nirvanablue@my-deja.com wrote:
>Are all Buddhists vegetarians?
>
>    No. The First Precept admonishes us to refrain from killing, but
>meat eating is not regarded as an instance of killing, 

I think that this view is rather perverse. If people buy meat in a
store, it comes from a dead animal, but when all the meat is sold, the
store owner will order more meat from the butcher. This will cause
another animal to be killed in order to provide meat for the buyers.
However, if the buyers don't buy meat, there will be no further need
to kill.

I'll quote a chapter from my book on vegetarianism:
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Vegetarianism

The cessation of taking the stimulating substances (alcohol, drugs
etc.) and of eating meat is often assumed to be the prerequisite of
the spirituality. As valid and reasonable as those things are, on
which I'll write in more detail, the problem occurs when someone
starts thinking that the vegetarian diet itself means that he attained
some height of spiritual development, and starts seeing himself as
superior to the "sinners" who eat meat, or smoke, or engage themselves
in some other form of  "impure activities". Such an approach is a ten
times greater aggravating circumstance in the spiritual progress than
eating meat, smoking, drinking alcohol and abusing drugs together. It
is better for a man to do all these things, and be kind and good to
his fellow men, than to "live the pure life" and for that reason
become proud and despise the "impure ones". Rejection of the others,
and thinking others to be lower than oneself, is the greatest of
obstacles in the spiritual development.
Once that we have eliminated that aspect of things, the valid reasons
why it is not wise to eat meat remain. First of all, the meat is a low
quality nutrient filled with all sorts of toxic and almost
indigestible substances, and it doesn't provide anything that one
couldn't get from the other sources, such as milk, fruits, vegetables,
leguminosae and cereals. So, from a nutritional point meat has a low
quality. From the energetic point the prana contained in the meat is
either the second or the third transformation of the solar prana, so
that it is at least one, and sometimes even two scales of magnitude
inferior to the pranic charge contained in the vegetable nutrients.
And the most important factor of all, there is the karmic aspect of
killing the animals. It is a sin to kill any being, either plants or
animals, but there is a vast difference in the degree, and most often
it is not even necessary to kill the plants for food, if we feed on
the fruits and seeds (that means all the fruits, cereals, leguminosae
and most vegetables), so that the issue of killing, drawn by those who
say that it is a sin to kill the plants as well as the animals, so it
is equally problematic to feed on both plants and animals, is
pointless. Besides, maybe the greatest problem with eating meat isn't
the killing, but the indifference to the suffering of the other
beings, which creates the karma which will sooner or later lead to
facing the consequences of one's deeds, when we figure out what it
takes for a piece of meat to be brought to our table. Those who say
that it is the same problem to kill the plants and the animals were
probably not in a position to test this principle by choosing the
lesser of two evils: to pick soybeans and wheat from a field, or to
slay a cow with a knife. It is clear that it is the same problem to
pick a can of beans or a can of meat in a store, and the people who
think about food as of something that is made in the store will
logically assume that it is the same thing. But it is not. The meat
industry includes a great amount of suffering of the animals, as well
as the horrible sights of the slaughterhouses (which I would advise
the advocates of meat eating to visit), and a man cannot accept such
things as normal unless he has hardened his heart to the suffering of
the others. For this reason it is best to exclude the food made by
killing the animals from the menu, and thus be freed from the moral
paradoxes.
There are the people who are the exception to this rule, the ones
whose bodies are physically unable to survive on the vegetable diet;
they exist, but they are few. Likewise, when a man finds himself in a
position to either eat meat or starve, it is better to eat meat, for
the optimal functioning of the human body is of great importance; the
human body is difficult to create, it takes lots of time and effort,
and that makes the human existence extremely precious. It is thus
justified to sacrifice the other beings for a man, but it should be
done with measure, and a man who feels for all the beings will avoid
taking more than is needed for his functioning.
Within the vegetarian nutritional style people often make mistakes,
failing to understand that the natural cycle of the plants should not
be interrupted, so they feed on the freshly sprouted seeds,
cauliflower and similar transitional phases in the life of the plants.
Such an interruption of a life cycle creates an ugly form of stress on
the astral and prana, and such food can seriously disrupt the
functioning of the human energetic system, and if it becomes a common
practice it can lead to cancer and similar diseases. The pranic layer
of the sprouting plant is such, that such prana, when assimilated into
the system, has a tendency to continue the speedy growth of the
tissues, thus disturbing the natural pranically-physical balance of
the cells; such an abrupt growth usually means cancer. It can thus
happen that the people who lead "healthy lives" die from cancer on
everything.
Also, before meals we should remind ourselves of the source from which
all the blessings and gifts come to us, and notice the omnipresent
Divine nature in the food, accept the meal with gratitude as a gift
from God, for all the aspects of our lives have to be aligned with God
and devoted to him. We should strive towards making all of our
actions, including eating, aligned with the Divine laws, for if we
allow the disharmony to penetrate any aspect of our lives, we will
lose the criteria of value, and our actions will become disorganized,
chaotic and wrong.
Such strictness in judgment should be applied only to oneself; towards
oneself one should be strict and apply the most severe criteria;
towards the others, one should be kind and tolerant, one should see
the others as the saints, seeing oneself as the sinner, and only then
shall we attain the true spirituality. Resenting the others for the
things that we see as their flaws is a sign of severe spiritual fall,
and it is a distraction of attention from one's own faults, an once we
did that, it means that we have diverted our look from the true goal.
In nutrition, as well as in all the other aspects of our functioning
on Earth, we should uphold the principle under which it is most
important to keep in mind our own problems and solve them, looking at
our own flaws instead of the flaws of the others. If we want to change
the others, let us first make ourselves into the perfect example, on
which we would want to build the world.

Copyright (C) Danijel Turina 1999., All Rights Reserved.
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Web (Kundalini-yoga): http://danijel.cjb.net