Talk:Buddhist cuisine
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I disagree with the first, second and third paragraphs. The article as it stands is poorly structured. The China/Vietnam phrase should be researched more closely, as I believe the no garlic/onion tradition may stem from dao or other Chinese philosophical or religious traditions and have been transplanted to Chinese Buddhist belief. Vietnam has been deeply influenced by Chinese culture (indeed, Vietnamese migrated from southern China to found their state!) and this would account for the Vietnamese habit. Basically this article needs a more informed rewrite, and I lack the knowledge/sources do it myself at the moment. --prat 01:58, 2004 Feb 17 (UTC)
Plants are "living beings" too. That needs to be disambiguated. Also, technically, there is no such thing as "good" or "bad" karma.
11/7/04: Major re-write, especially on order-of-presentation/clarity issues. It looked like the part about 'wu hun' being only in limited regions was corrected sometime inbetween your Feb 17 note above, Prat, and my editing this page, today -- so although I'm not sure what the 1st 3 paragraphs *were* in Feb (and too lazy to look), I'm assuming some of your concerns might also have been addressed re: 1st 3 paragraphs, by third parties. But I further modified the wu hun part: There are many more than the 4 vegetables which had been cited which are restricted; also, the author had called wu hun 5 restricted vegetables, then listed only 4 vegetables. ;-) Perhaps more accurate is that there are 5 FAMILIES of restricted, odorous vegetables (?), with e.g. onions, leeks, & shallots being all in 1 family, "onions"... but the consensus I found is that any pungent vegetable is restricted, so I specified no number, although the term 'wu hun,' when translated, may specify 5 (?). I just used the 4 given (which I confirmed), plus some others listed as forbidden by multiple sources, as examples rather than a definitive list.) I replaced, deleted, or gave the caveats regarding a few minor factual oversights re: Buddhism. Generally agreed with the rest... Also added some info., but it can probably still use more perspectives since, as another author pointed out, there are various practices, and various reasons cited for those practices...
As for plants being living beings, I believe today's Buddhist scholars' theory is that until the Greeks created the two (now 5, so even they weren't fully-aware ;-P ) Kingdoms of plants/animals, ancient man thought of all 'living' things as things which move. Check out Genesis (written, what, 1000-2000 BC?), which speaks of 'living' things this way. Not 100% positive that the Eastern ancients ca. Buddha's lifetime shared that limited perspective of 'life,' though, but this has also been addressed in the article by 1) noting that Buddhist vegetarians cite those reasons (as I've personally seen many do), without a POV judgment of whether they're interpreting Buddha's Five Precepts rightly or wrongly according to what Buddha intended, and 2) avoiding the specifics of the Five Precepts and redirecting to the 'Buddhism' page. ;-)
the reason some avoid eggs and milk is because of the suffering
In the 10billion animals who are killed each year in the USA alone, farming has been turned into a manufacturing operation, and even the government agencies refer to the farms now as "factory farms"
The vast majority of hens are kept in cages, and the floorspace size for each hen is less than a piece of notebook paper, as per the accepted industry standard for floorspace. McDonalds recently increased the floorspace their their egg hens, and it is still smaller than a piece of paper. http://www.upc-online.org/fall2000/mcdonalds.html
For dairy products cows are artificially inseminated to keep them producing milk (all female animals only produce milk when preganat and immediately afterwards). Their calves are taken from them in less than a week, so the milk from the cows can be collected for sale. The cows are milked mechanically more than once a day, and they are impregnanted again 2 months after they give birth. The intensive milk production results in the cow's body being less able to produces as much milk, and they are killed after about 5 years, compared to living 25 years naturally. The calves either become dairy cows if female, or veal calves if male. The calves raised for veal spend their entire lives in a stahl so small they cannot turn around.
hens http://www.tryveg.com/cfi/toc/?v=04birds
dairy http://www.tryveg.com/cfi/toc/?v=04cows
Diets without foods that result in the unfortunate cruelty: can provide excellent health, even better than the standard diets. Some world record athletes are vegan (Dave Scott). Diets with less animal products also require less water and land and energy, and also create more pollution to the air and water, and degrade topsoil less.
http://www.tryveg.com/cfi/toc/ has tons more info
Peace, and Namaste :)
Anonymous comments removed to here from the article
I believe that wu han refers to garlic, scallions, onions, shallots and leeks, which are all memebers of the lily family (http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/beyond/factsheets/herbs/herbs2_prog2.shtml)
It's not just in Buddhism but from what I remember in Hinduism and some of the many more obscure faiths in India but it's found in many religions.
Buddha specifically ruled out vegetarianism for monks to be a precept when Devadatta made a request. Today in the Theavarda sect being vegetarian may be seen by other monks as trying to impress - not good.
On the Karma issue.. the previous writer is correct. Karma just means actions, actions have consequencies. The aim for Buddhist is to remove themselves from the endless wheel of life and Karma - not to be reborn again in this realm but to gain nirvana. - Anonymous Nov. 12, 2004
stolen article?
http://www.recipeland.com/encyclopaedia/index.php/Buddhist_cuisine has this exact article. Did we steal it from them or they steal it from us? Neither specifies a source.
Just thought I'd mention that.
- I wrote the original of this article back in Nov 2001. However, the entire text has been rewritten by someone else. It is hard to tell the source of the rewritten text now. Kowloonese 00:55, Jun 21, 2005 (UTC)