Many Westerners assume Buddhists are vegetarian. The Dalai Lama eats meat. Thai and Sri Lankan monks eat whatever is placed in the alms bowl. Japanese Zen temples serve elaborate vegetarian cuisine. Chinese monastics are strictly vegetarian and often avoid onions and garlic as well.

All of these are orthodox positions within their traditions, and the disagreement is old.

What the Buddha permitted #

The early texts are clear, and they permit meat with conditions.

The threefold rule #

A monastic may accept and eat meat provided it is pure in three respects: not seen, not heard, and not suspected to have been killed specifically for them.

The reasoning is about intention, which is where karma lives. A monk who receives meat in his bowl has not killed, has not asked for killing, and has not caused a death — the animal was killed for the market, and the monk’s eating does not make it his act. A monk who accepts meat from an animal killed for him is complicit in the killing.

Devadatta’s demand #

The Vinaya records the case directly. Devadatta, the Buddha’s cousin, proposed five austerities be made compulsory for all monks: forest dwelling only, alms food only, rag robes only, dwelling at the root of a tree only, and abstaining from fish and meat.

The Buddha refused to make them compulsory. Monks who wished to undertake them could; they would not be required. Devadatta used the refusal to portray the Buddha as lax and led a breakaway group — the schism episode.

The passage is awkward for the vegetarian argument: the person demanding compulsory vegetarianism is the tradition’s designated villain.

The Jivaka Sutta #

MN 55 is the fullest statement. Jivaka, the physician, reports that people say the Buddha knowingly eats meat killed for him.

The Buddha denies it and sets out the threefold rule. He then makes a further argument: one who has someone slaughter an animal for a Tathagata or his disciples accumulates demerit in five ways — ordering the animal to be fetched, causing it distress on the way, ordering the slaughter, causing it pain, and offering unallowable food.

The condemnation falls on the person who causes the killing. Eating what has not been killed for you is permitted.

The first meal and the last #

Two further data points. The Buddha’s final meal, sukara-maddava, is read by Theravada commentators as pork — though the term is genuinely ambiguous and has also been read as a mushroom or a plant preparation.

And the first precept prohibits killing, not eating. The distinction is deliberate and is the hinge of the whole argument.

The Mahayana position #

Several Mahayana sutras take the opposite view, in strong terms.

The Lankavatara Sutra devotes a chapter to it, and the arguments are worth noting because they anticipate most modern ones:

That over beginningless time all beings have been one’s relatives, so eating meat is eating kin. That meat-eating produces a bad reputation and frightens animals. That it is incompatible with loving-kindness and compassion. And — the argument that does most work — that demand causes supply: there would be no killing if there were no eaters, so the consumer is implicated regardless of the threefold rule.

The Mahayana Mahaparinirvana Sutra and the Brahmajala Sutra, the latter the source of the bodhisattva precepts used in East Asia, also prohibit meat.

Whether these sutras represent a later development or a recovery of the Buddha’s real intention is exactly what the two sides disagree about. Historically they are later texts; doctrinally, the Mahayana regards later revelation as legitimate.

Where the traditions stand #

Theravada — generally not vegetarian #

Monks eat what is offered. Refusing alms food would be discourteous to the donor and would make the monk a burden, requiring special provision.

The threefold rule governs. Many monastics and laypeople choose vegetarianism individually, and it is respected and not required. Some forest monasteries are vegetarian in practice, partly by donor custom.

East Asian Mahayana — strictly vegetarian #

Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese monastics are vegetarian, and this has been the norm since around the sixth century, when Emperor Wu of Liang — a devout Buddhist ruler — mandated it for the sangha.

Chinese temple cuisine also excludes the five pungent spices — garlic, onion, leek, chive, and asafoetida — on the traditional reasoning that they inflame desire when eaten cooked and anger when raw.

Chinese Buddhist vegetarian cooking is a substantial culinary tradition in its own right, including elaborate mock-meat dishes made from wheat gluten and bean curd.

Japan — mostly not #

Japanese Buddhism is the exception in East Asia. Shojin ryori, the temple cuisine developed in Zen monasteries, is strictly vegetarian and is a refined tradition — Dogen’s Tenzo Kyokun, instructions to the monastery cook, treats cooking as practice.

But Japanese clergy have largely eaten meat since the Meiji period legalised it, along with marriage, in 1872. Most Japanese Buddhists are not vegetarian.

