The Big US Pig Problem (Last Week Tonight)

(LastWeekTonight) Feral Hogs: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

Thanks, Columbus!

Babe (American film)

What did the Buddha eat? “Pig’s Delight”

A new disciple of the Buddha offers a meal to the Teacher (Buddhism/jendhamuni.com)

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“Pig’s Delight”?

Out of the mouths of Babe(s)

In an attempt to justify some Buddhists' ghoulish appetite for the bloody flesh of animals, some individuals allege that the Buddha allowed monastic disciples to eat slaughtered meat under three circumstances or that the Buddha himself ate pork.

These are patently specious claims. A Pali canon (Theravada Buddhist) discourse called the Jivaka Sutta is the source of the infamous “three purities” argument. It states:

“I proclaim that there are three circumstances when meat should not be eaten:

1. when it is seen,
2. heard, or
3. suspected [as being present?]

“I proclaim that meat should not be eaten under those three circumstances.”

• Jīvaka questions the Buddha about meat eating, and he says: “Anyone who slays an animal for the use of a monastic and gives it to that monastic commits a terrible evil.” Jīvaka is pleased with this answer and declares himself a follower of the Buddha (M.i.368f.)
• Note, if a monastic were to eat meat, he or she would not necessarily be guilty of killing or even encouraging anyone to kill IF he or she neither saw, heard, nor suspected that an animal was killed [for one's sake or for any misguided reason]. Of course, we don't blame recipients of someone else's giving/dana). For example, if we give to a homeless person, is that good or bad? Does it depend on what that person chooses to do with the money if we did not know when we offered it? If he buys a knife and stabs someone, are we guilty of murder? We acted, and he acted.
• Further questioned by Jīvaka, the Buddha explains that a follower (upāsaka) is one who has "gone for guidance" to the Three Gem (Buddha, Dhamma, and [Noble] Sangha, what the Buddhist Teacher Seven translates as "the Teacher, Teaching, and [successfully] Taught") and undertaken the Five Precepts or lay training rules, and that such a person, by reason of these qualities, works for the benefit of oneself and others (A.iv.222f.)
• One's virtue (sila) is "pure" if one follows the Five Precepts, which means abstaining from doing harm by killing or causing to kill, stealing or causing to steal, engaging in sexual misconduct or causing another to do so, engaging in false speech [which is the biggest one because this actually has four factors*] or causing another to do so, consuming intoxicants that occasion heedlessness (negligence, moral carelessness) or causing another to do so.
• *"False speech" means bearing false witness or speaking divisive, idle, or harsh speech, all of which gets translated as "lying" when it is so much more.
• Finally, a Buddhist or disciple avoids "wrong livelihood": business in arms, business in living beings (animals, people, insects), business in meat, business in alcohol, or business in poisons (A.V.177).
• In this way one avoids the Ten Courses of Unwholesome Action or "bad karma."

Clearly, the Buddha is stipulating that if a monastic disciple (bhikkhu, bhikkhuni, samanera, samaneri, or maechi and sometimes anagārikas -- monk, nun, male novice, female novice, white clad ten precept nuns or special probationers) inadvertently consumes meat that has been placed in one's alms bowl, one is not at fault.

• 

  All mothers are alike in raising kids

  Guidelines are more lax in all things for lay Buddhists, who simply maintain the Five Precepts; however, those precepts include "not killing nor causing anyone else to kill." What is one doing when paying a butcher shop or supermarket for slaughtered flesh but hiring someone to slaughter, cut up, and sell the dead or their organs? That would be causing (asking, inducing, enticing, ordering, paying) someone else to kill for us. How can we be so deluded as to think that we did not order, cause, or contribute to that killing? The Godfather doesn't get his hands dirty but pays Guido to do his killing for him. Guido doesn't know the victims and is just doing the job he was paid to do. Is the Godfather guilty of murder for the people Guido's hands kill?

You're not going to slaughter me? - No! I'm going
to pay my butcher to. - WHAT!?! - He's the killer.

One's action (intention, karma, deed) remains pure. However, if one sees, hears, or so much as suspects that there is meat in one's bowl, one must not eat it.

