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Fish for thought.
Tara1978
UK Veteran
Thoughts please -
I've found myself becoming pretty much vegetarian in my diet, but do eat fish/seafood a couple of times a week. Not wanting to start a debate on the vegetarian question ( I know there are many threads on this), but I would like views on if fish are sentient beings, feel pain and suffer during the journey from sea to plate? Are fish more sentient than say prawns? I'm very content vegetarian food, discovering a whole new range of recipes, but do still occasionally crave meat (me bad, must work on this, i am aware).
I hope this discussion doesn't upset the resident crustacean here on N B 
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Comments
I think they probably do. And being an occasional/social carnivore, this causes me some guilt.
All we humies have are speculation and theories about whether fish etc. feel pain.
If you spoke fish-ese, you could ask.
@Tara1978
My personal thoughts
"If it runs on land, swims in the sea or with wings takes to the air-
For me it's not a food source, it knows fear and so I care! "
However this might be of some help in your quest for peace of mind when selecting a meal that does not squeal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain_in_fish#Controversy
I ate a lot of fish in S Fla when I went fishing with friends. They didn't seem real happy when I cut their heads off.
I don't expect they were! Having read the Wiki article suggested by Shoshin, it appears that although they may not react as humans do they will alter their behaviour to avoid a repeat of a painful experience. Looks like cauliflower steaks for me then
Don't mind me ... I only have 100 000 neurons for a brain ...
As well as being a symbol for Christ, fish in Buddhism are a symbol for the enlightened. Something about having no eyelids like Bodhidharma and always being wake ...
If fish were actually enlightened sentients would you still eat them? [lobster puts up guilty claw
]. Yum!
If 'fish for brains' Ms MacDonald Trumple can be considered sentient and unworthy of the 'eat the rich' campaign, then I might start changing my omnivore diet ...
Jean-Jacques Rousseau: When the people shall have nothing more to eat, they will eat the rich.
I recently heard about some vegans that eat immobile bivalves (oysters and mussels) on the grounds that there is no coherent basis for saying that they are sentient. I haven't looked into it to have an opinion but it may be something you'd like to think about.
https://sentientist.org/2013/05/20/the-ethical-case-for-eating-oysters-and-mussels/
I have worked in zoos as a keeper, and also in other capacities, in close association with a wide variety of animals. I have no hesitation in stating that all animals and plants are sentient beings - there is no easy out there for the serious Buddhist practitioner. Life is, almost by definition, sentient.
What are we going to do about that? Just the best we can, no more and no less.
Really? Plants are sentient beings? Hmmmmmm......
Fish have brains, sensory neurons, and repeatable aversion to painful stimuli.
Plants?
Seriously, plants?
@Bunks , @Steve_B
By the broadest definition, yes - having sensation or feeling, as opposed to being numb or dead. Plants also respond repeatably to stimuli, they just do it rather slowly.
Definitions of sentience vary, and some appear to require consciousness, or a vertebrate nervous system, or a number of other qualities clearly applying to humans. These sometimes appear to me to be veiled attempts to attribute sentience solely to human beings. From the standpoint of deciding what is worthy of our compassion, I don't find these distinctions very useful.
There are some quarters that maintain plants respond favourably to some types of music, and unfavourably to others. What this actually means is that the sounds made by music are manifested as energy waves. Some waves affect plant growth and health positively, others, negatively.
Some music, for no discernible reason makes us weep with joy, other music leaves us cold.
It's therefore not too much of a stretch to consider that it's the sound-waves that also have an effect on our psyche.
I mentioned binaural beats some time ago, used in association with hypnosis.
And as William Congreve said,
"Musick hath charms to soothe a savage breast,
To soften Rocks, or bend a knotted Oak.”
'Cut me do I not bleed sap' as a willow once said to me ...
http://opcoa.st/0nxh7
Sometimes it is the degree of exploitation, sentience and block headed insistence of taste, convention and choice ...
