Last week's post "Vegetarianism and the Grandma Scenario" got such a robust response I thought I'd keep the thread going. Here is an excerpt from Zen teacher Reb Anderson's excellent book Being Upright: Zen Meditation and the Bodhisattva Precepts (Rodmell Press, 2001), p. 93. This anecdote is about Reb Anderson's teacher Shunryu Suzuki Roshi (1904-1971), founder of the San Francisco Zen Center and author of Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind.
When Suzuki Roshi and his students founded Tassajara, a Zen monastery in California's Carmel Valley, they decided to have no meat with their meals so that vegetarians would feel comfortable practicing there. But once when Suzuki Roshi was riding to Tassajara with one of his young students, he said that he was hungry and asked to stop at a restaurant. The young man was a strict vegetarian and said that there was no place nearby that served vegetarian meals; he asked to keep driving until they found such a place. Soon Suzuki Roshi said that he was getting really hungry and asked to stop at the next restaurant. They went inside and the young man ordered a grilled cheese sandwich, and Suzuki Roshi ordered a hamburger. After taking a bite of his hamburger, he said, "I don't like this. Could we please trade?" So they traded. Suzuki Roshi ate the grilled cheese sandwich, and the vegetarian ate the hamburger.
Based on the response to the Grandma scenario -- a disturbing number of people were ready to throw Grandma under a bus rather than eat her pork chops -- I'm guessing some people will be offended that the Roshi maneuvered a vegetarian into eating a hamburger. But if you've spent much time with Zen teachers, you might recognize that Roshi was administering what Zen masters of old called "grandmotherly kindness."
The purpose of the anecdote in Reb Anderson's book was to illustrate this comment: "Open-hearted bodhisattvas vow not to hold rigidly to their understanding of the precepts and are constantly vigilant about the arising of self-righteousness."
Understand that the two Zen teachers here are not criticizing vegetarianism, only being self-righteous about it. As far as I know, they both may be/have been vegetarians themselves.
From a Mahayana perspective, even if we are the world's purest vegans we are still responsible for the slaughter and consumption of animals. Why is that? Because none of us is separate from everything else. This is the same wisdom behind Thich Nhat Hanh's poem "Please Call Me By My True Names."
Just about anything can become a means to separate ourselves from others, including Buddhism. How do we practice, and "do the right thing," without attaching to it? That's the challenge here, I think.
See also "The First Buddhist Precept: To Abstain From Taking Life."
Thank you for posting this story but he held found the San Francisco Zen Center, not LA…
Karen, could you clarify your comment?
Lise
Sorry, typo up there, Shunryu Suzuki help found San Francisco Zen Center, not Los Angeles (www.sfzc.org)
Me like Roshi Suzuki. Me would have taken the hamburger (perhaps take another small bite, say I also do not like it) and gave the meat to a dog or homeless person (there is still onions, tomatoes and lettuce on hamburger bun to eat).
If Roshi does not want me to be offended to eat meat, then he should not get offended if I give meat to somebody else, eh?
The point is; nobody can force me (unless it is in a dictatorship or crime situation) to do things against my own best interest. But I still need to find a skillful manner to deal with it.
But even for a vegetarian it is good to once in a while eat flesh…just one day you might get stuck (like a plane crash) on the top of a high mountain and the only food might be a frozen carcass that might just be your food for survival.
Hein — it’s not a matter of “offending” Roshi. He is presenting a lesson to the student. One suspects the student had a big, honking ego-attachment to his vegetarianiam, and Roshi was telling him to get over himself. Eating the hamburger was medicine for the student.
I have been a vegetarian for over 30 years and I have never, ever proclaimed non-meat eating as a virtue or ever commented negatively to a meat eater regarding his or her meat-eating habits. But one thing I will never do is to serve meat in my own home or serve it to others. Nor has anyone ever remarked to me “well..where’s the beef?”. Peaceful co-existence is possible and even necessary. I also remark that I look askance at any vegetarian whose ego is puffed up by his “virtuous” eating habits. This is especially troubling in the case of a Buddhist practitioner.
yum
The story is not about being a vegetarian, it is about being
attached to an idea.
The story is not about being a vegetarian, it is about being attached to an idea.
Exactly; an idea of self.
Why Bodhidharma Went to Howard Johnson’s
“Where is your home,” the interviewer asked him.
Here.
“No, no,” the interviewer said, thinking it a problem of translation, “when you are where you actually live.”
Now it was his turn to think, perhaps the translation?
~ Jane Hirshfield ~
As a Buddhist and vegetarian for 25 years I can appreciate the dilemma. Even as we live as compassionately as possible there is plenty of suffering even in the most vegan diet. Animals should not be harmed, but between cultivating the soybean fields, transportation, ecomonomic issues, labor issues and on and on play an ongoing role. You could buy vegan shoes, and the workers who produce them have money to go home and have steak for dinner.No matter how pure our ethical intentions are, there is suffering all around in every direction. There is no suffering-free diet. But I’m still vegetarian to reduce it. I feel that the only pure morality is that held by a fully awakened Buddha or high Bodhisattva. Theirs is based completely on pure compassion and complete wisdom.