Flesh-Eating among Buddhist Monks

Xuanzang · Down to Earth Series · 8 pages

From the seventh-century travels of the Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang, in the Watters, Rhys Davids and Smith edition of 1904. The doctrinal distinction is set out at the head and is the reason the file exists: the Hinayanist brethren were allowed to eat the three pure kinds of flesh — the flesh of animals whose slaughter they had not seen, heard of or suspected — whereas the Mahayanists abhorred flesh-eating altogether, on the grounds of universal compassion and the doctrine of karma.

The pilgrim's own report supplies the observed case rather than the theory. In the country he is describing there were above ten monasteries with more than two thousand ecclesiastics of all degrees, all adherents of the Sarvastivadin school of the Small Vehicle; since in sutra teaching and vinaya regulation they follow India, it is in the literature that students study these subjects thoroughly; and they are very strict in observing the rules of their order, but in food they take the three pure kinds of flesh, embarrassed — as his translator renders it — by the gradual teaching. That last phrase is the file's real subject: a rule kept exactly and yet felt as a compromise, which is the same distinction Can eating animal flesh ever be ethical draws in this section.

Read the full text (PDF, 0.6 MB, 8 pages)