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Question about 1st precept
I have been working on a farm for a little over a year now. it's the first job that I honestly can get some enjoyment out of. Flexible hours, get to work outside all day right ext to a beautiful lake, boss is a great guy, and after a long days work can get some amount of satisfaction with my work, but here's the problem, my job involves mainly operating farm machinery tractors, rotar tillers etc, grooming and planting. No doubly when I'm operating the machinery I'm probably killing insects and when I'm grooming weeds I no doubtdbly am taking sentient being life. Ive heard that your motivation plays a big role in your kamma and obviously my motivation is completing my responsibilitys and not maliciously taking sentient being lives but still it's something that I think a lot about. Any comments?
Metta
Nick
Metta
Nick
0
Comments
A student writes:
"Some time ago I wrote to you about vegetarianism or not in the Buddhist lifestyle. Your response to that I think was really that one had to make up ones own mind, with due consideration and then carry on. At the same time I think you were saying that essentially people change as their practice deepens.
At the start of my studies with you I sailed happily into buying a farm with my partner, to set in place a retirement programme. We both view the place as a retreat for ourselves, and hopefully as time goes on, for others also.
Meantime, we were considering the working options and beef cattle seemed to be the way to go for a number of reasons. We now have 10 Belted Galloways and their calves and are learning so much more about herd interactions and mutual care for each other.
We both are wondering how on earth we can choose which animals will be sent for slaughter, But at least the calves have had a life and the herd is on open paddocks and not feed lots.
I see so many hypocrisies, I'm afraid I feel I need to use that word, in saying that to eat meat is acceptable if it has not been killed at your behest�. the industry only exists because it knows that the product is requested by the community.
And if I refuse to eat meat, how do I justify the use of so many end products, all the leather goods and other many things using animal products.
Do vegetarian Buddhists also refuse to use any of those items? For the most part I see a lot of leather shoes."
Some vegetarians Buddhist or otherwise go that far - I suppose one could look for cows that die naturally and use their skins for leather. Also if one wants to argue that way, using animal products from cows means that cows are kept and give birth to males that are not wanted and then slaughtered. So you could argue it causes suffering to use milk products and so on.
To be honest I feel this is not a battle I personally feel like taking on. The danger with being high minded in this way is that one becomes very attached to concepts and one becomes judgmental and frustrated without in fact helping any beings directly.
If it were a matter of there being no cows in the world and a cow having to be brought into existence to feed my need for milk and then if that led to a male calf being killed then it would be a different matter and a different problem. But it's not like that. If many people stop eating meat and animal products then less animals are reared and killed. That is good - but I don't think if I sometimes eat meat that is already killed it is going to make any difference to the world.
On the other hand, I could think that it doesn't matter if it doesn't make much difference to the world, because the important thing is to dedicate the punya from making my vow to not eat meat and to keep that vow has a spiritual or karmic benefit that outweighs all practical considerations - then that is wonderful and it is a really good thing to take a vow like that and to keep it. I encourage that.
I must say I find it quite difficult to go along with a kind of gung-ho I love meat mentality as if there was nothing distasteful at all about eating meat. I think this does add to the number of animals being kept and killed and is somehow coarse.
But if people really do suffer from not eating meat (which some people claim) I am not going to judge them - its their choice and their karma. The animals are dead already - so better they are eaten than simply wasted.
As for keeping animals for slaughter - well, I must say I wouldn't like to have to do that. I think of that each year when I see the lambs and calves so sweetly nuzzling up to their mothers and feel so sad - they love each so much - the mothers and their babies. I couldn't bear to part them and take them off to be slaughtered. It is so sad.
But for farmers not to do that so many things have to change. I hope they will over time. I love to see the animals in the fields and I don't know whether it's worse not to live at all in this world or to come and leave again so swiftly - it cannot be good karma for farmers to send them off to slaughter year after year. Samsara is such a sorry place!