Later commentators gratuitously inserted the phrase [“that the living being has been slaughtered for oneself”] after each iteration of the word “suspected.”

That phrase does NOT appear in the original Pali text. It is a spurious addition, making it seem as if the Buddha allowed monastic disciples under his training to eat meat so long as an animal was not expressly killed to feed them, or at least when they did not see, hear, or suspect that such a killing (slaughtering, butchering) took place.

I live by Mafia rules, keep my hands clean

This interpolation is linguistically unwarranted. More importantly, it contradicts the unequivocal teaching of the historical Buddha on the matter.

The Buddha gives extensive arguments against meat (flesh, animal) eating in the Angulimaliya Sutra, Nirvana Sutra, Karma Sutra, Shurangama Sutra, Mahamegha Sutra, Lankavatara Sutra, Maha Parinirvana Sutra, and others.

In the “Net of All-Embracing Views Discourse” (Brahmajala Sutta), Shakyamuni (the historical Buddha Gautama) exhorts his disciples to adopt veganism:

“Monastics, should you willingly and knowingly eat flesh, you defile yourselves. Pray, let us not consume any flesh or whatsoever comes from sentient beings.”

Perhaps the most infamous of all revisionist interpretations is the one claiming that the Buddha passed away from eating contaminated pork (trichinosis, dysentery, cholera) offered by Cunda the Silversmith.

The term used in the Pali language “Great Final-Nirvana Discourse” (Mahaparinibbana Sutta) to describe the dish that Cunda served the Buddha at his last meal is sukara-maddava, which literally means “pig’s delight” — a clear reference to truffles, a type of mushroom (underground fungal fruiting body) that pigs delight in sniffing out, digging up, and eating as much of as possible.

The Pali term for “fatty pig meat, slaughtered swine flesh, or sliced stomach” is sukara-mamsa.

• COMMENTS
• (I. Rony) I think "pig's delight" means bloody pig, lard bacon, or hog's hair and eyes [aka hotdog or salami] because, think about it, when you order "Buddha's Delight" at a Chinese restaurant, it's Buddha flesh from that Fat Happy Guy at the door, isn't it? It has to be because it's right in the name.
• (Capt. Obvious) Hey, General Tso's Chicken contains canned General Tso...cannibals who like MSG order it all the time...so Pig's Delight is probbly 'Delightful Pig' in blood sauce with soy with entrails or offal guts

• “Boar, hog [pig, peccary, swine, suina, suines]” = Sukara, Śūkara, Sūkara, Su-kara, Shukara: 30 definitions (wisdomlib.org)

The famous Buddhist scholar Carolyn Rhys-Davies Caroline A.F. Rhys Davids -- wife and colleague of T.W. Rhys-Davids, founder of England's Pali Text Society), who served as its president from 1923 to 1942 -- clearly noted the discrepancy more than seven decades ago.

Hollywood's Babe, a talking farm pig (film)

But proponents of human carnivory still trot out this fallacy today. Unless one is ignorant of the Pali language, or is willfully misleading oneself or others, it is impossible to assert that “pigs delight” means “delicious pork,” as if the Buddha had ordered a greasy dish in some Chinese restaurant.

In the Dhammapada, the Buddha says:

“All beings tremble before danger; all fear death.

When we consider this, we do not kill nor cause to kill.

All beings tremble before danger; life is dear to all.

When we consider this, we do not kill nor cause to kill.”

All beings means all beings, not just humans and devas.

• Meal of delicious truffles: dhammikaweb.com
• Buddhist veganism/vegetarianism
• The linchpin to restraint is shame (trepidation, scruples) and dread (considering the karmic consequences)
• Did Buddha [eat] pork before dying? | Vipin Tyagi
• Based on outline by Tashi Nyima, Great Middle Way, Jan. 10, 2013; edited, clarified, and expanded by Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson, Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation), CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly 2024

Fast food's fast but not food (Daily Show)

Jon Stewart devours the fast-food industry | The Daily Show

(The Daily Show) May 3, 2024: #dailyshow #Comedy Jon Stewart takes a bite out of the fast-food industry from McDonald's' promise to use chicken anuses [for McNuggets] without antibiotics, Chick-fil-A’s Appreciation Day protests, and Pizza Hut’s pork belly and hot dog-lined pizza. #dailyshow #Comedy

McDonald's goes vegetarian for India (video)

Tiffany Hsu (LATimes.com, Sept. 4, 2012) UPDATED
(NextVictim09) The evil Ronald McDimmu HamBorgir does something good for a change. (Norwegian black metal by Dimmu Borgir).