In an ideal world I would live off moon beams and feel guilty over stealing the suns rays ... but that is a god realm problem. Not sure if gods are sentient at all. I do know angels taste of chicken and devils of barbecued chicken with fish sauce ... [lobster goes to naughty corner with the god eaters]
... and now back to the Buddha Menu ...
Trees like being hugged by hippies, so that proves it.
"Bite me" the broccoli said to me (sentiently).
Lobster very bad! But the smell bbq chicken would test me to the limit I fear!! BBQ lobster with garlic butter...........
Thank you all for your insight and wisdom.
You are a very naughty lobster. I hope you don't watch prawn movies, featuring lobsters with unfeasibly large mussels and winkles.
Yes to all of the above.
I used to love oysters. I lived in France and well, you know,... I mean, oysters are typically French.
I stopped because I realised that I had 12, individually-killed-just-for-me creatures on a dish.
Ain't no Buddhist got any time for that!
I have always seen "sport" fishing as a particularly cruel pastime.
I have seen and heard that fishing is 'justified' as a hunting/game sport, because the fish do have a good chance of escaping capture, and the odds are more in their favour.
But I don't think that justifies anything.
Are they sentient beings? For a machine to be sentient in the general meaning of the term, it would have to be self-aware. No, I don't think fish are self-aware. I don't think evolution has graced them with emotions. Neurobiologists say fish do not have the neurons that process pain the way we do, although they certainly do have many senses including some we don't.
I think the problem is that the yardstick we're using - sentience - is outdated. Sentience means the ability to feel emotions, not intelligence. The people back then had no concept of neurons or parts of the brain that evolved for emotions or that intelligence is a sliding scale.
When Buddha laid down his Precepts, he didn't just say "don't kill anything" but "avoid killing sentient beings" so he must have thought there were non-sentient beings. But no list of animals was preserved in the Sutras, and you know hands must have shot up with "What about fishes?" "What about spiders. I kill a lot of spiders!" type questions he had to answer.
So to be on the safe side, many Buddhists don't kill anything.
I think 'the safe side' is a more skilful place to be than ' Sentience means the ability to feel emotions, not intelligence', in my opinion.
They feel a form of distress. Whatever we use to quantify that pain or distress, to me, is immaterial. They feel it.
And humand wilfully inflict it.
That, to me, is unacceptable.
Simply because we cannot compare it to our own levels of pain and distress doesn't devaluat them as creatures, and does not abdicate us from Acting responsibly.
I came across a reference the other day that Buddha once instructed his monks that if the animal had been killed especially for them, the meat should not be accepted. If on the other hand it had been killed for other reasons, then it was ok to eat meat. It seems good guidance.
Where does that leave us with the modern food chain? Although the animal has not been slaughtered specifically for you (in most cases), you are helping to perpetuate the industry by buying meat.
So I choose to do a little middle-way'ing, and eat meat very rarely. Generally when I'm out at restaurants or at a friend's barbecue and it is hard to avoid. I do eat more fish and eggs currently, it's an issue I am not totally resolved on yet.
I agree. And how would a fisherman feel if somebody put a huge hook through their cheek and then dragged them along underwater till they nearly drowned?
I know the empathy is there, but the problem with that argument is, the fish aren't humans and we're not fish. We experience the world in different ways. If the question is, are fish sentient, that's a different question from should we go fishing for fun. I don't fish anymore because I don't like to eat fish. However, I see no difference from fishing for sport and sticking them on the grill, or buying fish sticks in the grocery. Given that huge fishing trawlers are raping our remaining fish stock with huge nets to fill our freezer sections, catching and eating a couple of fish locally might be the lesser of two evils.
I also don't kill bugs if I have an option, but that's because I just don't want to kill anything if I can avoid it anymore. I definitely kill the hell out of fleas, since I have 3 dogs in the house. So I guess you could say I obey the precept but the sentient part is irrelevant to me. I avoid killing, period. But I'm not religious about it. If that makes sense.
