The book Eating Animals is brilliant. Jonathan Safran Foer has done the world a service. He is a best-selling novelist who has managed to write a book about factory farming that is readable — horrific, yes, but still readable. Even un-put-downable. He has looked at the question of eating animals from many angles — culture, community, history, politics, husbandry, morality, health etc. He has avoided black and white haranguing and reasonably discusses shades of gray so people can come to their own conclusions.
Those of you die-hard carnivores who don’t want to change your habits at all, don’t read any further, and don’t pick up this book. As 99% of USA meat is factory farmed, really knowing about factory farming forces you to change in some ways — and you may not want to change! The facts in this book, if digested, will lead most people (a) to become vegetarian or vegan, (b) to eat less meat, or (c) to be far more careful about choosing meat from animals that have not been tortured their entire lives or stewed in their own filth and stuffed with antibiotics, hormones etc. (If this book gets people into the habit of asking the store and restaurant owners where their meat or eggs actually come from, this will in itself have the power to improve animal welfare and human health). The alternative from digesting this book (as opposed to dismissing it) is that you won’t change but you will feel guilty, and that is not a useful state of mind according to Buddhism.
“I *really* need some exercise.”
This article is more about me than about you. I can’t lecture anyone about vegetarianism (let alone veganism) — until some years ago I was an imperfect vegetarian, eating meat when I went to visit my family for holidays for example, thinking erroneously it was the best way to blend in, plus secretly digging the excuse … But I never felt that good about it. I love animals, and I could see that loving animals was somewhat contradictory to eating them! It sat uneasily with me. But hey, steak smelt so good, and I didn’t always have the will-power to ignore others tucking into it whilst I nibbled on the brussel sprouts.
Pigs are as intelligent as dogs. Who would push their dog in a closet and throw away the key?
“
I can’t help it. I have to eat.”
Then I watched a nature program about animals in the Arctic. Like these programs always are, it was brutal. Kill or be killed. It dawned on me that — unlike every animal struggling every day in the wild — I have the choice, every day, not to eat meat. That is my good fortune. I don’t have to kill anyone in order to eat. And every time I exercise that choice, I create the karmic cause to have that choice again. Whereas if I deliberately allow animals to be killed for me so that I can eat them, am I not creating the cause to have less freedom to choose in the future? Every thought and action has consequences. Buddha said that with our thoughts we create our world. From a Buddhist understanding of rebirth (and depending on my motivation) could one even say that I might be creating the cause to be a powerless animal in future lives?
None of us likes being told what to do or having our lives controlled by others. Imagine what it is like, then, to be an animal.
Even by omission, by ignoring the facts, I personally felt like I was buying into samsara, the cycle of impure life.
This all got me thinking, and later I visited a friend who happened to have a copy of Eating Animals on the table. I read it avidly over the next two days and then could think or talk of little else but the horror of factory farms, driving everyone around me mad. I even fancied I caught a glimpse of what it felt like for the local Germans finally seeing the concentration camps that had been invisible in full sight all along.
“
Let me out. I want to go outside!”
When Buddha Shakyamuni tried to help us improve our states of mind or our actions, he would explain the benefits of doing something positive and the faults of not. This way people could check these out for themselves, in their own experience, and come to a genuine intention that was all theirs. No one can force us to be good or kind or healthy. Everything depends upon our own intention.
So for myself I have a quick mental checklist of the benefits and faults of eating animals — a mixture of worldly and spiritual. Although my temptation to eat anyone with a face is now down to zero, this list has been helpful in helping me get here. Much of this is explained in the book Eating Animals, the rest in Buddha’s teachings on karma and rebirth.
Benefits of not eating animals
- I am more conscious to avoid harming animals
“Let us out. We *really* want to go outside.” - I avoid the hypocrisy of saying I love animals and then eating them
- I’m healthier and slimmer
- I’m helping the planet
- I’m less likely to create the karmic causes to be tortured or eaten myself in the future
- I am trying to purify the karmic causes of taking an animal rebirth where it is eat or be eaten in samsara
- I’m increasing my empathy and compassion
Faults of eating animals
- The opposite of the above
“Cute, aren’t we? … but where are you taking us …?”
This, or any similar checklist of your own, might work for reducing your factory farmed intake, one way or another. Ignorance is not bliss according to Buddhism. In fact, it is the complete opposite of bliss (which is indivisible with the wisdom realizing emptiness, more another time). So my feeling is that if we’re going to eat factory-farmed animals, we should at least do so with full possession of the facts. I don’t think we need to harangue others (sorry if I am haranguing you!) — in Buddhism we try to identify and get rid of our own faults, rather than dwell on the faults of others. But nor do we need to, as it says in one of my long-time favorite quotations from Geshe Kelsang Gyatso (who doesn’t eat meat):
“Act as if we are sleepwalking or let our habits dominate our behavior.”
Related
7 questions to ask about animals and us (part one)
In "Animals"
Buddha and the Hidden Universe
In "Animals"
Love, the great Protector
In "Buddhism in society"
Author: Luna Kadampa
Based on 37 years' experience, I write about applying meditation and modern Buddhism to our everyday lives, and vice versa. I try to make it accessible to everyone who wants more inner peace and profound tools to help our world, not just Buddhists. Do make comments any time and I'll write you back! View all posts by Luna Kadampa
45 thoughts on “A Buddhist take on factory farming”
chrissays:While I can agree that factory farming is a terrible thing and it is also probably better for you to be Vegetarian, I cannot agree that eating meat is deliberately having the animal killed for me, if this is how we think then we don’t understand Karma, there is plenty of examples of this in Geshla books of how Karma works. If you have the Karma to be slaughtered and tortured, then this will happen even if we all become Vegetarian beings will experience these sufferings. Sure if we go to a restaurant and pick a live fish from a fish tank to be killed for us then that would be sure a negative action as we are active within that killing.
Living beings die from everything we do within samsara, cleaning products, driving your car, all the materials that have been used to build your home and furniture, your vegetables from farming, your leisurely walks through country side as we walk along grass, gardening, if you look around your room probably everything you have around you as involved the death of an animal, insect or humans, from the digging or pollution or hardships or what materials it is made of, we are living in a horror show of death and destruction all around us, whatever we do involves the suffering of other sentient being. Would we to refuse to sit on an IKEA chair because millions of insects and squirrels died for the benefit of this seat, is by sitting on that seat contributing to the suffering of all these beings and there creating the cause for suffering. (Maybe the kindness of others would be better and realizing the nature of samsara is everywhere like sitting in a thorn bush of suffering is among a vast amount of thoughts to arise). Seems to me animals are cute and cuddly so we put more love towards these more than insects and even humans whereas everybody without exception is suffering and unless we gain liberation from samsara we will be lining up at the slaughter house in our future lives too, or losing our home and life for the sake of an IKEA chair.
Nowhere within any of Geshla’s books to my knowledge is the word vegetarian. Most people believe to be a Buddhist we have to be a Vegetarian which is wrong. The whole point of Buddhism is to change your mind and your world will change as I understand.- 09/15/2018 at 3:54 am