But in your situation I think having gone this far you will be limited in the choices you can make. I think it's good to think in terms of not being engaged in this industry any longer than you have to - but in the meantime you can pray hard for the animals that you keep and at least this way their life becomes meaningful and you are making good karma to compensate for the bad.
Student:
"On top of that, I see a lack of clarity over the killing if insects in the commercial production of vegetarian food - thousands for every item."
Lama Shenpen:
That is true. That is why it's not good to get self righteous about being vegetarian. It's part of what it is to be in samsara for our lives to involve us in bad karma whatever we do. Every animal is host to many other beings too - so whatever we do we end up taking the lives of many other beings.
In the end we just have to choose our battles carefully and lead as harmless a life as we can without getting self righteous and judgmental about it in situations where that is not going to save lives or save anyone from suffering.
It is a very difficult area and we don't want to be hypocrites and to have double standards. The whole area is a very messy one and it's important to turn towards it. It has bothered the Buddhist tradition for centuries.
There are sutras in which the Buddha speaks out against meat eating but in the stories of his life and the lives of his great disciples it is clear that they ate meat if it was offered.
In Vajrayana Buddhism in order to cut through our concepts about not wanting to eat unclean food we have to eat meat - it should actually be the kind of meat we think of as impure but usually we use meat that is quite nice and to our taste - which seems to go against the principle - but then we read of many enlightened masters who became enlightened through practising in this way.
I don't know what to make of that. I cannot help suspecting they became enlightened in spite of eating meat rather than because of eating meat. Many eminent Tibetan Lamas are now speaking out against meat eating and encouraging their students to take a vow against it. I am glad they are doing this. I took a vow once but then Khenpo Rinpoche told me to start eating meat again so I did.
Now I try to only eat it when offered and try to always choose non-meat options. I am not always completely consistent about this I have to admit. I am not proud of the fact but it does seem to cheer up the meat eaters to see me do this. I don't know what to make of that really. Would it do more good to show more moral fibre? I am not sure. If I were sure I would be much more consistent.
Student:
"I feel confusion over Karma. I know that it's a complex area but surely these creatures have been born as food beasts or beasts of burden."
Lama Shenpen:
Yes there is that - so maybe they are the farmers who took the lives of animals in their past lives. There is not much comfort in that really is there?
Student:
"When my time comes it comes. So for them, and also a release and a chance to have a more fortunate rebirth?"
Lama Shenpen:
Well there is that - and since that is the situation you are in this is the best way to think.
It is good to do practices specifically for purifying the bad karma you make as you engage in this form livelihood - like meditation on love and compassion and repentance generally for being trapped in samsara from the bad karma accumulated in past lives as well as this.
Also making pranidhanas for their happy rebirth and to be able to help them follow the Dharma in their future lives and so on. You can recite lots of mantras for them so that the sound of Dharma touches them.
It is really good for them that they have a strong connection with you. You can help them in a way nobody else can. You are their connection with the Mandala of Awakening.
SO you can feel happy about that. Very happy!
Each life form must eat food, including human beings. Imo, you are providing a service to mankind by working on the farm. If you did not do the work, how could the rest of us eat?
The Buddha said: "Karma is intention".
Enlightenment is not the same as "goodness". In terms of enlightenment, it is inevitable some creatures die in order for other creatures to be fed.
I can only recommend you consider learning acceptance of this inevitable reality, as sad as it may seem to be.
An enlightened person is guided by wisdom rather than by feeling.
With metta
:-/
With this attitude we would never have enough food because farmers would just allow pests to devour their crops and thats the end of that.
If you have a rat infestation in your house what are you gonna do? Ask them to leave? Killing is a necessary fact of life.
Ignorance is bliss.
If I know my knives will be used to kill,
I may decide to make ornamental knives instead.
You have to make a very personal decision.
make peace with it or move to another job.
Ultimately, how you feel is the most important.
As I suggested, we can choose the path of enlightenment or the path of idiot compassion.