 

McDonald’s, that carnivore’s haven of beefy Big Macs and chicken McNuggets, is going vegetarian.

The fast food giant will open its first non-meat restaurant next year in India, in the Sikh holy city of Amritsar. The branch, to be located by the much-visited Golden Temple, will serve herbivore options tailored to the country’s cultural tastes, according to AFP.

 

Much of the Indian population avoids certain types of meat. Hindus consider cows sacred and don’t eat beef, while Muslims avoid pork. Indian McDonald’s restaurants already feature much less meat than the chain’s locations in other countries.
 

The company’s bestseller in India is the McAloo Tikki burger, which features a fried potato patty and is responsible for a quarter of sales. The chain has fewer than 300 branches in India -- a growing market for fast food that has already attracted competitors such as Subway, KFC and more.

  

Research in recent years suggest that Indians spend a quarter of their income on food, compared to the 1.5% they shell out for health issues.

  

Next up: Another vegetarian McDonald’s planned for Katra, a town near the Hindu pilgrimage site of Vaishno Devi.

The company has long customized menus to its host country. There are kosher McDonald’s in Israel and Buenos Aires, McBaguettes in France, McArabia pita-style sandwiches in the Middle East and more. More

Eating Pigs = Eating Worms? (video)

Wisdom Quarterly

It is rumored that the Buddha's last meal, which brought about a sharp decline in his health, was either pork or tender food loved by pigs (Mahaparinirvana Sutra). Mushrooms would fit this description and could have easily and unintentionally been toxic. Surely the blacksmith was trying to provide the best gift he could to a famous teacher and his renunciate disciples.

The Buddha saw that there was no other being, seen or unseen, who could possibly digest the food offered to him by the blacksmith Cunda. He had already relinquished the will to keep his body going, and this meal made it possible to bring the material basis of his dependently-originated becoming on Earth.

Most Buddhists (Chinese Mahayanists) have been vegetarian in consideration of developing compassion. No particular diet is a Buddhist requirement (although many types of meat, such as bear, are specifically excluded). But as the world has moved toward Western ideals of luxury, affluence, and poor health, meat eating has increased.

Hygienic practices have not kept up, even in America which seems to do the most to promote the cruel practice of not only slaughtering and eating animals (more than a million a day being killed for consumption in the US alone). For all the improvement in sanitation, we have not managed to eradicate trichinosis, salmonella, food poisoning, or worms. This easy vermifuge test may be performed to check the status of slaughtered pigs ingested by careless human carnivores.

Explaining Swine Flu

Now that the reasons for the outbreak have been exposed, and given that WQ has provided a cure, the question Rumsfeld and others should answer is why pigs have not been found with the virus.

Explaining swine flu
Why are pigs, not birds, at the center of this most recent epidemic? » Mutated with bird and human flu

• Find simple flu prevention tips
• Flu threatening to become pandemic

Definition: "pandemic" simply means a local epidemic that gets larger or moves out into the world. It naturally occurs every year. Tens of thousands commonly die.

Pork? Mushroom? How the Buddha Died

The Buddha's last illness: the result of eating sukara-maddava, pork or mushroom (LINK).

The Buddha is shown here leaving Cunda's the Blacksmith's house. He eventually walked a great distance to Kusinara (modern Kushinagar, India, site of an enormous Tibetan reliquary and monument), where he intended to pass into final nirvana at an out of the way site Ananda found very strange. The final passing took place between two Sala trees, and the Buddha explained to Ananda the very strategic reasons for the site.

