Buddhism Between Abstinence and Indulgence: Vegetarianism in the Life and Works of Jigme Lingpa

Tibetan Buddhism has long argued for the sanctity of life, condemning the killing of humans and animals alike. For just as long, however, meat has been a staple of the Tibetan diet. Individual religious leaders have dealt with this tension in different ways, but few have done so as revealingly as the eighteenth century master Jigme Lingpa ('jigs med gling pa, 17301-798). In his religious and autobiographical writings, Jigme Lingpa draws on Buddhist ideals promoting compassion towards all beings and his own unusually strong love of animals to praise vegetarianism and condemn the killing of animals for meat. Jigme Lingpa also recognizes, however, that vegetarianism is a difficult ideal. Rather than insisting on vegetarianism, therefore, he offers his students a variety of means through which to moderate the negativity of eating meat without fully abandoning it. By doing so, Jigme Lingpa offers his disciples a method to resolve the tension between Tibetan Buddhism's compassionate ideal and the practical difficulties of a vegetarian diet, allowing one to practice compassion without becoming vegetarian. Tibetan Buddhism adheres to the Mahayana school of Buddhist thought, and, as such, largely defines itself through the persona of the Bodhisattva and the cultivation of compassion. Individuals are called upon to practice religion not out of concern for their own suffering, but out of concern for the sufferings of others. In addition, practitioners are expected to put this compassionate orientation into practice, striving to relieve the suffering of all sentient beings--a category that explicitly includes animals--through both religious and worldly means. Concerns over the compatibility of this compassionate attitude with a meat-based diet arose early in the history of the Mahayana, and several early Mahayana texts contain explicit critiques of meat. Among these, the text most commonly cited by later Tibetan authors is the Lankdvatara Sutra, which D.T. Suzuki notes could have been composed no later than the third century (5). The Lankdvatara Sutra contains an entire chapter devoted to the flaws of meat, focusing on the contradiction between meat and the compassionate attitude a Mahayana practitioner should display. Ultimately, the text concludes, "Because they cultivate the idea that all beings are their only child, Bodhisattvas possess the nature of compassion and do not eat meat" (Shakyamuni lang kar gshegspa'i mdo 153b). (3) Despite these concerns, however, vegetarianism does not seem to have become normative in Indian Buddhism. The seventh century Chinese monk Yijing, in fact, returned to China after fifteen years in India and explicitly reported that vegetarianism was not found in Indian Buddhist monasteries (Yijing 213.a06-213.a10; I-Tsing 58-59). Yijing's emphasis on this point was likely prompted by the prevalence of vegetarianism among his own contemporaries in China (Benn 316). By the late seventh century, when Yijing was writing, vegetarianism had become normative for Chinese Buddhist monks (Kieschnick 201). Supported by a conviction that meat eating leads to a negative birth, vegetarianism spread steadily in China and eventually all devout Buddhists, both monks and laity, would be expected to adhere to a meat free diet (Kieschnick 187). By the late nineteenth century, vegetarianism had become so closely associated with Buddhism that Christian missionaries in Shanghai saw an individual's willingness to eat meat as proof that they had forsaken Buddhist beliefs (Reinders). In contrast to the situation in China, meat remained common in Tibet. Despite the emphasis on the practice of compassion for all beings, the traditional Tibetan diet includes large quantities of meat. Meat is eaten dried and raw, steamed in dumplings or boiled in soup. Indeed, along with roasted barley flour and butter tea, meat is a key staple in the diets of most Tibetans, resulting in the death of many animals. …