Monks, mosquitoes and eating meat
Re: "A Buddhist view on eating meat", letter, March 17
I don’t understand how people who claim to be Buddhist don a white outfit, take a vow of the five precepts, meditate, speak in tongues, then go home to chomp on the flesh of dead animals.
The first Buddhist precept clearly states “Do not kill”. Doesn’t eating meat mean the killing of animals? Buddhist monks don’t even swat a mosquito that lands on their skin, but they eat meat!
Statistically, 95 per cent of Thais are Buddhists. I don’t agree with those statistics. I think about 5 per cent are practising Buddhists, the rest are Buddhists by descent or merely by claim. They go to temples not to study Buddha’s teachings but to pray before Buddha images for favours, a good job, a rich spouse or lucky lottery numbers.
To paraphrase an old song: Oh yes, we are the great pretenders.
Somsak Pola
