The Faults of Meat - Geoffrey Barstow

In his review of Geoffrey Barstow’s The Faults of Meat: Tibetan Buddhist Writings on Vegetarianism, Rory Lindsay examines the little-known teachings around vegetarianism in Tibetan Buddhism.

Eating other beings may not seem like the most intuitive choice for those following the Mahayana Buddhist path, but that is exactly what many Buddhists have done for centuries. In Tibetan culture, the consumption of meat has been the norm, yet given the basic Buddhist prohibition against killing, meat-eating has always posed significant ethical problems. How, then, have Tibetan meat eaters justified their actions? And how have vegetarians in Tibet argued their case? In The Faults of Meat, edited by Geoffrey Barstow, we find a rich amalgam of translated works by major Tibetan authors on the topic of meat-eating, from those who vigorously argue for vegetarianism to those who carefully defend meat’s ingestion.

A basic starting point for Tibetan scholars has been the canonical record of the Buddha’s teachings. Those arguing in support of vegetarianism frequently cite works such as the Lankavatara Sutra, in which the Buddha rejects the idea that eating meat is distinct from the act of killing. Barstow notes in his introduction that one of the most common Buddhist defenses of meat-eating hinges on the idea that the consumer is not at fault if the meat is purchased in the marketplace; this centers on an oft-cited monastic rule concerning meat’s “threefold purity” that holds that if the consumer didn’t personally kill the animal, didn’t ask someone else to kill it for them, and/or didn’t even suspect that the animal might have been killed for them, then they are absolved of any wrongdoing. As Barstow’s translated excerpt shows, the Lankavatara Sutra rejects this reasoning: “If someone gives up meat, then animals will not be killed. This is because innocent beings are usually killed for money; other reasons are rare.” The Buddha then explains that while he had previously permitted less advanced disciples to eat meat that was not killed for them, he now forbids everyone from eating meat due to its wide-ranging karmic consequences.