10th Anniversary Classic Rant: When Fashionable White College-Boys Try to be Buddhists: Buddhist "Vegetarianism"

I find it hilarious when I hear someone state something about a religion that they imagine to be true, but is in fact patently false. And of course, its even funnier if the person making the statement is an adherent.

What prompted the statement was someone on a forum I read today in a thread about Buddhism saying "I'm afraid that there's no way you could really get very far in Buddhism if you eat meat".

Well, now, that's very funny, given that historical records would seem to indicate that the Buddha himself ate meat. That it does not, in fact, appear as though vegetarianism became a significant part of buddhism until at least 500 years after the Buddha's death.
The oldest buddhist texts, and the oldest buddhist school still in existence, considers meat eating to be no big thing; and in the Theravedan texts there is a specific reference to "10 types of meat you should not eat" (including things like bear, hyena, tiger, lion, etc... but pork, chicken, beef, and fish were all allowed), and a text where one of the Buddha's followers tried to get him to impose vegetarianism on the Sangha (spiritual community) but the Buddha explicitly refused. Even monks are ONLY forbidden from eating meat if the creature the meat comes from would be killed specifically for the monks.

Note also that Vajrayana (tibetan buddhism) is meat-eating.

So let's see, you "can't get very far in buddhism" if you eat meat, unless you're talking about:
a: The Buddha
b: The Dalai Lama

Go back to Dharma School, Little White College Kid.

RPGPundit

Currently Smoking: Neerup Poker + Gawith's Winter Flake

(Originally Posted March 20, 2009)