Vegetarian Discussion

[Husky]

^ Vegetarianism in Hellenismos (Very cool)





Apparently the next is not as common knowledge as you'd have thought, though it would be at IF I suspect:



1. Buddhism didn't invent Indian vegetarianism (let alone global vegetarianism) despite modern claims about this that have been posted even on Indian fora/blogs that no reader knows/cares to correct;



2. Buddhism isn't actually vegetarian per se. Only the (later) Mahayana branch of Buddhism has text insisting on it. (And of course, it got its vegetarianism as a *reaction* to the vegetarianism pre-existing in India.)



But as it's not admissible to point to earlier Hindu texts to prove that vegetarianism (among other things) pre-existed in Hindu religion, one must instead point to what's known of Buddhism itself.



The following link is mainly on the postulations of whether the Buddha did or did not in fact die from eating poisoned pork, as per the semi-ambiguous statements about his death that have been handed down by tradition (the quite plausible alternative being poisoned mushrooms - my random opinion favours the latter*, but western scholars and even some surprisingly Buddhist Chinese ones have been more than merely divided about it.

* However, pork being a part of Buddha's diet is not at all an impossibility, since Theravada claims that the Buddha himself - with proviso - allowed pork and beef, among other meat. And it is only the later Mahayana Buddhist branch that has Buddha himself insist on a more vegetarian diet. But don't ask illegal questions like "So which one is it, since the two sets of statements attributed to him are mutually exclusive?", because scholars on Buddhism - western at least - will tell you that IIRC *everything* the Buddha is to have said was written down after his passing. So I think the Theravadins may have the better memory, being the earlier branch).



But the speculation on the food item that caused Shakyamuni Buddha's death is - or so you thought - general knowledge and therefore not the interesting bit in the following. Note that I'm not saying it -



www.ianchadwick.com/forum/index.php?/blog/1/entry-15-buddhas-death-reconsidered/

[...]

Waley doesn't discount the possibility the word meant pork, but indicates it could have had other meanings. The sutra is not definite as to which is meant. See Did Buddha Die of Eating Pork?



The significance of a single word to the later doctrine cannot be overlooked, however. Taken one way, it allows Buddhists leeway to eat meat (Shakyamuni leading by example - if the Buddha did it, it must be right), regardless of some contradictions to this in other texts. Taken another, it fortifies the argument for vegetarianism in Buddhism.



Fifth century Chinese translations of the sutras (and the subsequent canon in Chinese) do not include the "death by pork" comment, but instead indicate the last meal was a vegetarian dish that included a fungus grown on a sandalwood tree (rather than meat).



The early Mahayana texts had strict prohibitions against eating flesh and that has continued to be part of the Mahayana practice since the line was founded. The first Mahayana reference to a meatless diet is found in the Mahaaparinirvaana Sutra. However, these prohibitions are not found in the earlier Theravadin works, which can claim doctrinal precedence.



Hence the centuries-old argument about whether vegetarianism is doctrine, or optional, in Buddhism. It depends in part on whether you belong to a Theravadin or Mayahanin school. But the practice of vegetarianism has not been strictly applied in Mahayana schools, and some Theravadin schools have taken it up as accepted practice. The lines are blurred.



Waley makes an educated guess that vegetarianism arose among Hindu followers of Vishnu a century or two before the Mahayana movement took root (the Vishnu cult was the rising movement in Hindu culture at that time).

(Actually, vegetarianism among Hindu communities - at times as something distinct from ritual sacrifices involving animals - has existed much longer than even that and goes back to old Hindu religious texts, but saying so could invite trouble. Hence one strikes such a statement from the official record. As in, I didn't say anything.)



Cultural and social pressures from the Hindu majority may have pushed the minority Buddhists to accepting their neighbours' vegetarian lifestyle in order to reduce friction in their communities. This became doctrinal when the Mahayana texts were being written, somewhat later.

(In an earlier era, Mahayana Buddhism in Chinese lands was generally strictly vegetarian. But "apparently" Buddhists weren't the first vegetarian ascetics there either. This should not come as a surprise.)



The writer of the above ends his piece well, with a decent argument for why Buddhists can choose to be vegetarian *regardless* of whether the Shakyamuni Buddha was vegetarian or not.







This next is better than I anticipated: I'd expected Wacky to say the very opposite. Instead, Wacky factually indicates that Mahayana Buddhism adopted vegetarianism reactively, instead of claiming M/B innovated it (maybe one should save the wacky page before the crucial para disappears?):



en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhist_vegetarianism

In Buddhism, the views on vegetarianism vary from school to school. According to Theravada, the Buddha allowed his monks to eat pork, chicken and beef if the animal was not killed for the purpose of providing food for monks. Theravada also believes that the Buddha allowed the monks to choose a vegetarian diet, but only prohibited against eating human, elephant, horse, dog, snake, lion, tiger, bear, leopard, and hyena flesh.[1] Buddha did not prohibit any kind of meat-eating for his lay followers. In Vajrayana, the act of eating meat is not always prohibited. The Mahayana schools generally recommend a vegetarian diet, for they believe that the Buddha insisted that his followers should not eat meat or fish.

[...]



Mahayana

[...]

A long passage in the Lankavatara Sutra shows the Buddha speaking out very forcefully against meat consumption and unequivocally in favor of vegetarianism, since the eating of the flesh of fellow sentient beings is said by him to be incompatible with the compassion that a Bodhisattva should strive to cultivate. This passage has been seen as questionable.[11] In a translation by D. T. Suzuki, a note is made that this section:

This chapter on meat-eating is another later addition to the text, which was probably done earlier than the RāvaNa chapter....[b]It is quite likely that meat-eating was practised more or less among the earlier Buddhists, which was made a subject of severe criticism by their opponents. The Buddhists at the time of the La~Nkāvatāra did not like it, hence this addition in which an apologetic tone is noticeable.[b][11]

"Amazing" that Buddhism didn't invent "compassion and egalitarianism" but that such things as vegetarianism pre-existed in (gasp) Hindu religion hence society. Truly, "amazing."

(Actually amazing is the scale of the collective amnesia among Hindus today on what should be common knowledge to them.)





And so ends another claim from superiority. (India's neo-'Buddhists' claimed - and it's reposted on an international Buddhist site - that Buddhism invented vegetarianism and that Hindus got it from Buddhism, and moreover made vituperative accusations concerning the latter. And when such assertions get dumped on Indian sites frequented by presumably Hindu readers, no one sets the story straight.)





Not that anyone would suppose it (but ya never know - I'm just pre-empting silly declarations to the effect):

Since the Mahayana branch of Buddhism came to exist long after Pythagoras, and MB's vegetarian tenets after that, one can work out that Buddhism did *not* influence Pythagoras' vegetarianism either.

(The above is a reference to the frequent mention in the west that Pythagoras had been influenced in his teachings by some unspecified "Indian" religion. Whether this claim included Pythagoras' view of *vegetarianism* or not, I can't recall. But if at all it did, then Buddhism at least could certainly not have influenced it).

But whatever. Hesiod predates known Indian contact with GR, so vegetarianism in the Hellenistic space doesn't require any Indian (Hindu or otherwise) precedent.





Even though Buddhism didn't devise vegetarianism, many ancient (religious) traditions around the world have - on their own - come up with:

1. individual (i.e. conscious) vegetarians,

2. frugal ascetic vegetarians and

3. communities of vegetarians.