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Wine
and Meat Don't Matter
•By Living Buddha Lian-Sheng, Sheng-Yen Lu•
Translated by Cheng Yew Chung.
Edited by TBN
Buddhists are bound to hear this
Chinese saying, "Wine and meat don't matter if you have
Buddha in your heart!"
It is easy to say this sentence,
but how many people can really put it into practice? It is
doubtful [that many can].
As a practitioner, one should
refrain from killing and reduce one's gluttony of food. Having
taken the Three Refuge, one should uphold the teachings of
Buddhism. If one should indulge in wining and dining, the
spirits of the animals that are being slaughtered as food,
whose existence lingers in the three lower realms of
suffering, shall demand karmic payment from the practitioner.
How can one explain that Tantric
practitioners may consume wine and meat?
The actual reasons are:
1) The tormented spirits are
being delivered.
2) Recitation of mantra.
3) Making offering
4) Truly achieving the feat of
having the wine and meat pass through one's digestive system.
[without affecting one's body.]
I would like to give you an
example:
During the reign of Emperor Song
Xiao Zhong, a practitioner by the name of Jie Zuli had a huge
appetite for food. It was said that he could consume three pig
heads and five large jugs of wine.
A magistrate named Wang Ping Pu
invited Jie Zuli for a meal. When it came time to eat, Jie
Zuli could not restrain himself and consumed wine and meat to
his heart's content. His appetite for food was truly
remarkable; he had consumed the share of twenty persons at one
go, devouring the food like the autumn wind sweeping over the
fallen leaves.
After the meal, Jie Zuli went to
the back courtyard of Magistrate Wang's residence and blew out
a stream of wine into the air, followed by the consumed meat,
which were all received by spiritual beings. His act was
secretly witnessed by the magistrate's wife.
When the magistrate wife informed
magistrate Wang of this incident, he was awestruck by what had
happened, and had since paid great respect to the Jie Zuli,
and even took refuge with him. (It was said that Jie Zuli was
the embodiment of Manjushri Bodhisattva.)
I quoted this example to
illustrate the fact that on the surface Jie Zuli might have
been consuming wine and meat, but in reality he did not.
Evidently, it exemplifies the statement "wine and meat
don't matter."
It was said that a Tantric guru
loved to consume the intestines of fish. When he finished his
meal, he would return the fish to the water and the fish would
come alive again. So the question is, did he consume the fish?
I personally feel that if we are
unable to deliver the spirits of the slaughtered animals, have
not chanted any mantra nor performed any offering, and are
unable to achieve the feat of having the wine and meat pass
[unaffected] through one's digestive system, it would be
better to stick to vegetarian meals. It is important to avoid
indulging in food!
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