From

Living a Buddhist Life: Vegetarianism by Bodhipaksa

I have suggested that the natural expression of a Buddhist ethical sensitivity is to become a vegetarian: that the natural outcome of a greater awareness of the reality of interconnectedness is that we will experience more compassion. With a deeper experience of compassion, we will want to avoid unnecessary suffering and will stop eating meat. However, I’ve also pointed out that not all Buddhists are vegetarian and that many claim that the Buddha himself ate meat. So what is the truth? Does Buddhism really support the practice of vegetarianism? There are a number of passages in the early Buddhist scriptures suggesting that the Buddha and his monastic followers were meat-eaters. One of the most often quoted is from a teaching called the Jivaka Sutta:

I say that in three situations flesh can be partaken of - when it is not seen, heard, or suspected (that an animal has been killed for a monk).

Although some have argued that this might be a later interpolation by meat-eating monks, there are many passing references to meat-eating amongst monks and nuns, carried out with the Buddha’s knowledge and without his condemnation. I would argue that the Buddha certainly did eat meat.

What are we to make of this? Doesn’t it go against the whole case we have built for vegetarianism based on the first precept? Was the Buddha ignoring his own ethical teachings? If the Buddha ate meat is it permissible for us to follow suit? These are all bracing questions but it’s impossible to begin exploring them without first looking at the social context in which the Buddha and his monks and nuns were practising. It is only by looking at the nature of early Buddhist monasticism and the prevailing dietary habits of the population at large that we can understand why the Buddha allowed meat-eating.

Firstly, Buddhist monks and nuns were mendicants; that is, they begged for their food from householders. The word bhikkhu, or monk (the feminine is bhikkhuni), comes from a root that means ‘to beg’. The monastic code did not allow them to grow their own food but to accept only food that someone else gave them. There were important reasons for monks and nuns to follow these rules. They could not grow their own food because that would inevitably result in them causing harm to the small creatures that live in the ground. For a monk to consciously kill any living creature was a grave breach of the principle of metta, or non-harm. The monastic code prevented monks and nuns from even using water containing microscopic creatures and from making bricks from mud lest they kill any of the creatures living in it. The monastic rules demanded the thorough practice of non-harm and metta - as we would expect, given how fundamental these ideas are in Buddhist ethics. Monks and nuns were even allowed from compassion to free animals from hunters’ traps - even though that would normally be viewed as theft. How then could these practitioners of non-harm eat meat?

In the early years of the Buddhist monastic tradition many - probably nearly all - of the householders from whom the monks and nuns begged would eat meat. Few of those householders - and none in the earliest days - would have been Buddhist. Much of the food offered would not have been vegetarian. In those days the custom of the monks was not to remain settled but to travel widely to spread the Dharma. Only during the rainy months would they live in shelters and remain in one place. During the remainder of the year the monks and nuns would often have entered villages new to them and would not know the people who gave them food, or whether they were vegetarian.

Householders believed they could gain merit by offering food to religious mendicants, and through this have a better rebirth. An important role of the monk was to allow householders (of whatever religious persuasion) to gain merit in this way. It was the duty of monks and nuns to be the recipient of alms and to give householders the opportunity to gain merit. A monk was ‘morally bound to accept any alms offered in good faith by a pious donor and that if he failed to do so he was interfering with the karmic fruit and just reward that the donor was entitled to expect’. Therefore, even if a gift was not vegetarian, it was a monk’s duty to accept the donation. It would have been considered very bad manners to refuse unless there was a very good reason to do so. In fact, refusing an offering of food was used to punish a householder who had falsely accused a monk or nun of wrongdoing.

Monks and nuns were simply not able to be vegetarian without great difficulty. This is why the Buddha ate meat, and allowed his monastic followers to eat meat as well. Other mendicant religious practitioners appear to have been in the same position. Nowadays followers of the Jain religion in India are strictly vegetarian, yet the Jaina scriptures - which describe the same period in Indian history as the early Buddhist scriptures - reveal that their mendicants too ate meat. This reinforces the suggestion that it was very difficult, in the early days of Buddhism, to obtain vegetarian food.

The Buddha also allowed monks and nuns, of course, to be vegetarian, although he specifically refused to make the practice compulsory. Significantly, being vegetarian was seen as an ascetic practice along with other austerities such as sleeping only beneath trees or wearing only cast-off rags. The fact that living on a vegetarian diet was considered an ascetic practice of this sort suggests that it might have been a very difficult thing to do at that time and in that social context. There was one occasion when monks or nuns could specifically request meat, and this was when they were ill. One wonders if this was a recognition that trying to live on scraps might result in malnutrition. Presumably trying to assemble a healthy vegetarian meal out of the same leftovers would be even harder.

Bhikkhus and bhikkhunis, of course, were not the only Buddhists. There were also lay followers of the Buddha. The householders were, as we would expect, in a different position from the monks and nuns. They worked for a living rather than begged, and had a choice in what they ate. Just as the laity supported the monks and nuns materially, the monks and nuns supported the laity spiritually, through teaching them. Teachings given by monks and nuns to lay people, particularly the ethical teachings that encouraged non-harm and the practice of metta/ would have encouraged them to give up meat- eating, along with livelihoods that caused harm. Once, when a gathering of lay disciples came to visit the Buddha, he told them:

Now I will tell you of the rules of conduct for a householder, according to which, he becomes a good disciple…. Let him not destroy life nor cause others to destroy life and, also, not approve of others’ killing. Let him refrain from oppressing all living beings in the world, whether strong or weak.

This teaching clearly encouraged the laity to give up meat. Following this teaching a lay follower could not be a ‘good disciple’ of the Buddha and kill animals for food, nor could he buy meat. For how could one buy meat from a butcher without approving of his killing? In buying meat from a butcher, we are financially rewarding him for his unethical activity. If we were to look for vegetarianism among the early Buddhists, it seems clear that we would most likely find it among householders.

Buddhism presents us then with an apparently paradoxical situation where the early monks and nuns, who were not vegetarian, would have been encouraging householders to give up eating meat. Those vegetarian Buddhist householders would have been offering food that did not contain meat to the monastics. At first, of course, the proportion of the population that was vegetarian would have been too small to have had much impact on a monk’s consumption of meat. Nevertheless, over time it would have had an enormous impact, since Buddhism became widespread in the centuries after the Buddha’s death. We do have evidence that a few hundred years after the death of the Buddha vegetarianism had increasingly become the norm.

So why did the Buddha tell monks and nuns they could eat meat if they did not see, hear, or suspect that a householder had killed an animal especially for their benefit? It seems quite likely that householders living in a largely non-vegetarian country would have seen meat as a special food. If meat was special it would make a special offering for a religious beggar. Giving a special offering might confer special merit, leading to a better rebirth. So it is quite possible that there would be a minor outbreak of slaughtering accompanying the arrival of religious mendicants in a village. We know from later Buddhist sources that this did happen. It would be akin to the practice - still common in India to this day - of making an animal sacrifice. This would be something that the Buddha - interested in advocating the principle of metta - would not want to encourage. It was important that monastics too did not encourage others to kill, or approve of their killing. If a monastic knowingly accepted such meat he or she would be condoning the slaughter of animals as offerings. Hence the injunction that monks and nuns had to be alert to any signs that an animal had been specially killed for them.