Gautam Buddha, Tirthankar Mahavir and many other awakened ones have preached reverence for all life forms. This includes sensitivity towards and abstinence from killing of animals for our pleasure.
Osho tells us: It seems to me that killing animals for eating is not very far away from killing human beings. They differ only in their body, in their shape, but it is the same life that you are destroying. With new technology, the earth is perfectly capable of giving you food.
You can make it as tasteful as you want and you can give it any flavour. Destroying life for the sake of taste is disgusting. In destroying life you are destroying many qualities within yourself. In this way you cannot become a Buddha. You cannot have that purity of consciousness, that sensitivity.
A meditator who does sadhana is supposed to be conscious in every moment, as life presents problems at each step. Osho explains this with a story: “The Buddha had told his bhikkhus, ‘Whatsoever is given to you when you go begging, never reject it. That is insulting.’ And he was careful, because if he allowed people to reject anything then they would choose good things only. ‘So accept whatever is given gracefully, thankfully, and eat it. And don’t throw away anything’.”
One day, a bird dropped a piece of meat in a monk’s begging bowl. The monk was in a bind as he could neither empty the contents of his begging bowl nor eat the meat as both would amount to flouting the Buddha’s ord-er. So he came into the commune and and asked the Buddha what to do.
Even Gautam Buddha, for a moment, was in a dilemma. If he said, “throw it away,” then he would allow an exception which would soon become a rule. If he said, “Eat it,” then he is allowing meat to be eaten. But then he thought, birds are not going to drop meat every day. So he said, “We are vegetarians, and we will remain as such, but you I allow to eat this meat, so that nobody ever throws out anything which is given to him.” But Buddhists took this to be an assent in support of non-vegetarianism. So Buddhists in China, Japanese and Korea — the whole of Asia, except India, eat meat.
A meditator cannot allow him/herself such a leeway if s/he seeks enlightenment. To attain Buddha nature one must remain true to the teachings of the Buddha, instead of quoting an idle statement to indulge one’s appetites.
Swami Chaitanya Keerti, editor of Osho World, is the author of Osho Fragrance
