty to animals. This contemplation reduces eating to fuel for the vehicle of the body, so that we can continue to live. This way, we eat to live, not live to eat. Like contemplating our choices at the gas pump, cars meant to burn regular grade gas do not fare well burning high octane, diesel or kerosene. Humans, likewise, thrive on simpler, plant-based diets.

  While bowing through Santa Barbara county, we met a high school biology teacher who approached us at lunch with a book in his hand. He introduced himself and said, “Look all around you at the plants under your feet. When offerings are scarce, if you can recognize just a few of the native plants along the California coastline, you can support yourselves and thrive.”

  He then handed us a copy of Stalking the Wild Asparagus, by the late Euell Gibbons, renowned naturalist and advocate of foraging edible native plants. The biology teacher warned us against picking mushrooms. He said, “There are old mushroom hunters and there are bold mushroom hunters, but there are no old and bold mushroom hunters. If you pick and eat mushrooms you can’t clearly identify, you can die young!”

  He taught us to distinguish hemlock (inedible and toxic) from its look-alike, Queen Anne’s Lace (edible and useful.) After that encounter, we supplemented our diet with pot herbs such as sorrel, miner’s lettuce, dandelions, and spices and medicinal herbs like fennel and yerba buena, rose hips, sage and peppermint. The connection between food and medicine became clearer with each bite of wild food. The green coastal fields turned into a living produce department before our eyes. Our gratitude to the planet for sustaining our lives and our health grew with each meal.

  If hunger is an illness, then food is medicine. Once we recover from an illness we don’t continue to take medicine; once our hunger is allayed we needn’t continue to consume. The Middle Way, the method that leaves behind both excess and deficiency, can sustain our lives and that of the planet.

  “…To sustain my cultivation and to realize the Way;”

  This contemplation exhorts us to follow the Buddha’s Way and the Bodhisattva’s Way, paths of selfless spiritual practice on behalf of others. The vision that powers this heroic dedication is the vision of connection among all beings, known to Buddhists as “same body, great compassion.” It arises from the recognition that earth, water, fire and air, the four elements that comprise bodies, are shared in common with all living creatures past, present and future. Seeing this identity in our fundamental make-up can lead to the next awareness: that the inner spirit, or soul, or nature that inhabits our elemental bodies is likewise one, not two. This mealtime contemplation invites us to celebrate the awakened nature, identical in all beings.

  Bowing along the San Mateo County coastline, to my delight, I read this sign posted at the gate to the Pigeon Point Lighthouse Station, near Pescadero, fifty miles south of San Francisco.

  “No killing, hunting, fishing, trapping, harming or disturbing of wildlife in any way.”

  – By order of the commandant, U.S. Coast Guard, Pigeon Point Lighthouse Station

  The sign brought tears of gratitude, imagining that the men and women in Coast Guard uniforms were using their military authority to defend the lives of animals, birds and sea creatures as well as protecting human interests along the coast. Perhaps this was an unusually compassionate commandant, or maybe compassion towards other species was an explicit policy for the Coast Guard. In any case it gave me goose bumps as I contemplated working alongside the US military to protect lives and save the environment for all beings. I salute the wise and compassionate Coast Guard commandant who embodied the vision of oneness and made the notion that we are interdependent and connected Pigeon Point Lighthouse’s policy.

  “So we contemplate with gratitude on this offering today.”

  Agronomists’ studies show us that when our food is based on plants, instead of animal flesh, dairy, and eggs, the planet can produce sufficient food to feed all humans and animals and put an end to starvation. The Five Contemplations in the Buddhist mealtime blessing bring that study to bear on my thoughts. The end to human starvation and cruelty to other species begins in my next thought.

  How important is the wisdom of being content with our blessings? How important is it to not waste and instead to cherish and feel gratitude for the food on our table each day?

  With every bite of food, The Five Contemplations connect body and spirit to the universe. My physical body’s flesh, blood and breath are a microcosm of the planet Earth and its natural environment of continents, oceans, forests, mountains and atmosphere. This is the macrocosm where my physical and mental habits make their mark.

  Employing the Five Contemplations in silence while eating has the potential to clarify our deeper connection to the entire web of life and to the fabric of production, consumption and transformation of energy that nourishes and sustains our lives. It generates a graceful inspiration to responsibility for the whole, and stewardship for the well-being of all.

  Compassion: The Heart of the Buddhist Teachings

  TRACEY GLOVER

  To be a Buddha means to be awake. Glimpsing the truth about the myriad ways we exploit and harm non-human animals, and recognizing our connection with them, is, for some of us, our first real moment of awakening. It was for the Buddha as well. It’s said that the Buddha’s first moment of awakening happened before he was known as the Buddha but still as the young Indian Prince Siddhartha. He was about seven years old when his family took him to a ploughing festival, which the king, his father, organized to celebrate the farming culture and the people who fed the kingdom. During the festival, the young prince watched the men drive the oxen who plowed the soil.

  While the people celebrated, and were happy, the prince saw how hard the animals toiled and how much they suffered. He also saw all the other small animals, the mice, crickets, worms, and insects being displaced from their homes, and some even cut up by the blades of the plows. In that moment, he felt their sufferi
ng as if it were his own and felt a great compassion arising within his heart for them all. This is said to have been one of the most important moments in the Buddha’s life, and that he spent the rest of his life trying to find and then teach a path that could lead to the end of suffering. It is clear to me that every vegan has the heart of an awakening Buddha and that no matter where we are on the path to an awakened life, a Buddhist practice can help us cultivate compassion and wisdom in order to be of maximum benefit to all sentient beings, while also enjoying the miracle of being alive.

  As a child, I grew up in a home that was like a menagerie and always considered myself an animal lover. We had many cherished dogs and cats, as well as snakes, mice, fishes, rabbits, hamsters, and for a while a skunk (obviously, a terrible idea). We also ate animals without seeing any moral inconsistency. When I was about fifteen, during the late 1980s, I received a PETA mailer, and shortly thereafter read Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation. Thanks to PETA and Singer, I learned for the first time what the animals in our modern agricultural system endure, and like the Buddha, and like all ethical vegans, I felt their suffering as if it were my own. I made the decision to go vegan.

  Unfortunately, my first attempt at veganism was something of a failure. Living on a teenager’s diet of potato chips, French fries, Oreos, fast food, and other convenience foods left me feeling unhealthy, and when everyone in my world at the time including parents, doctors, and friends all told me that my general lack of vibrant health was due to my strict vegan diet, I believed them. I added eggs and dairy back into my diet but maintained an otherwise vegetarian diet for a few more years until, in my naiveté and ignorance, I somehow managed to convince myself that the government must have fixed all the problems that the PETA mailer and Singer’s book had pointed out.

  I distinctly remember how firm my faith was that the U.S. government was a benevolent and paternalistic entity whose purpose was to eliminate injustice and ensure fairness, decency, and the well-being of all members of our society, including the non-human animals. And though it would be downright laughable if it weren’t so tragic, in my trusting, seventeen-year-old mind, I reasoned that if I knew about the horrible abuse of animals taking place throughout our food system, then surely the government must have known about it too. And if they knew, the only logical result was for them to fix these problems, because the government had the power to do that, and there was absolutely no moral ambiguity about what was right and wrong.