Meat or Flesh Should Come From Lives   

25.5.2021

Tashi Delek! Dear everyone. I hope everyone is doing good. And this is so-called Saka Dawa or Vaisakhi. A very important month, very important Dharma day because our great Teacher, Compassionate Buddha Shakyamuni was born, reached Buddhahood and went to Nirvana. So this becomes very important month for us as Buddhist practitioners.

And this month is also called vegetarian month. This means people try to use vegetarian food in this month and try to give up non-vegetarian food. This is such an important month in the tradition of Buddhist teachings. And I hope that everyone try to be more compassionate and to eat more vegetables and vegetarian food.

Because eating non-vegetarian food could be harmful action, could be harmful to other beings because flesh or meat comes from animals, they don’t come from nothing. This only comes from lives when you take meat or flesh. From other lives, you know. Of course, that hurts other lives, therefore, to be more compassionate, to more peaceful, we should eat more vegetarian food. This is such a great good action.

Because it has to do with compassion or bodhicitta. Not only that, but of course, vegetarian food could bring a lot of benefit to your health as well. So therefore, for the benefit of all sentient beings and also a benefit to one’s health and longevity and also to your devotion, to compassion, we should try to be more vegetarian. This is very beautiful practice, a very great compassionate practice, so therefore here I’m asking people tried to to avoid eating non-vegetarian food and to eat more vegetarian food.

Because we try to practice bodhicita and compassion. We practice Mahayana teachings. Of course, Mahayana teachings and compassion request people to be sweet, kind and compassionate to other beings. If we eat a lot of meat, if we eat a lot of non-vegetarian foods, then of course that kind of action will be harmful because, as I mentioned earlier that meat or flesh should come from lives. Unless you can grow, you can produce meat by yourself, otherwise there’s no no way to not harm to others, but only harm to others to get meat. So therefore, please be more compassionate and to practice more bodhicitta in order for us to develop our Mahayana practice through eating more vegetables.

Thank you so much.

Transcript by Lotsawa (Hiếu Thiện)

Source: (Rinchen Lamp): https://youtu.be/GKNzHFVzfDA

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* The title is created by the translator for the reader’s convenience.