practice6

What Do Buddhists Eat?

|>|What chance has a chicken in a cage so small that it couldn't 
|>|turn around in? What chance has a cow in a slaughterhouse? 
|>|What chance has a veal calf in a crate?

none allowed.  such 'chance' is not the objective for those who 'cultivate'
 and kill in this way

|Do you think that killing brocolli is equivalent to killing cows?

killing broccoli does involve considerably less blood and mess

|Do you think that crushing carrots is equivalent to crushing fingers?

I don't remember ever being a carrot, so I'm not sure how it feels.
 I do have fingers, and I know I don't like them being crushed

|If that is true, then the first precept makes no sense.

my memory is that the first precept has to do with 'sentient life
 forms', specifically those which can experience pain and trauma.
 there is yet discussion and research concerning the subjectivity
 and development of plant life

|Doing what the Buddha did does not make you a Buddha.

well said!  but the Buddha is said to have recommended a process 
 which approximates his own pathway into nirvana 

|Torturing animals is not what a Bodhisattva would do.

it is an error to limit the actions of the bodhisattvas, who may have
 means and motives far beyond our ability to understand.  this says
 nothing about what constitutes compassion and respect for all beings,
 which is the pathway of the awakened


What Do Buddhists Eat?

|>|Wouldn't not eating animal flesh fall under the first [Buddhist] precept?  

|>Most Buddhists are not vegetarian.

|Most Buddhists don't sit under a Bodhi tree when they meditate.
|Does that mean that it's wrong to sit under a Bodhi tree?

no, but it does say very much about what is considered 'required' within
 Buddhism (perhaps a statement regarding its degeneration)

|Must we do something because most Buddhists are doing it?

no, in fact it is only our own trial and error regarding the precepts,
 'truths', instructions and practices which we may reliably use in a
 discernment of our 8-fold path

|>Let's start by not killing people.

|If we can't stop others killing people, does it mean that we should 
|start killing animals in our own backyard?

perhaps if we changed our relationship to that killing (i.e. doing it
 ourselves, having raised the animals and become intimately familiar
 with them and then sanctifying our hunger through elaborate rite)
 we would eventually also change our relationship to the killing of
 all living beings