Ground Level

“But...... the methodology of Zen seems to involve a kind of purification, sort of a forceful removal of clinging through strict discipline.”

This is an easy assumption to make, but in reality Zen does not have a methodology. What you see as discipline is just some forms that we worked out to make our lives easier; there are fewer things for us to worry about once you learn to bow here, chant there, etc.

And sorry, but we don’t believe in purity either. (Oh, I realize that some “Zen Masters” may have said something about this. But really, they just have to say something. The students expect it.)

So, the first thing that I have to admit is that I don’t care if the Buddha was a vegetarian or not, whether he endorsed it, or even would endorse it or not.

To live is to take life. There is no way we can get around this. For me, I prefer to take less life, rather than more. This is called living lightly on the planet.

My body kills the viruses and bacteria that enter its domain. I kill bugs when I walk on them, or ride my bike over them. And inside my house, I kill flies, moths, and occasionally some ants (but rarely my spider buds).

I try to honor and respect my body, which is my “vehicle” in this life, I would not hesitate to kill a mosquito that tried to attack this body. I am always killing. But the choice that I have is in how much killing I do. I can either choose to take life sparingly, when it is necessary for survival to do so. Or, I can choose to take as much life as I can.

I don’t have to look in some Buddhist rule book, or pour through the Sutras to see what the Buddha did or said. To me, it’s pretty obvious what the right thing to do is. I choose to want to create a healthy, beautiful planet where life is in abundance. Not over abundance, nor under abundance.

To eat I kill another.

For me its not a question of whether a cow’s life is worth more or less than a broccoli head. When we recognize that the truth is nothing at all, then our nature is not revealed, but is ever-present in the becoming thusness of the way of the Buddha.