I addressed these points in my previous response to you...
That's like saying Mass genocide is a hideous, inhuman and abhorrent crime, but murdering a couple of people is perfectly acceptable.
There's a difference between killing an insect that actually causes harm, pain and the spread of several diseases, and killing creatures that are free and doing no harm to anyone...
So you're selective about which bits do, and the bits that don't match your lifestyle...?
That's not a prod in the chest, actually. That's clarification.
Then there is Larry the Lobster who will be enjoying his remaining years in a Maine aquarium. No longer dreading the cooking pot. The article didn't state if he was known by our@lobster.
@federica I always have a problem articulating my view on the precepts, especially the "avoid killing sentient beings" one. My point isn't that killing a fish is fine, but that there's no moral difference between killing and eating your own, and eating meat that someone else killed. But there is a moral difference between catching and eating one fish in a stream and decimating an entire species.
As for being selective in how I carry out the precepts, sure. We all do. You and your family get stranded on a boat out at sea, you're going to let everyone starve to death because those fish swimming around you are sentient beings and not to be killed? Of course not. At least I hope not.
Even in your examples, you're selecting between bugs that spread disease and cause harm and those that don't. But the bug is just doing what nature designed it to do.
So yeah, I try to live as normal a life as possible within the confines of the precepts and my conscious. But I'm not religious about it. I am sincere when I say I'm not as good of a Buddhist as many others who practice it. I'm afraid I'd make a pretty poor monk.
^^ Good points. I can't argue with them, really....^^
(* conscience *
)
Yeah, me too (gender aside)...
Hmm....sorry for the digression but, I just wondered how is it monks are called monks?
And yet are famous for 'losing' their monk-ey minds? Yes, it's a bit silly.
And now for a humorous interlude which cleverly links "monk" and "fish".
It comes from the Greek word, 'monakhos' meaning 'solitary' or 'alone'.
They often talked to their invisible friends, but as they were figments of their imagination, they were called monakhos myalo... or monkey mind, in English.
Believe that, and you can come and watch me braid gravy, too....
It's safe to say that sentient being means different things to different people ...So when it comes to what is a sentient being??? I guess it's a case of... do what one feels is the 'right' thing to do...
"One Sentient Being's "meat" is (could be) another Sentient Beings mother father brother sister etc etc"
Love and do what you will, as Augustine would have it. I don't agree with Augustine on many things, but this line seems apt.
Well I must be suffering from lobstermania. That is what Dr Fish came up with. Right there on the net. Several entries for the Lobster Liberation Front. What a hoot.
I'm glad you didn't get a load of prawn.
A load of anything is more than required. I'm always happy to share.
I looked up sentinent and it means able to feel. Even single cell animals and plants are able to feel and react to stimuli. So a strict interpretation of the precept would rule out pretty much all food.
Well, I guess the only thing to do is go Breatharian.
Swarovski, I don't think reacting to a stimulus constitutes feeling. Elevators respond to me pushing the buttons, but they are quite unfeeling. And Republicans respond to stimulus but also are unfeeling. OK to eat them?
(Who's 'swarovski'....?
)
Sorry. Bizarre autocorrect. Swaroop.
Just did it again! Had to fix it manually. Also, 'bizarre' autocorrects to 'buzz are.'
Buzzare!
Usually happens when you are using a foreign language keyboard setting with its own autocorrect settings.
We don' have no foreigners here.... hees all Heenglish.
Well... I iz a continental 'ropean, so technically a wee bit foreign to uk and USA folks... Speakin' teh lingo as a languagmo segundo...
"Plants are just that, rooted in the ground nowhere else to go
and when rip some are plucked and eaten which is their natural flow
Some seeds might pass on through the body, and out amongst the crap
back into the ground to begin again ...Oh what an ingenious honeytrap ! "