Some recent(ish) vegetarianism articles

I’ve been rather remiss at keeping this blog up to date recently. Here are a bunch of articles I’ve had open in my browser for a long time now:

1. Here’s an article by Jeanette Stingley — one of the worst pieces on Buddhism and vegetarianism it’s been my misfortune to read. (Have I mentioned I was thinking I should rename my blog “The Angry Buddhist”? Actually that’s a bit of a joke. I feel sad, rather than angry, when I read self-justifying rationalizations such as this passing itself off as spiritual teaching).

I believe if you are Buddhist and you are contemplating becoming vegetarian or not, follow what your thoughts tell you. Neither is right and neither is wrong. It is an individual choice.

Paying people to kill animals so that you can eat them, or not paying people to kill animals. It’s all the same, really.

2. Next up: A glorious selection of links to resources pertaining to Buddhism and vegetarianism. There’s lots of food for thought here. I did not intend that to be a pun.

3. And next, a piece on a recent editorial in the Archives of Internal Medicine by Barry M. Popkin, a professor of nutrition at the University of North Carolina:

Mr. Popkin revisits several studies linking meat not just with heart disease and other health issues, but also with worldwide consumption of energy and water resources — and global warming.

Water use, Mr. Popkin writes, is two to five times greater worldwide for animal-source food than for basic crops such as legumes and grains. He further argues that livestock production accounts for 55 percent of the erosion process in the United States and is also responsible for one-third of the total discharge of nitrogen and phosphorous to surface water.

Yup, it’s just a personal choice. There are no ethical implications in eating meat at all. Jeanette Stingley sez so.

4. And next, a review of ‘The Face on Your Plate: The Truth About Food,’ by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson. Masson was originally a Sanskrit author. His book rests on exploding the myth that it’s “natural” for us to eat meat, explores the agribusiness industry, and highlights the fact that animal suffering matters, and should matter to us as ethical beings.

5. Then, bolstering his second point, that we’re not well-adapted for eating meat, an article in the New York Times that reminds us: “A recent report from The Archives of Internal Medicine found that regular eaters of red meat had a modestly higher risk of dying during a 10-year study period than those who ate very little meat.”

6. And another from the same source:

“The study found that, other things being equal, the men and women who consumed the most red and processed meat were likely to die sooner, especially from one of our two leading killers, heart disease and cancer, than people who consumed much smaller amounts of these foods … Extrapolated to all Americans in the age group studied, the new findings suggest that over the course of a decade, the deaths of one million men and perhaps half a million women could be prevented just by eating less red and processed meats”

7. And lastly, an article pointing out some of the environmental effects of meat-eating, including the following: “If every American skipped one meal of chicken per week and substituted vegetables and grains, for example, the carbon dioxide savings would be the same as taking more than half a million cars off of U.S. roads.”

2 Responses to “Some recent(ish) vegetarianism articles”

1. Jeanette Stingley says:

   May 14, 2009 at 9:30 am

   Thank you for your opinion and criticism. I understand and respect your choice of being a vegetarian. As my article states, Buddhist do not have to be vegetarian. There are many who can not including myself because I can not digest a lot of plant materials that have protein in them. And as I said in my article and as one of my teachers says “A Buddhist should not be scolded for their choice.”
2. bodhipaksa says:

   May 14, 2009 at 11:20 am

   Hi Jeanette,

   Buddhists don’t have to be vegetarian, or to abstain from murder, stealing, rape, lying, or indulging in intoxicants. All of the precepts are voluntary undertakings, and compliance with Buddhist ethics is, by definition, a personal choice. There’s no external authority to make us be ethical. But saying that vegetarianism is a personal choice in Buddhism is not the same as saying that eating meat and being vegetarian are morally equivalent, any more that it would be correct to say that, say, lying and truthfulness are morally equivalent because both are personal choices.

   You say in your article, “Many people will argue you that you should not harm the animal because it is a living being and deserves to live just as we do. I answer back that plants are living things giving their life for us to eat as well.” Again you seem to have some confusion here. Animals are capable of feeling pain, while plants cannot — or at least there’s no evidence that they can and it makes no sense for a plant to have a sense of pain since the whole point of that sense is to encourage movement away from damaging stimuli and plants, with a tiny number of exceptions, cannot move.

   Imagine taking a knife and cutting a carrot. Now imagine taking a knife and cutting the throat of a rabbit. Do you have the feeling that those things are morally equivalent? Really?

   Now it’s quite one thing to wish to be vegetarian but to be unable to for health reasons (although I think that problem affects a tiny minority of people) but quite another thing to argue, as you do, that there is no moral difference between eating animals and not eating them. In fact you go further and imply that the question is not even an ethical one: “Neither is right and neither is wrong.” The amount of suffering and destruction our dietary choices entail is very much an ethical issue.

   Now the Buddha ate meat, it’s true. He begged for a living in a culture where meat-eating was the norm, and so it would have been very difficult for him to have been vegetarian. I presume very few modern Buddhists are in a similar position of begging for a living, so the teaching of the Jivaka Sutta doesn’t apply to them. Instead what applies is the first precept of abstaining from taking life, directly or indirectly, as best one can. The Buddha’s moral teaching for householders was, “Don’t kill, or cause to kill, or approve of others killing.” That kind of implies being a vegetarian if it’s at all possible, don’t you think?

   You point out that Buddhists are encouraged not to cling to views, but I have the sense that many Buddhists cling not only to views, but to dietary habits, such as eating meat. And of course they cling to the views underpinning those habits, such as the absurd notion that eating animals and eating plants is morally equivalent.

   I don’t know who the teacher is that says “A Buddhist should not be scolded for their choice” or what he means by “scolding.” What you appear to be doing is saying that your ethical actions are beyond discussion and debate. I think that in itself is a profoundly unethical position.