Should a Bodhisattva Eat Meat?
Mahāmati asks a question directed not at ultimate truth but at ordinary practice: what should a bodhisattva eat? The Buddha's response opens the sūtra's final major teaching — one of Buddhist literature's most forceful and extensive arguments against eating meat, given not as a single rule but as reason after reason, each independently sufficient. Every being has, across beginningless lifetimes of birth-and-death, already been one's own parent, sibling, or child; meat is butchered and sold indiscriminately alongside every kind of animal; a mind still capable of tasting flesh with relish is a mind that has not yet let compassion take root. The Buddha closes this section with the story of a king whose taste for meat slid, by degrees, into eating his own people — and with the explicit closing of a loophole earlier teachings had left open.
Mahāmati's Question
爾時，大慧菩薩以偈問言：「彼諸菩薩等，志求佛道者，酒肉及與葱，飲食為云何？惟願無上尊，哀愍為演說。愚夫所貪著，臭穢無名稱，虎狼所甘嗜，云何而可食？食者生諸過，不食為福善，惟願為我說，食不食罪福。」大慧菩薩說偈問已，復白佛言：「惟願世尊，為我等說食不食肉功德過惡。我及諸菩薩於現在未來，當為種種悕望食肉眾生，分別說法，令彼眾生慈心相向。得慈心已，各於住地清淨明了，疾得究竟無上菩提。聲聞、緣覺自地止息已，亦復逮成無上菩提。惡邪論法，諸外道輩，邪見斷常，顛倒計著，尚有遮法，不聽食肉。況復如來，世間救護，正法成就，而食肉耶？」佛告大慧：「善哉，善哉！諦聽，諦聽！善思念之，當為汝說。」大慧白佛：「唯然受教。」
At that time, Mahāmati Bodhisattva asked in verse: "For those bodhisattvas who set their intent on the buddha path, what of wine, meat, and the onion family in their food and drink? I only wish the Unsurpassed and Honored One would, out of compassion, explain this for us. What the foolish and ignorant crave and cling to, foul and rank, without any honorable name, relished by tigers and wolves — how could this possibly be eaten? Eating it gives rise to manifold faults; not eating it brings about wholesome merit — I only wish you would explain to me the transgression and merit of eating and not eating it." Having asked this question in verse, Mahāmati Bodhisattva further said to the Buddha: "I only wish the World-Honored One would explain to us the merit and fault of eating and not eating meat. May I, and every other bodhisattva, present and future, teach this discerningly to sentient beings who harbor various desires to eat meat, causing them to turn toward one another with a compassionate heart. Having attained a compassionate heart, each will become pure and clear within his own ground, swiftly attaining ultimate, unsurpassed enlightenment; and śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas, once they have set aside their own [limited] ground, will likewise swiftly attain unsurpassed enlightenment. Even the outsiders' own mistaken and evil theories, holding to annihilationist and eternalist mistaken views in their own topsy-turvy attachment, still maintain some prohibition against permitting the eating of meat — how much more, then, should the Tathāgata, the world's own savior and protector, who has accomplished the true Dharma itself, refrain from eating meat!" The Buddha told Mahāmati: "Excellent, excellent! Listen carefully, listen carefully, and reflect well upon it — I shall explain this for you." Mahāmati said to the Buddha: "Yes indeed, I shall receive your teaching."
The commentators note the specific circumstance that occasions this final teaching: "如來在鬼王宮中說法，諸夜叉等念食時將至，非肉不食。大慧欲令諸鬼生慈心故，因請如來說食肉、不食肉罪福" — "the Tathāgata is teaching the Dharma within the palace of the demon-king; the yakṣas there, sensing that mealtime is approaching, will eat nothing but meat. Mahāmati, wishing to cause these very demons to give rise to a compassionate heart, therefore asks the Tathāgata to explain the transgression and merit of eating and not eating meat." The audience for this teaching is pointedly not an assembly of already-refined practitioners but beings whose very nature inclines them toward eating flesh — which is part of why the argument that follows is built from so many independent angles rather than a single appeal to doctrine alone.
On Mahāmati's closing argument — that even outsider teachers with mistaken views maintain some restriction on eating meat — the commentators cite the parallel translation for its directness: "路伽耶等諸外道輩起有無見、執著斷常，尚有遮禁，不聽食肉，何況如來正等覺大悲含育，世所依怙，而許自他俱食肉耶？" — "even the materialist outsiders and the rest, who hold mistaken views of being and non-being, clinging to annihilationism and eternalism, still maintain some prohibition, not permitting the eating of meat — how much more should the Tathāgata, the truly and fully enlightened one, whose great compassion nurtures and sustains the world, never permit himself or others to eat meat at all?" If even doctrines the Buddha has spent this entire sūtra refuting draw a line at eating flesh, the argument runs, it would be strange indeed for the fully awakened teacher to draw no line at all.
