The Accidental Vegetarian

Noa Jones

Noa Jones goes back and forth on the question of whether or not to eat meat. It’s something she’s still chewing on.

Recently I was invited to spend the weekend at a family dairy farm in the Fraser Valley of British Columbia. My hosts greeted me with a banquet—prepackaged sweet n’ sour tofu with boiled carrots for me, burgers and steaks for them. Like many people, they assumed that since I am a student of Buddhism I must be a vegetarian, which I am for the most part. But I was tempted by those steaks, and the next morning when the house filled with the smell of bacon, much to their amusement, I found myself unable to resist. Pigs are gentle, smart, and proud, and they have an alarming similarity to humans when it comes to DNA. But I decided to eat that crispy piece of pig, thinking I was doing it as part of my Buddhist practice, not in spite of it.

I’m doing my best to walk Siddhartha’s path with my vision firmly fixed on defeating dualistic thinking such as happy and sad, heaven and hell, us and them. Along the way, I’ve been told by some Buddhists that this philosophy extends to the food I consume as well. The rochig (Tib.), or “one taste” doctrine, one of the highest of teachings in the Vajrayana, holds the view that samsara (cyclic existence marked by suffering) and nirvana (liberation from cyclic existence) are ultimately one. According to my understanding of this doctrine, one could eat substances without discriminating between good and bad, delicious and disgusting, ethical or unethical—whether it be a plate of slugs slathered in barbecue sauce or a scoop of fresh guacamole. I have to admit that it’s going to take a lot more practice for me to perfect that kind of pure vision. In the meantime, though, I find myself picking and choosing from the various schools of Buddhist philosophy as they suit me—bacon tastes good so I use the “one taste” argument from the Vajrayana to justify eating it. But if I were asked to go out and kill the pig first, I would become an instant Mahayana or Theravada Buddhist, most of whom abstain from eating meat.

It’s because of my shortcomings in the commitment department that I don’t feel comfortable walking around advertising my spiritual practice by proclaiming, “I am a Buddhist.” Similarly, I don’t say, “I am a vegetarian.” I have yet to find my inner fanatic on either front. Instead, I dabble. True vegetarians, like religious practitioners, can be fundamentalist extremists, bombing foie gras factories, declaring jihad on veal eaters, and organizing guerilla attacks on ladies wearing mink stoles. On the other hand, there are many who are all talk and no action—not practicing what they preach. I am lost somewhere in the middle. I say “lost” because of my inexact motivation. For the most part my path is unexamined; I am simply following my instinct, and my instinct is to forget about nonduality and avoid meat. It’s kind of gross to put something dead in your mouth…even if it tastes good.

It’s difficult to make arguments for eating meat. Most meat-eaters play the protein card. Others don’t feel macho unless they find flesh on their plates. They insist we are natural-born killers and have been since our Neanderthal days. I’ve also met many longtime vegetarians who “force” themselves to eat meat once a month or once a week because their Chinese or Tibetan doctors said it was necessary to help “ground” them. Their motivation is self-preservation. I do not know the science behind ground beef’s grounding properties, but I do know that many strict vegetarians seem frail, lacking in color, and susceptible to a light gust of wind. This may be because many vegetarians tend to subscribe to a number of other nutrition philosophies, constantly tinkering with their digestive systems—chugging slimy green drinks, swallowing pills and tinctures, scrubbing their colons. Personally, I feel that a little toxicity is good. Along with all the bacteria in my intestines, it helps protect me. It’s like homeopathy. Homeopathy is also my rationalization for drinking margaritas and smoking the occasional cigarette.

True vegetarians are usually quite clear about their motivation. On the sectarian front we have environmentalists who can recite statistics about the acres of farmland it takes to support one beef cow, the resulting nitrogen pollution, and the depletion of underground water supplies. Looking at it from the point of view of the relationship between human biology and the planet, even the most zealous Atkins dieter has to realize that we all run on carbohydrates; it is our basic fuel. All animals eat plants or eat animals that eat plants. The Atkins dieter, by the way, is the complete opposite of the fundamentalist vegetarian. During the first two weeks on the Atkins diet, one consumes almost nothing but animal products. I admit that I tried it once when I was looking to drop a few pounds. It worked, but my fridge looked like a morgue, my tongue tasted like a cow patty, my digestion quit—and soon after so did I.