[Buddha-l] Re: Buddhist pacifism

Richard P. Hayes rhayes at unm.edu
Sun Oct 16 19:08:51 MDT 2005


On Mon, 2005-10-17 at 00:23 +0100, Mike Austin wrote:

> The Buddha recommended eating but warned against killing. Eating meat is 
> not bad karma - because there is no harmful mind, no harmful word and no 
> harmful action. Killing to eat or ordering others to kill to eat, is bad 
> karma.

Of course if someone gives you some meat, eat it. Or if a rabbit jumps
into your cooking pot and offers himself as a gift, eat it. But buying
meat is a way of ordering others to kill animals, unless you're naive
enough to think people would go around killing animals if there were no
market for the meat. And stealing it isn't much to be commended.

-- 
Richard Hayes




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