Meat-Eating and Nature: Buddhist Perspectives
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Description
The historical survey distinguishes two main strands. The earlier Vinaya tradition permits monastics to eat meat provided it meets the standard of "threefold purity," while largely disregarding the consumer's indirect responsibility for the killing that supplies the demand. The later Mahāyāna strand — emerging around the 5th century in the Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra, Aṅgulimālīyasūtra, and Laṅkāvatārasūtra — condemns meat-eating outright on grounds of incompatibility with compassion and loving-kindness, the doctrine that all beings have been one's parents in previous lives, the tathāgatagarbha teaching that all beings share Buddha-nature, and the consumer's co-responsibility for killing through demand. In East Asia the vegetarian strand became dominant among monastics, while Tibetan Buddhism remained largely non-vegetarian. Tantric contexts present a further complication, where ritual consumption of tabooed meat carried different valences entirely.
Turning to the contemporary situation, Schmithausen argues that several factors demand a reassessment. Modern factory farming inflicts suffering far exceeding that of traditional slaughter; the consumer's co-responsibility for this suffering can no longer be ignored; and large-scale meat and fish consumption contributes substantially to ecological damage including overfishing, water pollution, and deforestation. He addresses objections — from Tantric non-dualism, Jōdo Shinshū antinomianism, and the argument that plants too are sentient — finding none ultimately decisive.
His conclusion is pragmatic rather than absolutist: complete vegetarianism following the Mahāyāna strand is the most consistent response, but the present situation at minimum demands that consumers refuse to support cruel and ecologically destructive forms of animal production. Even modest reductions in consumption matter. The underlying ethical imperative, he argues, should be oriented not toward the consumer's own spiritual purity but toward the animals themselves as sentient fellow creatures.
