Some claim that the contents of their stomach do not matter, only the contents of their mind. Probably these passages refer to avoiding gluttony as well as vegetarianism. Although the ideal of detachment does not mean we are forbidden to experience material pleasures, clearly allowing one's attachment to, say, the taste of meat to override adherence to the First Precept is contrary to the spirit of the Dhammapada . A painted puppet with jointed limbs, sometimes suffering and covered with ulcers, full of imaginings, never permanent, for ever changing. A nest of diseases, a heap of corruption, bound to destruction, to dissolution.
All life ends in death.
Look at these grey-white dried bones, like dried empty gourds thrown away at the end of the summer. A house of bones is this body, bones covered with flesh and with blood. Pride and hypocrisy dwell in this house and also old age and death. Moreover, unlike the Judeo-Christian scriptures, the Dhammapada does not claim that humans are superior to or more important than other animals. It is a depressing fact of life that absolutely everything we buy has involved harm to sentient beings at some point in its production, simply because the vast majority of people are willing to harm nonhumans whenever it is expedient.