Why Do Vegetarians Always Treat the Monks Who Eat Meat Like the End of the World?
If the Lord Buddha Can Eat, Isn’t It a Common Food?
If you are a vegetarian, please keep calm. I did not blame you. What I am talking about is Buddhists in Mahayana tradition who view eating meat is a sinful deed for monks.
10 Years ago, my friend went to study in Taiwan where Mahayana Buddhism is prosperous. a year or two later, I saw him again in Thailand. He was skinny. I asked how it happened and the answer was he had to eat like a vegetarian. When he ordered a meat menu, a waiter told him that monks had to eat veggie with a blaming tone.
Mahayana monks are vegetarian but they have 3 meals.
Theravada monks can eat meat but they have only 2 meals. The mealtime end at 12.30 PM. They can only have drinks such as a cup of milk after mealtime but they cannot have food.
That is why my friend is so skinny.
It’s the Buddhist culture in Taiwan, I understand.
But it does not mean monks cannot eat meat. The Lord Buddha also eat meat. He prohibits the meat that people kill animals for you and you know it. If you do not know they kill for you, you can eat because you do not rejoice their killing. It’s a piece of a dead body. It’s just a nutrient. If you do not eat, it will be rotten and waste an animal's life for nothing.
Vegetarian view who eating meat as a cause. If you eat it, then people will kill it for you. I disagree with this logic.
Whatever you eat meat or not, the people who want to kill, they will kill.
Do you drink coffee? Boiling water for it evaporated into a gas and then condensate into droplets of water, they stuck together in a cloud form. Then it rains. The rain can kill a lot of ants, the flood can kill even human. Do you know your coffee cause this tragedy?
The assassin kills people to make a living. His money is dirty. If you receive his money, will he kill more? If he is a Medium member and following your work. You earn money from him and it’s dirty money. If you stop writing, he will stop killing? Is it he kills to make money for paying you?
Nonsense!
You do not order them to kill. You are not supporting them to kill.
Then you are not wrong.
Meat is food. You may not be healthy if you eat so much but it’s not mean you support killing.
Monks cannot picky. If people offer you meat as food. They have to eat unless it making them sick. They eat to get energy and use that energy for doing a good deed.
Nothing is wrong except perspective. Keep calm and move forward.