The Many Reasons Not to Eat Meat
佛告大慧：「有無量因緣不應食肉，然我今當為汝略說。謂：一切眾生從本已來，展轉因緣，常為六親，以親想故，不應食肉。驢騾駱駝狐狗牛馬人獸等肉，屠者雜賣故，不應食肉。不淨氣分所生長故，不應食肉。眾生聞氣，悉生恐怖，如旃陀羅及譚婆等，狗見憎惡，驚怖群吠故，不應食肉。又令修行者慈心不生故，不應食肉。凡愚所嗜，臭穢不淨，無善名稱故，不應食肉。令諸呪術不成就故，不應食肉。以殺生者，見形起識，深味著故，不應食肉。彼食肉者，諸天所棄故，不應食肉。令口氣臭故，不應食肉。多惡夢故，不應食肉。空閑林中虎狼聞香故，不應食肉。令飲食無節量故，不應食肉。令修行者不生厭離故不應食肉。我常說言，凡所飲食作食子肉想，作服藥想故，不應食肉。聽食肉者，無有是處。
The Buddha told Mahāmati: "There are countless causes and conditions for not eating meat; but I shall now explain a few of them briefly for you. Since every sentient being, from the very beginning, has been bound up in an unbroken succession of causes and conditions, having each in turn been one's own close relative — because of this very sense of kinship, one should not eat meat. Because the flesh of the donkey, the mule, the camel, the fox, the dog, the ox, the horse, humans, and every kind of beast is mixed together indiscriminately by the very butchers who sell it, one should not eat meat. Because it is grown and nourished by impure exhalations, one should not eat meat. Because sentient beings, smelling its scent, are all struck with terror — the way dogs, seeing an outcaste or a hunter, are filled with revulsion and bark in alarm — one should not eat meat. Because it also prevents a practitioner's own compassionate heart from arising, one should not eat meat. Because it is what the foolish and ignorant crave, foul and impure, without any honorable name, one should not eat meat. Because it causes sacred mantras to fail in their accomplishment, one should not eat meat. Because one who kills, seeing the very form [of the creature], gives rise to consciousness [of it], and becomes deeply attached to its taste, one should not eat meat. Because those who eat meat are abandoned by every heavenly being, one should not eat meat. Because it makes the breath foul-smelling, one should not eat meat. Because it produces many evil dreams, one should not eat meat. Because tigers and wolves, catching its scent in the quiet forest, [are drawn near], one should not eat meat. Because it causes food and drink to be taken without any moderation, one should not eat meat. Because it prevents a practitioner from ever giving rise to weariness and renunciation, one should not eat meat. I have always taught that, with respect to whatever food and drink one takes, one should form the notion that one is eating one's own child's flesh, or taking medicine out of necessity — and it is for this very reason that one should not eat meat. There is simply no basis on which meat-eating could ever be permitted.
The commentators cite the parallel translation's fuller account of the very first reason, which grounds every argument that follows in the doctrine of beginningless rebirth already established across this entire sūtra: "一切眾生從無始來，在生死中輪迴不息，靡不曾作父母、兄弟、男女眷屬，乃至朋友親愛侍使，易生而受鳥獸等身，云何於中取而食之" — "every sentient being, from beginningless time, has circled ceaselessly through birth-and-death, and there is not one who has not, at some point, been one's own father, mother, brother, sister, or other kin, or even a beloved friend or attendant, only to be reborn and take on the body of a bird or beast — how, then, could one possibly take and eat such a being?" The commentators sum up the entire seventeen-item list this way: "備列不應食肉者凡十七緣" — "in full, seventeen distinct reasons for not eating meat are listed here" — a deliberate accumulation of independent grounds, not a single argument repeated, so that no matter which objection a listener might raise to any one reason, several others remain standing untouched.
On why sacred mantras are said to fail when meat has been eaten, and why habitual meat-eaters are said to be abandoned even by heavenly beings, the commentators do not treat these as separate from the ethical reasons surrounding them but as part of the same continuous list — each item drawing on a different domain of a practitioner's life (ritual efficacy, dream-life, bodily odor, social relations with animals and other people) to show that eating meat touches virtually nothing in ordinary existence without leaving some trace of harm behind it.
