The Spirits Demand A Sacrifice

[meadish_sweetball]

Thanks orang37, very interesting post.

[gatorhead333]

that pig they killed may have been his own grandmother!

Out of sincere respect for all life and the First Precept to refrain from killing, many Chinese Buddhists are vegetarian. Vegetarianism is consistent with the Buddhist concepts of universal interrelationship and rebirth. With the concept of rebirth humans may be other forms of life in their past and/or future lives, thus it follows that an animal could be a past and/or future next-of-kin. Thus, killing an animal could be seen as synonymous with destroying one's own relatives.

Lord Budda can not abide..

Sawasdee Khrup, Khun GatorHead333,

Theravadan Buddhism in Thailand is not commonly vegetarian. Monks here can and do eat meat frequently, if it's offered to them. If you believe the Buddhist scriptures are litereally true in some accounts, the Buddha himself is reported to have died because he ate a pork dish prepared by a metal-worker which was offered to him as an act of merit (tamboon); according to the story : the Buddha warned his disciples not to eat the dish which he knew was contaminated.

The correlation of Buddhism with vegetarianism is thought to reflect later elaborations of Buddhism in India and China which reflect amalgamations with Hindu Vedic philosophy, elaborate semi-magical practices associated with the cult of Siva (tantras), in Tibet fusion with the ancient Bon shamanistic religion, etc. And in China, of course, synthesis with Taoism, animism, and Confucianism. The idea of a continuum of food from polluting and non-spiritual to soul-food (rajas, sattvas, tamas) is such a profound part of Vedic tradition.

Of course you will find vegetarian Buddhists who will insist that this is a "root" practice according to scriptures which have been lost, or supposed "oral traditions." Given the wholesale copying over of Shivaite texts into Mahayana Buddhism (just changing the word "Siva" to "Buddha"), and efforts of countless thousands of Brahmins in the Puranic period (those who Milton Singer in his great work on Indian religion calls the "orthogenetic literati") to revise and line everything under the sun in an ever complicating self-referential web focused around the great divine cycle of yugas ... yada, yada, yada ...

There are certainly sub-groups of Thais who are vegetarian and Buddhist, and often they are followers of Mae Kwan Im as well. According to a Ph.D. study by a Danish woman several years ago Mae Kwan Im has an increasing following among the urban upper-middle-class Thai Chinese who convert to become vegans.

You will also find Thai followers of Mae Kwan Im who are Buddhist here in Chiang Mai at, for example, the giant Potisat Shrine (Boddhsattva Shrine) near Wiang Khum Kham, which is the Chiang Mai branch of a Woman Monk (fully ordained in the Mahayana tradition, I believe in Taiwan). And you may know of Chamlong Srimuang's association with the Shanti Ashoke group who I am pretty sure are vegetarians.

While the "official story" (from the Chinese/Indian "Mahayana" Buddhist point of view) is that Mae Kwan Im is the female "emanation" of the Dhyana Buddha Avalokitesvara, reflecting Vedic ideas that "male" "gods" are "abstract" and need a "female" vehicle ("vahanam" or "shakti") to act on "material planes," lots of people, like me, see in Mae Kwan Im an ancient form of Mother Goddess worship.

Many Chinese who migrated here, coming from animist and tradtional Chinese background,s and who were not Buddhist, and then adopted Theravadan Buddhism, were never, and remain, non-vegetarians.

I live mainly on soy milk, but that is not because of any ideology or religious belief : it's a solution to having my taste buds die and being unable to swallow. But, I have to admit living on an almost a 100% vegan diet for two years has done great things for my mental energy. Needless to say I don't recommend getting oral cancer as a way to become vegetarian and lose a lot of weight

Sometimes I enjoy jok, the thick rice-porridge-gruel. I have the feeling my grandfather might just as well be in a grain of rice in my jok as walking around on the hoof waiting to be a steak at Dukes

What concerns me most is the "killing" or "neglect" of "human potential."

enjoy your food, ~o:37;

you made a great point ,foul meat did the Budda in.... if in fact he fell big from the pig,what chance have we?

live and let live...

[IanForbes]

Sometimes it's the critter that gets eaten...

and sometimes it's the man...

At more than 10,000,000 to one, I'll take those odds.

Yah, but just don't go swimming or take a mid day nap near a salty lagoon in Australia. The odds depreciate in numbers in those situations.

[MonsieurHulot]

Sometimes it's the critter that gets eaten...

and sometimes it's the man...

Thanks Arnold. Now the thread does contain graphic content.

[sassienie]

And this is the English method:

[12DrinkMore]

And this is the English method:

Come on, that's just Brown taking a bath before he gets his snout in the trough again

:D

The real sacrificial lambs are the UK tax payers, being taken to the financial cleaners so that all the banks and Brown's colleagues can be bailed out.