Abusing the middle way
Re: "Monks, mosquitoes and eating meat", Letters, March 18.
As a non-Buddhist and a farang, I never thought I would be in a position to give any Thai a lecture on Buddhism.
Letter-writer Somsak Pola notes that the first Buddhist precept prohibits killing, and asks, “Doesn’t eating meat mean the killing of animals? Buddhist monks don’t even swat a mosquito... but they eat meat!”
Yes, they do, Khun Somsak. But as I understand it, the Buddha permitted his monks to eat meat just so long as they hadn’t killed the animal and it hadn’t been killed specifically to feed them.
This “middle way” between eating meat and vegetarianism can be easily abused by anybody inclined to abuse it, which is why Mahayana monks, at least in Taiwan, have adopted vegetarianism.
Observer
