One final book-launch party offering, via Dirk Johnson

[Part of my book-launch party offerings.]

Dirk Johnson, a friend from Twitter, wrote a poem a while back about Buddhists who justify their meat-eating on the grounds that “it’s ok to eat animals because everything is empty.”

Here’s a link to the poem. Please do go read it in its entirety. It wags a finger, but in a playful way.

And here’s an extract:

Oh, you Buddhist, so far along the path
That you’ve realized
Your own inseparability from emptiness,
That your own pain is without essence,
That your own suffering is an illusion,
That your imputed self is a mirage,
You, who realize this so deeply
That you even experience
This emptiness in the minds of other beings,
The bliss that they think is their pain,
So that you can see them killed and eat them
Without the slightest perturbation of regret.