Can Buddhists eat meat?
- What have we said time and again? Buddhists can do whatever they want. However, killing (or violating any of the other precepts) is not keeping in line with what the Buddha taught.
- "Pig's Delight" (sukaramaddava): truffles, but in the case of the final meal offering, inadvertently poisonous/toxic mushrooms picked in error thinking them truffles, which pigs love
- Rule: A Buddhist monastic is not allowed to eat three kinds of "meat" (slaughtered flesh) -- that of a living being that is seen, heard, or suspected of having been killed for one's sake
Did the Buddha pass away from eating meat or mushrooms or by choice?
The precise contents of the Buddha's final meal are not clear, due to variant scriptural traditions and ambiguity over the translation of certain significant terms like sukara-maddava.
The Theravada tradition generally believes that the Buddha was offered "pig's delight" (sukaramaddava) which could be slaughtered pork or some kind of mushroom/food pigs delight in that was offered by the blacksmith Cunda, while the Mahayana tradition believes that the Buddha consumed a truffle or other mushroom [mistaken to be edible].
These differing translations may reflect the different traditional views on Buddhist vegetarianism and the precepts for monastics (monks and nuns) [265] as well as laypersons.
Modern scholars disagree on this topic, arguing both for pig's delight, pig's flesh, or some kind of plant or mushroom that pigs delight in eating [z].
Whatever the case, none of the sources that mention the last meal attribute the Buddha's sickness to the meal itself [266]. But it is widely thought that he suffered severe illness from being unable to safely digest to toxic food, which he directed Cunda to dig a hole and bury rather than offering to any other monastic present at the meal.
As per the "Great Final Nirvana Discourse" (Mahaparinibbana Sutta), after the meal with Cunda the blacksmith, the Buddha and his monastic companions continued to walk until he was too weak to continue.
They stopped at Kushinagar (near modern Gorakphur, India), where Ānanda was directed by the Buddha to prepare a resting place of folded robes between two sala trees in a delightful grove [267, 268].
After announcing to the Monastic Sangha (spiritual community) that he would soon be passing away, reclining into final nirvana, the Buddha personally ordained one last novice into the Monastic Order. His name was Subhadda [267].
He then repeated his final exhortations to the Sangha, which was that when he was no longer present to guide them, the Dhamma and Vinaya (Doctrine and Discipline, Teaching and Training) was to be their guide.
Then he asked if anyone had any doubts about the Teachings, but nobody did [269]. The Buddha waited, satisfied that anyone who would have like to speak or ask any final question had the opportunity to do so.
His final words are reported to have been: "All formations (saṅkhāras, fabrications) are hurtling towards destruction. Strive for the goal with diligence (appamāda)." In Pali this is, "vayadhammā saṅkhārā appamādena sampādethā" [270, 271].
He then entered the eight jhanas as his final meditation forward and then reversing, as verified by a psychic monk near him, reaching what is known as parinirvana ("final nirvana"). He did not "die," for if he had, he would be reborn as all ordinary being are reborn in accordance with their karma.
Rather than being reborn, "the Five Aggregates of physical and mental phenomena clung to as self that constitute a being cease to occur" [272] just as a fire, having exhausted its substrate of fuel goes out. But what is it that really goes out, a being? No, what goes out completely is ignorance.
The Mahaparinibbana Sutta reports that as his final act, the Buddha performed a final meditation of entering the first four material meditative absorptions (jhanas) consecutively, then the four immaterial absorptions, and finally a meditative dwelling known as "the extinction of feeling and perception" (nirodha-samāpatti), which should not be thought of as a permanent "extinction" since many Buddhist meditation practitioners are able to reach this attainment even now throughout life. It is said that only noble ones (those who have attained the stages of enlightenment) are able to reach it and can do so as often as they like as many times as they like. If it were a permanent extinction, no one would be able to do it a second, third, or thousandth time.
Before returning to the fourth absorption (jhana) right at the moment of passing into final nirvana without remainder [273, 268].
Having traveled and taught, the Buddha took his last meal, a sincere offering from a blacksmith named Cunda. But having eaten it, he fell violently ill. Not wishing that Cunda have remorse or misgivings about his offering, the Buddha instructed his personal attendant Ānanda to tell Cunda something.
The meal offering eaten at his place had nothing to do with his passing. Moreover, such an offering was an extraordinary source of merit because it was provided as a last meal for a buddha [262] tantamount to an offering of food to a bodhisatta before his attainment of supreme awakening (buddhahood, arahantship, great-enlightenment).
Bhikkhu Mettanando and Oskar von Hinüber argue that the Buddha passed away due to mesenteric infarction, a symptom of old age, rather than mushroom food poisoning [263, 264]. More
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