HOW DID THE BUDDHA DIE?

Passing away into final nirvana (parinibbana): Instructing his last disciple, Subhadda the Wanderer, the Buddha entered nirvana for the final time on the full moon day in the month of Vesakha. This is part of the reason for annual Vesak celebrations throughout the world. It is the same day he attained he was born and attained enlightenment.

Cunda the Blacksmith offered the Buddha a meal. As an alms gatherer, the Buddha accepted his offer for lunch the following day. Together with the Sangha, the Buddha attended. But seeing the food -- sukara maddava ("pig's delight") -- being offered, he asked Cunda to only serve it to him and bury the rest.

What is a meal of "Pig's Delight"?

British Buddhist scholar Maurice Walshe

I have chosen this ambiguous expression to translate the controversial term sukara-maddava (sukara = "pig," maddava = "mild, gentle, soft," also "withered"). It could therefore mean either "the tender parts of a pig" or "what pigs enjoy" (cf. note 46 in The Last Days of the Buddha, Wheel Publication 67-69, BPS 1964, see note 363 [below]).

What is quite clear is that the old commentators did not know for certain what it did mean. DA [Digha Nikaya (Lengthy Discourses) Commentary (Sumangalavilasini by Buddhaghosa, see p. 50)] gives three possibilities:

1. The flesh of a wild pig, neither too young nor too old, which had come to hand without being killed,
2. soft boiled rice cooked with "the five products of the cow," or
3. a kind of elixir of life (rasayana) (cf. next note).

MUSHROOMS?

Modern interpreters from Rhys Davids onwards have favored truffles [which pig's love and are obtained by having pigs root for them] as a plausible explanation, and some evidence for this has been adduced.

Trevor Ling , in Note 31 to his revision of the Rhys Davids translation of this Sutta [The Buddha's Philosophy of Man (Everyman's Library, London 1981, p. 218)], remarks: "This explanation seems intended to avoid offense to vegetarian readers or hearers. Rhys Davids's statement that Buddhists 'have been mostly vegetarians, and are increasingly so,' is difficult to accept."

Be that as it may (and in fact Eastern Theravada Buddhists have rarely been vegetarians, though some are now almost certainly under Western influence!), the question of vegetarianism has frequently been raised in the Buddhist field.

The standard Theravada position is set out in the Jivaka Sutta (MN 55), in which the Buddha tells Jivaka that monks must not eat the meat of any animal concerning which they have

• seen,
• heard, or
• suspect

that it was specially killed for them. The Buddha rejected Devadatta's proposal to forbid meat-eating altogether to the monks.

[Devadata is the Buddhist of a backbiting Judas or proud Lucifer figure, who repeatedly attempted to assassinate the Buddha. This was not a sincere request by Devadatta., Rather, it was part of a plot to discredit the Buddha as not being austere enough to run the Sangha; Devadatta used the Buddha's unwillingness to consent to it to cause a schism in the Sangha. He then formed his own short-lived splinter group, impersonating the fully enlightened Buddha in the process instituting this and other mandatory austerities. The Buddha left it to nuns, monks, and followers to be vegetarians if they chose without making it mandatory. He soon became very ill, urgently sought out the Buddha to apologize for his misguided views but, it is said, was swallowed by earth before he could do so because the earth was unable to bear the gravity of his misdeeds.]

Living on alms as they did in the conditions of rural India at the time, they would either have gravely embarrassed those who offered them food, or starved if they had refused all meat. At the same time, under modern conditions, especially in the West, the question does arise as to whether the Sangha might not educate the laity into offering only vegetarian food. Many Western Buddhists (and not only Mahayanists) are in fact vegetarians today.

In many schools of Mahayana Buddhism, vegetarianism is the rule, and some writers have indulged in polemics against the Theravada school on this score. This, whatever may be said, has not always been purely for reasons of compassion. Shinran Shonin, the founder o the Shin School in Japan, abolished compulsory vegetarianism along with celibacy because he construed it a penitential practice.

