DO BUDDHISTS EAT MEAT?
Simple question, not necessarily a simple answer. 1. The Buddha himself never forbade eating meat. The Buddha even explained that monks and nuns should never refuse the food that is offered to them, including meat. He obviously did not say one should kill an animal for food. Killing is one of the five main precepts. 2. The main precept of a Buddhist is not to harm others, including animals. Not harming others is essential in Buddhism, so one should never kill “sentient beings” (humans and animals). Eating meat from an animal which died a natural death is not by definition bad, but these days, we would not even want to eat that meat anyway for fear of disease… 3. Asking people to harm others is very negative karma. Just like a general is responsible for the killing that his soldiers perform under his orders, so do we create very large negative karma when we instruct others to kill. So, for example going into a fish restaurant and selecting a live fish from a tank to be killed is even
