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**JonDopl** · 11-04-2011, 09:13 PM

If we go by this principle, then I think we'd have to conclude that meat-eating is incompatible with Buddhist ethics.

But then again you run up against the fact that the Buddha ate meat and did not forbid his followers form eating meat. Which would make the Buddha a hell of a hypocrite.

A standard argument is that the consumer is not directly engaged in the act of slaughtering animals, so therefore there is no precept violation and buying/eating the meat is OK. Buddhism does not prohibit us from gaining nutritional benefit or culinary pleasure from someone else's act of killing.

But by the same token, we could say that the average citizen is not directly engaged in the act of operating the electric chair switch or administering the lethal injection, so therefore there is no precept violation and capital punishment is OK. Buddhism does not prohibit the benefits (sense of security, the satisfaction of retributive justice) we feel we get from the state's act of killing.

Most Buddhists I know would not accept the second line of argument, so why do they accept the first? The logic is the same. Sounds like evangelism to me.

11-04-2011, 09:13 PM	#25
JonDopl Join Date Oct 2005 Posts 446 Senior Member	If we go by this principle, then I think we'd have to conclude that meat-eating is incompatible with Buddhist ethics. But then again you run up against the fact that the Buddha ate meat and did not forbid his followers form eating meat. Which would make the Buddha a hell of a hypocrite. A standard argument is that the consumer is not directly engaged in the act of slaughtering animals, so therefore there is no precept violation and buying/eating the meat is OK. Buddhism does not prohibit us from gaining nutritional benefit or culinary pleasure from someone else's act of killing. But by the same token, we could say that the average citizen is not directly engaged in the act of operating the electric chair switch or administering the lethal injection, so therefore there is no precept violation and capital punishment is OK. Buddhism does not prohibit the benefits (sense of security, the satisfaction of retributive justice) we feel we get from the state's act of killing. Most Buddhists I know would not accept the second line of argument, so why do they accept the first? The logic is the same. Sounds like evangelism to me.
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