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Ahimsa: Buddhism and the Vegetarian Ideal

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"The purpose of this book is to try to better inform those Buddhists that consume their brothers of the animal kingdom as to the reasons why they should try to refrain." So opens Ahimsa: Buddhism and the Vegetarian Ideal by Bodo Balsys, a book that is at times clearly stated, confusing, and strongly worded: "How can you truly be a spiritual being when you kill (animals) via the consequence of eating meat? Your intention to not harm is negated by your intention to eat meat. You are the perpetrator of suffering upon others. Your Buddhist vows are useless, let suffering rule the world you inadvertently say, as you eat the cow."

Ahimsa is geared primarily towards Tibetan Buddhist practitioners, a school of Buddhism that strongly teaches the ideals of compassion, yet, despite the Dalai Lama's recent reaffirmation of vegetarianism, still continues, at least unofficially, to condone the eating of meat. "[Tibetan Buddhists have a] rich culture and teachings on wisdom and compassion are examples that many in the West are inspired by," writes Balsys, "apart from this major problem of a seeming hypocritical stance with respect to their four-footed brothers."

The book discusses all the typical, nonsensical excuses used by meat-eating Buddhists-the three-fold rule; insects die in growing the vegetarian's food and insects and cows are equal so we might as well eat meat; you shouldn't discriminate against anything, including animal or vegetable food-but also covers some more obscure, strictly Tibetan excuses as quoted by the title of chapter seven: "The Highest Yoga Tantra -or- It's alright for me to eat meat because in my mind I am the greatest of all yogis living in the most austere way in the Himalayan snows."

The author views the eating of flesh foods as a war between animals and men and likens it to the invasion of Tibet by China: "the digestion of a country through war and that of meat are similar, both are bloody." While he certainly blames China for the invasion, he also sees Tibet as having built a karmic pathway for the take-over because the monks ate meat. He goes on to stress the importance of karma in all aspects of life, including our diet, discusses the discrimination people show toward one type of animal over another, and shares symbolic stories that convey the esoteric truth of human/animal rebirth.

The author does a lovely job of putting flesh, so to speak, on the bones of the old saying "you are what you eat," and discussing the environmental considerations of flesh foods, including deforestation, over grazing, and misuse of resources. There is one point, however, where Balsys seems misguided. While he advocates vegetarianism he says veganism is an extreme, boldly stating-and quite arbitrarily-that veganism "is not the Noble Middle Way for humanity at this stage." This is as arbitrary as saying you can take a skateboard to work or a helicopter, so I'll opt for a Hummer as the Middle Way. I think that if you look at the extremes of not eating anything, or eating everything one can get your hand's on-and the latter is unfortunately practiced by many-the Middle Path would be eating to sustain a healthy life while being as compassionate as possible. This is a vegan diet, not a vegetarian diet that, while very good, still has many undesirable effects on the animal world.

While parts of Ahimsa are clear, concise, and even poetic, it is at times clunky and rambling as if a poor translation (some of this may be due to my inexperience with Tibetan practice-I come from a Zen background). The author was born in Germany, attended university in Australia, and the book was published in India, so your guess is as good as mine as to what language the tome was originally written in. But some of this book is so well done that is excuses the parts that aren't.

Ahimsā lays out a course on meditative healing, each chapter includes detailed and very welcome end notes, and the appendices include extracts from the Lankavatara Sutra, an exposition on the nature of karma, details of meat and dairy production (when reviewing this section of the manuscript, I would think that the author would have rethought his view on vegan versus vegetarian), the levels of Tantra, and an index.

All in all, I believe The Great Compassion by Norm Phelps (which I also reviewed for Amazon and VeggieDharma.Org) to be a better book and the obvious choice (if you have to make one) between the two. However, if you have an interest in this subject or are a Tibetan Buddhist, I would strongly recommend it.

i am a vegetarian who does personal reading/study of eastern religious/spiritual subjects. i bought this book in hopes of finding more information or a deeper view of ahimsa than i had found in other texts, and i did. presented in chapters that read like a collection of debate-like essays on related topics, this volume offered me deeper explanation of vegetarianism as an act of ahimsa and the wide spanning chain reaction that can come from both vegetarianism and meat eating. the arguments include scripture excerpts and their interpretations as used to support both eating habits-- but of course the author more heavily supports vegetarianism and offers good reasoning for this.

unfortunately, the writing style of this text can become confusing. perhaps this is because the author is not a native to the english language, and this text was printed by an indian publisher. also, for those not well versed in tibetan buddhism, some concepts are difficult to grasp. i found this challenging and a source for more study, but not all readers will be pleased.

overall, i feel this is an excellent text and will continue to suggest it to those i believe will find interest or benefit from it.

It's not the book's fault or the author's fault that this is a little more philosophical than I expected. What I really want is some kind of "guide" to Jainism. I did a search for "ahimsa." I got it! Still an interesting read.