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.