- When cultivating and realizing the Dharma, eating a vegetarian diet is of course the best.
① Because a vegetarian diet keeps the qi clear, it can make our energy channels relatively pure, making it easier to open up and transform the energy channels during the transformation of the physiology.
② “Food and sex are part of human nature.” Eating, drinking, and the bond between man and woman are humanity’s fundamental desires. When we keep our diet light and plain, as time passes it will weaken and reduce our other desires, thereby clearing the mind and lessening desire, which benefits cultivation.
③ Eating a vegetarian diet can avoid killing living beings directly or indirectly. In this way, our cultivation will not create so much karma of killing that our adverse conditions increase; this benefits cultivation.
2.Sometimes, due to various circumstances, we find ourselves compelled to eat meat or consume alcohol. Because we place our faith in the Buddha and in the law of cause and effect, this often leaves us caught in deep inner conflict. When faced with such situations, I believe that before eating, you can silently recite a mantra or mentally recollect the names of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, offering yourself as a conduit for them to deliver the animal’s spirit from suffering. If your mind is profoundly serene and your mental intent single-pointed as you recite, even if your personal spiritual power falls short of full deliverance, you can still alleviate the agony felt by the animal at the moment of its death and soothe its hatred and resentment. In doing so, the karmic retribution of killing incurred indirectly by consuming meat will be substantially lessened.
I often used to eat with relatives and friends. If any of my friends ordered meat dishes, I would use my mental power to perform deliverance when the meat was served. Every time I performed deliverance, I would see many animals transform into light and depart, and in the meat on the table, large masses of black qi would be expelled as they left (this is because when animals are killed, their pain and hatred cause their bodies to produce toxins).
Once, I performed deliverance for a fish being fried and grilled on an iron plate. I saw that the fish had not completely died but had already been placed on the plate. I heard a single piercing cry—it was not the cry of a fish at all, but the voice of a fourteen- or fifteen-year-old girl. Because of the extreme pain, the fish’s spirit scattered in an instant. To perform this kind of deliverance, I had to enter meditative concentration in an instant and gather its spirit back together; such deliverance takes considerable effort. If our power of mindfulness is insufficient and we do not know how to recite mantras, then if we do eat meat, we should do more life-release practice, or go to a monastery to perform deliverance for the animals we have eaten. That also counts as accumulating a little wholesome karma to make amends for our faults.
Someone once asked me: “Doesn’t the Living Buddha Ji Gong also eat meat? ‘Wine and meat pass through the intestines; the Buddha remains in the heart.'” Ji Gong was a living Buddha. When he ate dog meat, he would deliver that dog at the same time—the blessing power of his body, speech, and mind is inconceivable. If you have not reached the level of a living Buddha, you had better not imitate Ji Gong. Tibetan Buddhism also eats meat, but that is determined by its particular geographical environment and particular practice methods. Although diet is not the most important entry point for our ultimate and perfect liberation, if we can pay attention to every aspect, then our cultivation will have a few more favorable conditions and go a little more smoothly. Lay practitioners cultivating at home must be careful not to practice with attachment to outward forms.
For example, take a person who eats a strictly vegetarian diet. If the cook is careless and does not wash the cutting board used for meat or the pot used for meat dishes, then as soon as that person tastes the slightest trace of animal fat, he will fly into a rage; sometimes he will even think others are deliberately destroying his spiritual attainment. He does not realize that “when a single thought of hatred arises, eighty thousand gates of obstacles open”—all the merit he accumulated through vegetarian eating is burned away by his fury. When the World-Honored Shakyamuni went on his alms rounds in those days, if living beings offered meat, the World-Honored One and his disciples would accept it too. That was going along with and skillfully accommodating the offerings of sentient beings, and it was an expression of compassion. Therefore, what matters most for a practitioner is the arising and movement of his or her own thoughts. If, among greed, hatred, delusion, arrogance, and doubt, you can let go of even a little, the merit you create far exceeds the good deeds you perform in outward behavior. No matter how well you observe a pure vegetarian diet, keep the rule of not eating after noon, practice giving, and so on, if the arising and movement of your thoughts has not changed in the slightest, then people who do not cultivate will feel out of tune with you and feel that you are too attached in your cultivation. It would be better for you to be tolerant, forbearing, accommodating, and selfless in helping others; even if you eat meat, sentient beings will still see you as possessing more of the qualities of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas.