How to Choose Your Diet
1. For the cultivation and realization of the Buddha Dharma, eating a vegetarian diet is naturally the best choice.
First, vegetarian food contains pure energy (qi). It helps keep our energy channels pure, making it easier to open and transform these channels during physiological shifts in our practice.
Second, as the saying goes, appetite and lust are human nature; they are our fundamental desires. By keeping our diet light and pure, over time, this will naturally dilute our other desires. This purifies the mind and reduces cravings, which is highly beneficial for cultivation.
Third, eating a vegetarian diet helps us avoid direct or indirect killing. This way, we won’t accumulate too much karma of killing, which would otherwise create adverse conditions and obstacles in our practice. Therefore, it supports our cultivation.
2. Sometimes, due to various circumstances, we have no choice but to eat meat or drink alcohol. However, because we believe in the Buddha and believe in cause and effect, we often find ourselves caught in a state of inner conflict.
I suggest that when you encounter this situation, you can silently recite mantras or chant the names of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas before eating the meat. Allow the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas to perform a spiritual liberation for the animal through you. If your mind is very pure and your mental focus is one-pointed while reciting the mantra, even if your power isn’t enough to fully liberate the animal, you can at least alleviate the pain it experienced at death and reduce its resentment. In doing so, the karma of killing you indirectly create by eating the meat will be significantly lightened.
I used to often eat out with family and friends. If my friends ordered meat dishes, I would use my mental focus to perform a liberation of consciousness as soon as the meat was served. Every time I did this, I would see the spirits of many animals turn into light and depart. As they left, large masses of black energy would be expelled from the meat on the table. This happens because when animals are slaughtered, their immense pain and resentment cause their physical bodies to produce toxins.
Once, I was liberating the consciousness of a fish that was being grilled on a hot iron plate. I saw that the fish wasn’t completely dead before it was thrown onto the grill. Suddenly, I heard a piercing, agonizing scream. It didn’t sound like a fish at all; it sounded exactly like a fourteen- or fifteen-year-old girl. Because of the extreme agony, the fish’s consciousness instantly shattered. To perform a liberation in this situation, I had to instantly enter samadhi to gather its shattered consciousness back together. Liberating an animal in that state takes a considerable amount of effort.
If your mental focus is insufficient and you don’t know how to recite mantras, but you still eat meat, then you should make an effort to practice life release (freeing captive animals). Alternatively, you can go to a temple and request a liberation ritual for the animals you have eaten. You can consider this as accumulating a little good karma to make up for your faults.
People have asked me before: “Didn’t the Living Buddha Ji Gong also eat meat? As the saying goes, ‘Meat and wine pass through the intestines, but the Buddha remains in the heart.'” Ji Gong was a Living Buddha. When he ate dog meat, he was simultaneously liberating that dog. The power of blessings in his body, speech, and mind was unimaginable. If you haven’t reached the level of a Living Buddha, it’s best not to imitate Ji Gong.
Similarly, practitioners of Tibetan Buddhism also eat meat, but that is determined by their specific geographic environment and their particular dharma methods. Although diet is not the absolute most important starting point for our ultimate perfect liberation, if we can pay attention to all these aspects, we will gather more favorable conditions for our practice, and our cultivation will proceed much more smoothly.
For lay practitioners, it is crucial to avoid clinging stubbornly to outward forms in your practice.
For example, take someone who is strictly vegetarian. If a chef is careless and uses a cutting board or a wok that was previously used for meat without washing it thoroughly, this vegetarian might taste a hint of animal fat and fly into a rage. They might even think the other person is deliberately trying to sabotage their spiritual cultivation. Little do they know that “a single thought of anger opens eighty thousand doors of obstacles.” All the merit and virtue they previously accumulated from eating a vegetarian diet is completely burned away by the fire of their anger.
Back in the time of Shakyamuni Buddha, when he and his disciples were begging for alms, if sentient beings offered them meat, the World-Honored One and his disciples would accept it. That was a way of accommodating sentient beings, an expedient means to allow people to make offerings, and an expression of profound compassion.
Therefore, for a practitioner, the most important thing is every movement of your mind—your arising thoughts. Out of greed, anger, delusion, pride, and doubt, if you can let go of even a tiny bit, the merit and virtue you create will be far greater than any outwardly good deeds you perform. You might be perfect at eating a vegetarian diet, fasting after noon, practicing charity, and so on, but if your arising thoughts haven’t changed in the slightest, non-practitioners will feel completely alienated from you. They will feel that your practice is far too rigid and attached.
On the contrary, it is much better to be tolerant, patient, accommodating, and to selflessly help others. If you do that, even if you eat meat, sentient beings will still feel that you embody the true qualities of a Buddha or Bodhisattva.