The Moral Vacuum That Ignores The Suffering Of Animals

A trend in contemporary Western Buddhism that is just as pernicious is the growing tendency to treat the Buddha as just another self-help guru, like Wayne Dyer or Dr. Phil, whose lecture series might show up on public television during the pledge drive. According to this school of thought, the purpose of spiritual practice is to reduce stress, lower anxiety, and generally make us better adjusted and less neurotic. Advocates of Buddhism as self-help do not so much deny the importance of compassion as reduce it to a set of mental exercises that fill us with warm fuzzies while having little or no effect on the world around us. The Buddha taught that we cannot achieve our own happiness until we are prepared to sacrifice it for the happiness of others. Buddhist self-help coaches teach that we can not make others happy until we first make ourselves happy. It is, as the saying goes, a question of priorities.

Most of the discussion about whether Buddhists should eat meat takes place in this kind of moral vacuum. That is to say, it deals exclusively with the mental state of the practitioner and ignores the suffering of the animals. As long as this trend continues, the role of veganism in Buddhist practice will never be properly understood.

---The Great Compassion: Buddhism and Animal Rights, by Norm Phelps---