Closing Verse: The Final Teaching

At that time, wishing to restate this meaning once more, the World-Honored One spoke in verse:

"Every creature has once been one's own kin — foul, impure, and mixed together indiscriminately; grown and nourished by what is unclean, its very scent strikes every being with terror.

Every kind of meat, and the onion, the leek, and the garlic too, and every kind of intoxicating wine that breeds heedlessness — the practitioner should forever keep far away from all of these.

One should likewise always avoid sesame oil, and any bed with holes or gaps in it, since the many small creatures within them are filled with the greatest terror there.

Eating and drinking give rise to heedlessness; heedlessness gives rise to manifold sensations; from sensation, craving desire itself arises — and it is for this very reason that one should not eat meat.

Through eating, craving desire arises; craving intoxicates and confuses the mind; intoxication and confusion prolong desire further still, and one is never liberated from birth-and-death.

Killing sentient beings for the sake of profit, using one's own wealth as a net to catch their flesh — both of these alike are evil karma, and death leads to the hell of wailing cries.

Where there is no teaching, no seeking, and no desiring it at all, there is no such thing as the 'three-fold pure meat' any longer — for it, too, does not arise without a cause, and it is for this very reason that one should not eat it.

Every practitioner should, for this very reason, keep entirely far apart from it — every buddha, the World-Honored One, throughout the ten directions, rebukes it without exception."

"Devouring one another in endless succession, they fall, at death, among the ranks of tigers and wolves — foul and detestable, forever born into folly.

They are, for the most part, reborn as outcastes, as hunters, among peoples who trade in dog-flesh, or as rākṣasī demonesses and every kind of flesh-eating being — reborn, throughout, as jackals, cats, and civets.

In the Hastikakṣya, in the Mahāmegha, in the Aṅgulimālīya, and in this very Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra as well — I have, in every one of these, prohibited and entirely cut off the eating of meat.

Every buddha and bodhisattva, and every śrāvaka too, rebukes it — and one who eats it without any shame is born, life after life, forever shrouded in folly.

I have already explained how what is seen, heard, or suspected [to have been killed for oneself] cuts off every kind of meat entirely — yet, through their own false thought and lack of awareness, beings still give rise to a place where meat is eaten.

Just as the fault of craving desire itself obstructs noble liberation, so too do wine, meat, the onion, the leek, and the garlic all alike obstruct the noble path.

In future ages, sentient beings, speaking foolishly of meat, will say: 'This is pure, and carries no transgression at all — the Buddha permits us to eat it.'

One should eat as though taking medicine out of necessity, and as though eating one's very own child's flesh — knowing contentment, giving rise to weariness and renunciation, practicing instead the mendicant's way of begging for food.

One who abides in a compassionate heart, I say, is one who forever holds such things in weary renunciation — tigers, wolves, and every fierce and evil beast may then dwell alongside him without harm.

Should one eat any manner of flesh and blood, every sentient being is struck with terror at once — and it is for this very reason that the practitioner, holding to a compassionate heart, does not eat meat at all.

Eating meat is without compassion, forever turning one's back on true liberation, and running contrary to every noble outward mark — and it is for this very reason that one should not eat it.

Being born into the lineage of the wise ones, and into every place of true practice, into a family of wisdom and true prosperity — all of this comes about through not eating meat."