Recently when I was in Kuala Lumpur (KL) to speak at a conference, I had the opportunity to speak to a group of 50~60 nice folks from Kelantan, Malaysia. Very friendly and lovely bunch I must say.
I noticed that some of the locals in KL were eating live seafood and so I quizzed them on how that relates to the first precept of non-killing. After a very lively discussion, we concluded that eating live seafood crossed the line for non-killing. Consider how the fishes were happily swimming around in the tanks … ok, maybe not so happily … but nonetheless, alive and swimming. Then someone may come along to the restaurant and order a meal, resulting in one or more of them being killed for our consumption. At that point, it became clear that the meal was quite the cause of death or at least the reason. So far so good, as far as understanding how we relate to the first precept of non-killing.
Then someone pointed out that sometimes, actually most of the time, only one person do the ordering, so perhaps he is the only person bearing the karma of killing. I threw it open to the . . . → Read More: How about that fish?
