Spring yig slob ma la phan pa

From Bodhicitta
< TextsTexts/Spring yig slob ma la phan pa

🤓 Admin Zone 🛠️ hidden to non-admins
སྤྲིང་ཡིག་སློབ་མ་ལ་ཕན་པ།
spring yig slob ma la phan pa
An Epistle Benefitting Students
Text


Please note that many items in our library are simply pages that represent a detailed library catalog entry and citation of someone else's work, presentation, or performance. Read our General Disclaimer for more information.

Description

An Epistle Benefitting Students is a well-known composition by Ngorchen Kunga Zangpo. One of the longest Tibetan literary works of its kind, in it he urgently argues from both sūtric and tantric points of view against the consumption and tantric use of alcohol and meat by monastics. Ngorchen compiled the text in 1425 at age forty-three when he was still based at Sakya Monastery. (Source: Slightly modified from Jörg Heimbel, trans., "Ngorchen Künga Sangpo on the Faults of Alcohol and Meat," in The Faults of Meat: Tibetan Buddhist Writings on Vegetarianism, comp. and ed. Geoffrey Barstow (Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, 2019), 78.)
Reference
spring yig slob ma la phan pa [སྤྲིང་ཡིག་སློབ་མ་ལ་ཕན་པ།]. [An Epistle Benefitting Students].
Interconnections
1 Full translations
The Faults of Meat-front.jpg
Books2019About this item
Should all Buddhists be vegetarian?

Vegetarianism is an important topic of debate in Buddhist circles—some argue that Buddhists should avoid meat entirely while others suggest that it is acceptable. For the most part, however, this ethical query has been conducted in the West without consulting traditional literature on the subject. The Faults of Meat brings together for the first time a collection of rich and intricate explorations of authoritative Tibetan views on eating meat. These fourteen nuanced texts, ranging from scholastic treatises to poetic verse, reveal vegetarianism as a significant, ongoing issue of debate for Tibetans across time and traditions, with a wide variety of voices marshaled against meat, and a few in favor. Authors include many important Tibetan teachers:

Dolpopa Sherab Gyaltsen (1292–1361) Khedrup Jé (1385–1438) The eighth Karmapa, Mikyö Dorjé (1507–1554) Shabkar Tsokdrük Rangdröl (1781–1851) Khenpo Tsultrim Lodrö (1961– ) and many more.

These Buddhist teachers recognize both the ethical problems that surround meat eating and the practical challenges of maintaining a vegetarian diet; their skilled arguments are illuminated further by the translators’ introductions to each work.

The perspectives in The Faults of Meat are strikingly relevant to our discussions of vegetarianism today; they introduce us to new approaches and solutions to a contentious issue for Buddhists. (Source: Wisdom Publications)