Are all vegetarians kind-hearted souls?

By nature, humans are omnivorous. However, choosing herbivore lifestyle is gaining currency all over the world either due to reason of religiosity, health or compassion towards animals. Undeniably it’s a noble choice to be a vegetarian and no vegetarian should be subjected to unsavoury remarks or being treated insensitively. Hopefully, one fine day, I would also be able to hop into the vegetarian bandwagon after I’ve successfully weaned myself of Bak Kut Teh. Knowing me, it would be a tall order.

For the health freaks, it would be useful to know that being vegetarian is not a sure-fire way to leading a healthier lifestyle. The jury is out whether humans are able to derive maximum benefits out of a diet which is strictly devoid of meat simply for the reason that humans’ diet does require a healthy balance of meat and vegetables intake.
If that’s not convincing enough, the late Linda McCartney was a popular vegetarian who had breast cancer which took her life eventually, so too was Olivia Newton John but the latter survive the cancer scare.

Being compassionate towards animals is also another reason why people choose to shun meat. Adherents of certain religions like Mahayana Buddhism and Hinduism or kind atheists belong to this category. These people believe that animals have every right to live, just like humans do; therefore it’s inhumane to kill them for their meat.
Any visit to the slaughterhouse will confirm this to be true as prior to being killed, it is as if the condemned animals know the fate awaiting them and will put up a struggle. Some even shed tears. It is truly a pitiful sight and definitely not for the faint-hearted. Insensitive this may sound but this morbid visit is highly recommended to those who need an impetus to turn vegetarian instantly.

Many of us have the mistaken view that Buddhist clergies are compelled to be vegetarians. While it is true with the Mahayana tradition (widely practised in East Asian countries like China, Vietnam, Korea and Japan), it is foreign to the Theravadin tradition (widely practised in Sri Lanka, Thailand, Cambodia & Myanmar). In fact, Buddha ate meat and didn’t ban His followers from eating meat. However, He did discourage His followers to kill with the sole intention to partake in the meat; neither did He allow them to commission others to kill on their behalf in order to consume the meat. He went so far as to disallow His believers to work as butchers and that monks must decline to eat meat as offered by the lay-people if they suspect the animal was specifically killed as offering. It goes without saying He taught that there is no basis in sacrificing animals to be offered as prayers. That is why in Buddhism; food of any kind is not offered as prayers. A proof of his seriousness in treating lives as precious is the inclusion of “killing is strictly forbidden” as one of the 5 basic tenets in Buddhism every Buddhist should follow.

What Buddha did is a proof of his compassion but why did he stop short of compelling his followers to only partake in vegetarian food? Come to think of it, it is only natural that if the consumption of meat stops, the killing ends. It is because of what he did not do; his religious order was split when his cousin, Devadatta, also a monk; raised hue and cry that Buddhism should reject meat outright and that monks must not consume meat.
Naturally, one would think Devadatta’s request was not unreasonable.

This knowledge stupefied me for years but my confusion was finally put to rest when I had a discourse on vegetarianism with a senior Theravadin monk in Lunas, Kedah. Regardless of whether one is a vegetarian or otherwise is not a good judgment of one’s character. Some vegetarians are under the illusion that by just eating vegetables, they do not contribute to killing, not realising that pesticide is generously sprayed all over the farm where the vegetables are grown. It is also of no use if one is vegetarian but continues to harbour ill-will towards other human beings.

Back to Devadatta, opposing Buddha on meat-eating was not the only vile acts he committed. Seeing that he failed to gain the upper hand, he resorted to inebriating an elephant named “Nalagiri” to kill Buddha. By so doing, he did 2 acts of cruelty, cruelty to animal and intending to kill another man.
Throughout history, we can also see how some vegetarians embarked on a killing spree from Pol Pot, Charles Manson, Volkert Van der Graaf to Adolf Hitler. The German Fuhrer was even a teetotaller and did not smoke.