Is it a layman's duty to be Vegan?

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From a scriptural point of view, Buddha did not forbid the consumption of meat, let alone animal products etc., but what we do know is that 'Right Livelihood' tells us to not work as a butcher.

You cannot kill or case others to kill. If another person kills independently without your mediation and you buy and consume this then it is fine.

Countries like Burma have been very much meat centric diets. Buddhism may not have survived it preached veganism.

If you sufficiently distance your self to the extent that your conscience is clear then this is sufficient.

Once we know about the abattoir's conditions around the world, we are informed & we thereby have to take kammic responsibility, otherwise we will partake in the deaths of trillion animals, due to our demand for animal products.

Karma is volition which is acted upon. So what ever happens in the world, to which on does not contribute in volition and action, does not result in any karmic retribution.

If you can take some action to reduce deaths of animals this will definitely be positive Karma. If you are not successful at it still there is no negative Karma. At least trying would be positive Karma.

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There's no avoiding death; even the act of killing is unavoidable. Veganism is veil pulled over reality. It is a moral dressing that obscures the first noble truth. Veganism violates the fourth precept by misrepresenting the first. It deludes us into thinking that liberation from suffering can occur through action rather than insight.

Veganism denies that death is an inevitable part of living. It sells us the lie that we can eat a diet that somehow is free from it. This is only possible if one lives at one remove from our food system, at one remove from reality. When we are truly intimate with the world, we become keenly aware that no diet exists apart from destruction. Moreover, when the avoidance of death becomes our litmus for all moral action, it hampers our ability to express ourselves as fully moral beings. Just think of all the environmental devastation wrought by our agriculture system - even one that doesn't kill animals for food. Think of the desertification wrought by GMO soy, the ammonia emissions from Haber-Bosch nitrogen fertilizers, the aquatic life killed by farm runoff, the million of insects - even those we depend on for our food - that are wasted by chemical pesticides. Simply not eating meat won't solve any of those problems. If anything, it will exacerbate them. After all, even a small, organic farm ultimately requires animals inputs to grow fertility.

Being a Bodhisattva doesn't mean that you have to kill, but it does require you to acknowledge your unavoidable role in killing. To say that you can exist otherwise is deny your place in Indra's net and your connection to all sentient beings.

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