King Siṃha-Sudāṃṣṭra, and No More Loophole
「復次，大慧！過去有王，名師子蘇陀娑，食種種肉，遂至食人，臣民不堪，即便謀反，斷其奉祿。以食肉者有如是過故，不應食肉。「復次，大慧！凡諸殺者，為財利故、殺生屠販。彼諸愚癡食肉眾生，以錢為網而捕諸肉。彼殺生者，若以財物，若以鈎網，取彼空行水陸眾生，種種殺害，屠販求利。大慧！亦無不教不求不想，而有魚肉。以是義故，不應食肉。大慧！我有時說，遮五種肉，或制十種。今於此經，一切種、一切時，開除方便，一切悉斷。大慧！如來、應供、等正覺，尚無所食，況食魚肉？亦不教人。以大悲前行故，視一切眾生，猶如一子，是故不聽令食子肉。」
"Furthermore, Mahāmati, there was once a king of the past, named Siṃha-Sudāṃṣṭra, who ate every kind of meat, until, at last, he came to eat human beings — his ministers and his people, unable to endure it, then rose up in rebellion and cut off his royal allowance entirely. It is because eating meat carries this very kind of fault that one should not eat meat. "Furthermore, Mahāmati, every one of those who kill does so for the sake of profit, slaughtering and trading in flesh; and those foolish and ignorant sentient beings who eat meat use their very money as a net with which to catch that flesh. Those who kill, whether by means of wealth or by means of hooks and nets, seize creatures that fly through the air or dwell in water or on land, killing them in every manner, slaughtering and trading for the sake of profit. Mahāmati, there is no fish or meat that comes into being without someone having taught another to kill it, sought it out, or thought of desiring it — and it is for this very reason that one should not eat meat. Mahāmati, at times I have taught a prohibition against five kinds of meat, and at other times a restriction covering ten kinds. In this scripture, however, every kind of meat, at every time, and every skillful means that once permitted an exception, is now entirely cut off, once and for all. Mahāmati, the Tathāgata, the Worthy One, the Truly and Fully Enlightened One, does not eat anything at all — how much less would he eat fish or meat? Nor does he teach anyone else to do so. Because great compassion goes before everything else he does, he looks upon every sentient being exactly as though each were his own only child — and it is for this very reason that he does not permit anyone to eat what would be, in effect, the flesh of his own child."
The commentators are direct about what makes King Siṃha-Sudāṃṣṭra's story land as more than a cautionary tale: it is placed here to show a single, gradual slide rather than a sudden, unrelated crime — a taste for meat, indulged without limit, ending at cannibalism and the collapse of a kingdom, with no separate moral required beyond what the story itself shows plainly. On the closing abolition of any remaining exception, the commentators confront the apparent tension with the Buddha's earlier, more permissive teachings directly: "今謂非也，正言《楞伽》當四《阿含》之後，故存漸教之說，異乎《梵網》頓制，以見此經部當方等" — "the correct view is this: since the Laṅkāvatāra comes after the four Āgamas [in the order of the Buddha's teaching career], it still records the language of a graduated teaching, differing from the Brahmā Net Sūtra's own sudden, complete prohibition — this simply shows that this scripture belongs among the Vaipulya class of teachings [where the graduated and the complete stand side by side]." Where an earlier stage of teaching once permitted the so-called "three-fold pure meat" as a concession to what a listener could then bear, this passage explicitly closes that door: "一切悉斷," entirely and without exception, cut off.
On why the closing image insists that eating meat is, in effect, eating one's own child, the commentators tie it back to the very first of the seventeen reasons given earlier in this same passage — that every being has, across beginningless lifetimes, already been one's own kin. The image is not rhetorical exaggeration; given the doctrine of rebirth this entire sūtra has taken as settled since its opening fascicle, it is simply what the first reason implies stated as plainly as possible: there is no creature a bodhisattva could eat that was never, in some past life, that same bodhisattva's own child.
Part 49 Complete
This closes Part 49: Mahāmati's question about eating meat, the Buddha's seventeen independent reasons against it, the story of King Siṃha-Sudāṃṣṭra whose taste for meat slid into cannibalism and cost him his throne, and the explicit closing of every remaining exception this scripture's own graduated teaching had once allowed. Part 50 completes the teaching, and the entire sūtra, with the Buddha's long closing verse — the final passage of the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra as Guṇabhadra transmitted it.
Continue to Part 50 — Closing Verse: The Final Teaching →