Being Vegetarian

My most dear, most kind, most precious, wish-fulfilling one,

Hello! How are you? I enjoyed very much my first time there at the guesthouse and I was very happy to introduce Dharma, which is the most important thing in the life for oneself and for all living beings, to free them from the oceans of samsaric suffering and bring them to buddhahood.

When we were talking about meat, you said you don’t eat goat meat because you have compassion for the goats and feel it’s terrible to kill them, but then you said you don’t feel like that for fish, and you’ve been eating fish. Then you sort of said during our talk that you want to eat fish.

I have seen a video from time to time of two ducks feeding the fish. It’s wonderful, beautiful, the most beautiful thing. How the Buddhists will explain this is, yes, there are buddhas who have achieved the total cessation of gross obscurations and subtle obscurations and because of that, the holy mind became omniscient and achieved total realization where there’s nothing more to gain. 

As well, that mind has perfect power to help sentient beings according to their karma and in various forms, not only in the aspect of a buddha. It manifests not only in the aspect of a buddha but in ordinary aspect, and in all kinds of ordinary aspects, in order to bring beings to enlightenment, not only to free them from samsara.

They can be a buddha but can also manifest in any form of sentient being. They can be a manifestation of a buddha to help others. Also, even bodhisattvas who haven’t yet achieved buddhahood can do this. As bodhisattvas, there’s no self-cherishing thought, only cherishing others, meaning every hell being, every hungry ghost, every animal, every human, every sura and every asura being. There are numberless sentient beings in each realm, so toward everyone, they only cherish others. Then, among the bodhisattvas, there are ordinary bodhisattvas and higher bodhisattvas, exalted bodhisattvas who can manifest in various forms.

Generally, there can be animals who have a good heart, like people who have a good heart even though they don’t know Dharma. There are many Western people who haven’t met Buddhism, but they have a good heart. Without any expectation of getting some benefit for themselves, without that, they sincerely help others. There are many Western people like that. They have never met Buddhism, even though in Buddhism, the Buddha’s teachings explain not to harm but to benefit others. This is the most important thing, the essence of Dharma.

Imagine if you abandon eating fish. One person can eat many fish depending on their size, and they have to be killed. Some people eat live fish also. If I hear that now you won’t eat fish, then I’m really offering billions and billions and billions of thanks from the bottom of my heart to you. I’m thanking you on behalf of all the fish in the ocean, in the water. I’m their representative because they cannot speak, but I can speak now. At the moment I can speak, but in the future I cannot say. Maybe it is possible that I get reborn as a fish and can’t speak, even though I am tortured by human beings, by getting caught on a hook. Even if I move my body [the person who caught me on a hook] won’t feel much.

I’m very sorry that due to the situation of the COVID-19 virus the monks in our monastery contracted the virus, about one quarter of them. That’s why we cancelled and had to come back. We did prayers on the land for two days but not the actual puja. That’s next time.

If there’s anything I can do to help you, please let me know. Thank you very much. I hope to see you soon.

Please give my best regards to your husband. I’ll be sending letters to him. Thank you very much. I have a very important practice, a meditation [for him to do] first thing in the morning. I asked him if I should send it in English or do I need to translate it into Nepali. I don’t think I have in Nepali yet, only in English. If he wants it in Nepali, I will ask someone to translate it.

Thank you very much.

My very dear Thomas,
Thank you numberless times for your prayers dedicated to me, but please dedicate to all sentient beings, particularly to those who are suffering from diabetes, high blood pressure and stroke. Also, please dedicate for the long life of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and all the holy beings in the world who benefit others. Dedicate also for the Sangha, the benefactors of the Sangha and all sentient beings who recite OM MANI PADME HUM, as well as for those who do good things for others, and for the long life of those who practice morality.

Regarding your suggestion, I am going to think how to do this within FPMT. However, my request will be that it is voluntary to become vegetarian for this lifetime or at least for a certain number of years. You can’t say that nobody in this world should eat meat—you can’t do that; it is a little bit crazy.

There are many persons—buddhas, bodhisattvas, dakas and dakinis—who benefit others, but aren’t vegetarian. Some bodhisattvas eat meat and some don’t eat meat—it is their choice, to do whatever is most beneficial for sentient beings. Their decision is made on the basis of benefiting sentient beings, not because they like to eat meat. They have a great purpose to benefit sentient beings, and some are vegetarian and some are not.

Here I am referring to asking ordinary sentient beings to be vegetarian—ordinary sentient beings, just like myself—especially those who like to eat meat.

Some people have health problems and may have to eat meat. Some people are like this, but not the majority. For example, one of my gurus, Ribur Rinpoche, lived in Tibet and ate meat. He took the aspect of sickness in America at one FPMT center, the Land of Medicine Buddha. At that center you cannot eat meat, so they did not even offer it to Rinpoche, but a Tibetan lady brought meat quietly and only then Rinpoche took the aspect of recovering. So there are situations like this. Also ordinary beings sometimes depend on meat to be healthy, so we need to be careful and make exceptions.

My main thinking is that if more people become vegetarian, then there are less animals killed, so people create less negative karma and there is less suffering for animals.

With much love and prayers and thank you very, very, very much for all your dedication and your courage...

My very dear, very, very, very precious, very kind, wish-fulfilling Danielle,
I want to say skies of numberless thanks deep from my heart. You are very, very, very, extremely kind for the animals and sentient beings. As there are more and more people becoming vegetarian, that means less and less animals will be killed. So it is very important. In the world people eat meat mainly because of habit; so many people have not thought that the animals experience unbelievable suffering.

If the same thing was done to human beings—eating human meat and being killed for business—then you can see how much suffering there would be. It would be unbearable.

Human beings can express their suffering; they can explain their incredible fear, etc. If human beings ate other human beings, for example, if the powerful ones ate the weak ones, there would be so much incredible fear, even to go outside. So weaker ones would just stay inside, in the house, where they couldn’t eat each other. Can you imagine the incredible fear?

If human beings were treated like animals; if they were killed for meat like animals…wow, wow, wow. There would be so much crying, worry and fear. It would be unbelievable. We would be afraid to go anywhere, in case we were killed for meat.

When I was in hospital after a stroke [in April 2011] I saw on TV so many goats being sold by Australia to Indonesia for so many years. It even showed the place where the goats would be killed, one by one. I didn’t see the actual place where they were killed, but I saw a cow who was tied up by ropes. A man was pulling him down from the platform, but the cow didn’t want to go down. So I thought, I can’t stop the animal suffering, but what I can do as I go around the world to teach, even if it is on sutra and tantra, I will announce or request if people can become vegetarian. That is something I can do.

Australian people made a lot of noise for one or two months to stop that [live export], but probably rich people, very powerful businesses wanted to do business again. I heard that they went back to selling the live exports. Can you imagine?

Of course, individually we can’t say everyone who eats meat is bad. Many manifestations of buddhas, bodhisattvas and great yogis, who have very high tantric realizations on the basis of the three principals of the path, they eat meat, but they don’t eat it with the self-cherishing thought. They eat it to purify the animal’s negative karma, so that animal has a good rebirth, meets the Dharma in future lives, is reborn in a pure land, and achieves enlightenment as quickly as possible. So it is done to benefit the animals. When it comes to the individual person like that, it is a great, great, great blessing.

Your motivation is excellent; it is to benefit all sentient beings, particular the animals, who suffered unbelievably and were killed. Doing this, even if you don’t wish for a long life, naturally you create the karma for a long life, in this life and in future lives.

Thank you very much for studying Buddhist teachings at Vajrayana Centre.

With much love and prayers...