Master
Answers Questions
Q:
If everyone eats plants, will it create a food shortage?
M: No. Using
a given piece of land to grow crops provides fourteen times as much
food as using the same piece of land to grow fodder to feed animals.
Plants from each acre of land provide 800,000 calories of energy; however,
if these plants are used to raise animals which are then eaten as food,
the animals' meat can only provide 200,000 calories of energy. That
means that during the process 600,000 calories of energy are lost. So
the vegetarian diet is evidently more efficient and economical than
the meat diet.
Q:
Is fish all right to eat for a vegetarian?
M: It's all
right if you want to eat fish. But if you want to eat vegetarian, fish
is not a vegetable.
Q:
Some people say that it is important to be a good-hearted man, but it
is not necessary to be a vegetarian. Does this make sense?
M: If one is
truly a good-hearted person, then why does he still eat another being's
flesh? Seeing them suffer so, he should not be able to bear to eat them!
Flesh eating is unmerciful, so how can this be done by a good-hearted
man?
Master Lien Ch'ih once
said, Kill its body, and eat its meat. In this world there is no
one more cruel, malevolent, atrocious and evil than this man. How can
he ever claim that he himself has a good heart?
Mencius also said,
If you see it alive, you can't bear to see it die, and if you hear
it groaning you cannot bear to eat its meat; so the real gentlemen keep
far from the kitchen.
Human intelligence
is higher than that of animals, and we can use weapons to make them
unable to resist us, so they die with hatred. The kind of man who does
this, bullying small and weak creatures, has no right to be called a
gentleman. When animals are killed, they are terribly stricken with
agony, fear and resentment. This causes the production of toxins that
stay in their meat to harm those who eat it. Since the frequency of
the vibration of animals is lower than that of mankind, they will influence
our vibration, and affect the development of our wisdom.
Q:
Is it all right just to be a so-called "convenient vegetarian"?
(Convenient vegetarians do not strictly avoid meat. They would eat vegetables
out of a mixed vegetable and meat dish.)
M:
No. For example, if food is put into a poisonous liquid and then removed,
do you think it will become poisonous or not? In the Mahaparinirvana
Sutra, Mahakasyapa asked Buddha, When we beg and are given vegetables
mixed with meat, can we eat this food? How can we clean the food?
Buddha replied, One should clean it with water and separate the vegetables
from the meat, then one can eat it.
From the above dialogue
we can understand that one cannot even eat vegetables which are mixed
with meat unless one first cleans them with water, not to mention eating
meat alone! Therefore, it is very easy to see that Buddha and His disciples
all kept a vegetarian diet. However, some people slandered Buddha by
saying that He was a "convenient vegetarian", and that if
alms-givers gave meat, He ate meat. This is truly nonsense. Those who
say so have read too little of the Scriptures, or don't understand the
Scriptures they have read.
In India, over ninety
percent of the people are vegetarians. When people see mendicants in
yellow robes they all know they should offer them vegetarian food, not
to mention that most of the people have no meat to give anyway!
Q:
A long time ago, I heard another Master say, "Buddha ate a pig's
foot and then got diarrhea and died." Is this true?
M:
Absolutely not. It was because of eating a kind of mushroom that Buddha
died. If we translate directly from the language of the Brahmans, this
kind of mushroom is called the "pig's foot", but it is not
a real pig's foot. It's just like when we call a kind of fruit "longan"
(in Chinese this literally means the "dragon's eye"). There
are many things that by name are not vegetables but actually are vegetarian
foods, such things as the "dragon's eye". This mushroom in
Brahmanic language is called "pig's foot" or "pig's joy".
Both have a connection with pigs. This kind of mushroom was not easy
to find in ancient India and was a rare delicacy, so people offered
it to Buddha in worship. This mushroom cannot be found above the ground.
It grows under the ground. If people want to find it they must search
with the help of an old pig which likes very much to eat this kind of
mushroom. Pigs detect it by their smell, and when they discover one,
they use their feet to dig in the mud to find and eat it. That was why
this kind of mushroom is called the "pig's joy" or "pig's
foot". Actually these two names refer to the same mushroom. Because
it was translated carelessly and because people did not truly understand
the derivation, the following generations have been caused to misunderstand
and mistake Buddha for a flesh devouring man. This is really a regrettable
thing.
Q:
Some meat-lovers say that they buy meat from the butcher, so it's not
killed by themselves, therefore, it is all right to eat it. Do You think
this is right?
M: This is a
disastrous mistake. You must know that butchers kill living beings because
people want to eat. In the Lankavatara Sutra, Buddha said, If there
was no one eating meat, then no killing would happen. So eating meat
and killing living beings are of the same sin. Because of the killing
of too many living beings, we have natural disasters and man-made calamities.
Wars are also caused by too much killing.
Q:
Some people say that while plants can't produce poisonous things like
urea or urokinase, fruit and vegetable growers use lots of pesticides
on the plants, which are bad for our health. Is that so?
M:
If farmers use pesticides and other highly toxic chemicals like
DDT on crops, it can lead to cancer, infertility and diseases of the
liver. Toxins like DDT can diffuse into fat, and are usually stored
in animal fat. When you eat meat, it means that you take in all these
highly concentrated pesticides and other poisons stored in animals'
fat, which have accumulated during the growth of the animal. These accumulations
can be as much as thirteen times that in fruit, vegetables or grains.
We can clean the pesticide sprayed on fruit surfaces, but we cannot
remove the pesticides deposited in animal fat. The accumulating process
occurs because these pesticides are cumulative. So consumers at the
top of the food chain are the most harmed.
Experiments at the
University of Iowa showed that of the pesticides found in human bodies
almost all came from eating flesh. They discovered that the pesticide
level in the bodies of vegetarian people is less than half of that in
meat-eaters. Actually, there are other toxins in flesh besides pesticides.
In the process of raising animals, much of their food consists of chemicals
to make them develop faster or to change their meat color, taste or
texture, and to preserve the flesh, et cetera.
For example, preservatives
produced from nitrates are highly toxic. On July 18, 1971, the New York
Times reported, "The great hidden dangers to health for meat-eaters
are the invisible pollutants in meat such as bacteria in salmon, remnants
of pesticides, preservatives, hormones, antibiotics and other chemical
additives." Besides the above, animals are injected with vaccines,
which may remain in their flesh. In this respect, the protein in fruit,
nuts, beans, corn and milk are all more pure than the protein of meat,
which has 56% water insoluble impurities. Research shows that those
man-made additives can lead to cancers, other diseases or deformed fetuses.
So it is even proper for pregnant women to eat a pure vegetarian diet
to ensure the physical and spiritual health of the fetuses. If you drink
lots of milk you can get enough calcium; from beans you can get protein;
and from fruit and vegetables you get vitamins and minerals.