ELIXIR OF LIFE (Note 418)

The reference to an elixir noted above is interesting. E. Lamotte, The Teaching of Vimalakirti (English translation, PTS, London 1976), p. 313f., has an interesting and learned note in which he refers to deities mentioned in MN 36, who offered to insert a special divine essence into the Bodhisatta's pores to keep him alive, at the time of his extreme austerities.

He compares the Buddha's last meal with the wondrous food served to the Boddhisattvas by Vimalakriti, which takes seven days to digest, whereas the sukara-maddava eaten by the Buddha can only be digested by the Tathagata [another name for the Buddha] (or so we are told). The trouble was, of course, that in fact even the Tathagata failed to digest it! Cf. also SN 7.1.9.

THE LAST DAYS OF THE BUDDHA (Note 363)

With this Sutta [Sanskrit, sutra, "discourse"], Mrs. Bennett's volume of abridged translations comes to an end. Of greater value was The Last Days of the Buddha, translated by Sister Vajira and revised by Francis Story, with notes by the Ven. Nyanaponika Mahathera (Wheel Publication 67-69, BPS, Kandy 1964).

The Sutta is a composite one, many portions of which are found separately in other parts of the Canon, as listed by Rhys Davids. No doubt it contains the basic facts about the Buddha's last days, but various late and more than dubious elements have been incorporated in it -- a process which continued in the later Sanskrit versions (produced by the Sarvastivadins and other schools), which are known to us mainly from the Chinese and Tibetan translations (though some Sanskrit fragments have been found). For E. Waldschmidt's (German) study of these, see A.K. Warder, Indian Buddhism (2nd ed., London 1907), pp. 123-147.

It should perhaps be mentioned that the (expanded, Sanskrit-based) Mahaparinirvana Sutra is sometimes cited as evidence for the belief in a supreme self in Mahayana Buddhism. One Chinese version does indeed contain a passage to this effect, but this is a late interpolation, and is not representative of the general Mahayana position.

Buddha dies; Swine Sacrificed out of FEAR

Egypt will slaughter all its pigs out of fear of swine flu (AP).

The Buddha's last meal from which he became sick and passed away was at the house of Cunda, the blacksmith's son (buddhist-elibrary.org).

Non-vegetarian Buddhists don't avoid pork. But maybe they should. While historically in dispute, pork killed the Buddha. The dispute centers around the name of the dish offered to him -- "pig's delight" (sukara maddava) -- which could also refer to mushroom (truffles).

Neither seems suitable as "food." However, wandering mendicants do not have the luxury of choosing what they are offered. It is said that the Buddha well knew what the consequences of this meal would be. He asked the donor to only serve it to him and to bury the rest. The entire episode, coming well before the Buddha's final passing, is preserved in the Maha Parinibbana Sutta (D.II,127) of the Digha Nikaya (the "Great Final Passing Discourse of the Collection of Lengthy Discourses").

• BuddhismAtoZ.com: Last Meal
• Wisdom-Books.com: Buddha's Last Days

The following story illustrates a great Buddhist truth. All wrongdoing (harmful karma) has only four sources, four motivations, four roots: delusion, greed, aversion, and fear.

Egypt to Slaughter all of its Pigs out of Fear

Health worker sprays chemicals to disinfect local pig farm in Cairo, 4/27/09. Authorities will kill about 350,000 pigs (AP/Mohammed Ahmed).

CAIRO – Egypt began killing the roughly 300,000 pigs in the country today as a precau-tionary measure against the spread of swine flu -- even though no cases have been reported here yet, the Health Ministry said.

The move immediately provoked resistance from pig farmers. At one large pig farming center just north of Cairo, farmers refused to cooperate with Health Ministry workers, who came to slaughter the animals. And the workers left without carrying out the government order.

"It has been decided to immediately start slaughtering all the pigs in Egypt using the full capacity of the country's slaughterhouses," Health Minister Hatem el-Gabaly told reporters after a Cabinet meeting with President Hosni Mubarak.

Egypt's overwhelmingly Muslim population does not eat pork due to religious restrictions. But the animals are raised and consumed by the Christian minority, which some estimates put at 10 percent of the population. More>>