Tibetan — generally not, and uncomfortable about it #

Tibetan Buddhism is Mahayana and therefore doctrinally committed to the sutras above. Tibetans have historically eaten a great deal of meat.

The reason is geographic: the plateau is at high altitude with a short growing season, and for most of Tibetan history vegetarian subsistence was not possible for most people. A frequently cited consideration is that one yak feeds many people while a vegetarian diet requires the deaths of many small creatures in cultivation — an argument about the number of lives taken.

Tibetan Buddhists have been aware of the tension throughout, and there is a substantial Tibetan literature arguing for vegetarianism, notably by Shabkar Tsokdruk Rangdrol in the nineteenth century.

The fourteenth Dalai Lama was vegetarian for a period, returned to eating meat on medical advice, and has encouraged vegetarianism in Tibetan monasteries and institutions. A number of monasteries in the diaspora have become vegetarian. The direction of travel is clear.

Western Buddhism — variable, and trending vegetarian #

Western converts are vegetarian at much higher rates than Asian Buddhists, for reasons that owe as much to the surrounding culture as to the tradition.

The arguments now #

The historical positions do not settle the modern question, because the modern food system is not the one the rules were written for.

The strongest argument for vegetarianism is the one the Lankavatara already made and that industrial agriculture sharpens enormously: the threefold rule assumes a market in which animals die anyway and the individual consumer does not affect the total. In a system driven by aggregate demand and producing at industrial scale, purchase is a signal that causes production. On that analysis, the “not killed specifically for me” condition is a technicality, and the first precept’s spirit points towards abstention.

The argument on the other side is that intention remains the karmic determinant, that the Buddha permitted meat when he could have prohibited it, that making dietary rules compulsory is precisely Devadatta’s error, and that the tradition has consistently resisted turning ethical practice into food law.

A third consideration, increasingly raised: the number of deaths. Industrial crop agriculture kills very large numbers of small animals, and a diet is not blameless because the deaths are invisible. This complicates the arithmetic without obviously resolving it.

In practice #

Most Buddhist teachers who address this say something like the following.

It is a matter for individual conscience, not a rule. No tradition outside East Asian monasticism makes it compulsory for laypeople.

Reducing is worth doing even if eliminating is not chosen, and the tradition’s general disposition against all-or-nothing rules supports partial measures.

Do not make it an identity. Dietary strictness as a marker of seriousness is recognisably the third fetter — attachment to rites and observances — and the tradition warns about it.

Do not make others uncomfortable over it. Hospitality matters, and a guest who cannot eat what is offered creates difficulty for the host. This is the reasoning behind the monastic rule in the first place.

Consider the wider system. Purchase, waste, and the conditions under which animals live are all within the scope of the first precept on any serious reading, and diet is one part of a larger question. See Buddhism and the Environment.

Common questions #

Was the Buddha vegetarian? The texts indicate he was not, and that he permitted meat under the threefold rule. He also prohibited certain meats — elephant, horse, dog, snake, lion, tiger, leopard, bear, and hyena — for various reasons including public reaction.

Why do Chinese Buddhist monks avoid garlic and onion? The five pungent spices are prohibited on the traditional reasoning that they inflame desire when cooked and anger when raw. It is a Chinese Buddhist convention, not a pan-Buddhist rule.

Is eating meat bad karma? On the tradition’s own analysis, the karma of killing belongs to the killer. Whether purchasing constitutes causing the killing is the live question, and the answer the tradition gave assumed a pre-industrial market.

What about veganism? Dairy and eggs are permitted throughout the tradition — the Buddha’s final break with asceticism involved accepting milk-rice — and some contemporary Buddhists extend the reasoning of the Lankavatara to modern dairy production and become vegan. There is no traditional position.

What should I do? Decide, without making it a rule for others, and without treating the decision as evidence of anything about your practice.

Sources & further reading #

Bhikkhu Nanamoli & Bhikkhu Bodhi (trans.), The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha (Wisdom, 1995), MN 55 — the Jivaka Sutta. D. T. Suzuki (trans.), The Lankavatara Sutra (Routledge, 1932), ch. 8 — the Mahayana argument. Shabkar Tsokdruk Rangdrol, Food of Bodhisattvas, trans. Padmakara Translation Group (Shambhala, 2004) — the Tibetan vegetarian case. Peter Harvey, An Introduction to Buddhist Ethics (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 156–165. Geoffrey Barstow, Food of Sinful Demons: Meat, Vegetarianism, and the Limits of Buddhism in Tibet (Columbia, 2017).