Bite-sized Dharma on the go!
“You put a baby in a crib with an apple and a rabbit.
If it eats the rabbit and plays with the rabbit* apple,
I’ll buy you a new car.”
~ Harvey Diamond ~
Interestingly, I thought of a similar comparison earlier on and wrote a blog entry on http://buddhavacana.net/2012/01/21/which-would-you-eat-carrots-or-rabbit/
* How many of you spotted this? Thanks to a nice friend who pointed this out! 😮
I’ve met some folks who shared their thoughts on vegetarianism with me. They reason that vegetables are alive as well and if Buddhists do not eat animals out of compassion and do not wish to have a living thing killed for their food, they should not eat vegetables as well.
I present to you Carrots and Rabbit.
I know, I know. This is an imbalanced comparison. For most people who are omnivores would not eat rabbits anyway. But the principle is this. Given a choice, which would you pick?
Between vegetables and animals, when I ask a number of people to choose one to kill, cook and eat, most people would choose to eat carrots. The answer is unanimously because it is easier to ‘kill’ carrots, cook and eat it. When asked further, why it is easier to ‘kill’ carrots, they replied that because it is comparatively less alive than the rabbit. I’ve not had one person choose carrots simply
because they don’t eat rabbits. But I digress.
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How about the following? Is it because we have been conditioned to accept certain living beings as food for the table?
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Or is it because both do not exhibit life? Is that why it is somewhat easier for people to choose between carrots and meat?
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References
Pictures from the following respective sites
http://vegetablezone.blogspot.com/2011/04/carrots-daucus-carota.html
http://www.wallcoo.net/animal/rabbit/html/wallpaper29.html
http://sylbestine.blogspot.com/2007/11/luncheon-meatbanned.html
New research by Dr Brock Bastian from UQ’s School of Psychology highlights the psychological processes that people engage in to reduce their discomfort over eating meat.
This paper will be published in an upcoming edition of the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, where Dr Bastian and his co-authors show that people deny mental qualities to animals they eat.
“Many people like eating meat, but most are reluctant to harm things that have minds. Our studies show that this motivates people to deny minds to animals,” Dr Bastian said.
More after the link http://www.sciguru.com/newsitem/11437/Denying-mental-qualities-animals-order-eat-them
I am not advocating vegetarianism as a religious practice or mandate. Rather I am saying, do we really have to placate our palates in such a manner that requires much suffering in other sentient living beings?
Before you eat or order your next bowl of Sharks Fin soup, please watch the following video past 5mins … I’ve not eaten Sharks’ Fin soup for probably over a decade now … watching how these animals are slaughtered for their fins and mostly thrown back into sea to die … mostly suffocating, as the sharks cannot swim without the fins … I feel so :(((
This is not about this or that precepts or whatever. This is about basic humaneness and non-cruelty. I screamed out when I saw the baby shark being stepped on and have its face / mouth sliced open while it struggled. :(((( *weep*
Some people comment that other forms of killing are as inhumane and cruel, if not more. To that, I say that we then have to eat responsibly, to the best of our knowledge and ability.
This is not another vegan proselytizing campaign.
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 floor for discussion and went through a few possible scenarios regarding the causal consequences of the meal.
Case A: Person ordering get 100% of killing karma, while the eaters get none.
Case B: Person ordering get a majority percentage of say N% of killing karma, while the rest share in the 100% – N% of killing karma.
Case C: Everyone gets an equal share of the killing karma. So if there were five diners, each get 20%.
Then someone further suggest that those who eat more, should be more responsible! So the formulae became
Case A: Person ordering get 100% of killing karma, while the eaters get none.
Case B1: Person ordering get a majority percentage of
say N% of killing karma, while the rest share in the 100% – N% of killing karma.
Case B2: Person ordering get a majority percentage of say N% of killing karma, while the rest share in the 100% – N% of killing karma on a pro-rata or weighted basis.
Case C1: Everyone gets an equal share of the killing karma. So if there were five diners, each get 20%.
Case C2: Everyone gets a share of the killing karma depending on the amount they ate.
Things were getting complex! In the end, we simplified and just considered the original three cases, although as you will see, the reasonings for each case would lead us to similar conclusions. Bear in mind that we did not assume any of the case to be the actual mechanism behind how karma would or should work out; we simply cover all possible scenarios as much as we can. So for the following analysis, we then look at each case and say, if this were true, how would or should we act differently?
Case A, while the person ordering gets 100%, should Buddhists who embrace values and qualities like Loving Kindness and Compassion allow someone to bear the brunt (100%) of painful results for one’s meal while one selfishly tucks into the meal knowing that someone else (both the fish and the orderer) is suffering for us. While highly unlikely, we saw it unseemly for us to partake in such a meal as it is both selfish and unkind.
Case B, letting someone get the majority share and each diner receiving partial payout for the karma of killing didn’t seem to be such a good idea as well. Nope.
Case C, for most people in the discussion, going pro-rata seem to be the most likely mechanism for karma, but it then becomes even clearer why we should not partake in the meal altogether!
We could have, and were tempted to, gone further and consider many other factors, including those who arrive late, those who fail to turn up but were on the diners’ list, those who were not, but turn up after the ordering, those who were not but turn up before the ordering etc etc. But we did not. Most were duly satisfied with the discussion and analysis and left it knowing how better to relate to the precepts in future.
So what did you eat today?
PS: I do not advocate eating as a means of enlightenment, and the discussion of food was really a day-to-day affair that to me mattered to some of those lay Buddhist I met.