04.04.08
Vegetarian religion
Comment from SK: i didn’t think tibetan buddhists we re traditionally vegetarian, were they?.
The problem here is that primordial Buddhism was aggressively vegetarian. Yet by the medieval period the spread of the religion is compromising, or forgetting this. The original Buddhists would have considered such a great decline in their teaching.The problem is one of discontinuity, restoration, and renewal: as the fate of Tibetan Buddhism hangs in the balance, and suffers a period of discontinuity, the question arises as to its potential restoration: which Buddhism is to be restored?
James said,
April 4, 2008 at 7:35 pm
From the early Buddhist perspective, it was okay for a monk to eat meat if the donor didn’t kill the animal specifically for the monk. Remember, the Buddha himself wasn’t a vegetarian. In contrast, the Jains were militantly vegetarian.
“The problem is one of discontinuity, restoration, and renewal: as the fate of Tibetan Buddhism hangs in the balance, and suffers a period of discontinuity, the question arises as to its potential restoration: which Buddhism is to be restored?”
The Lama system already deviates significantly from primordial Buddhism. I’m not condemning it (it is an interesting culture), but it’s something that would appear quite alien to the early Buddhists:
“MN 108: Gopaka-Moggallana Sutta — Moggallana the Guardsman {M iii 7} [Thanissaro]. Ven. Ananda explains how the Sangha maintains its unity and internal discipline after the passing away of the Buddha. [BB] Interestingly, this sutta also shows that early Buddhist practice had no room for many practices that developed in later Buddhist traditions, such as appointed lineage holders, elected ecclesiastical heads, or the use of mental defilements as a basis for concentration practice. [TB]”
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.108.than.html