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Lankavatara Sutra & The Faults of Eating Meat (cont'd) - 3/7

“O Mahamati, in order to avoid such things, a Bodhisattva one who has compassion should never eat meat of any kind. O Mahamati, Bodhisattvas keep themselves from meat of every kind. For those who feed on meat, already in this present life, their breath is foul and rank; whey sleep with little ease, and they awake in pain. Dreadful visions haunt their drams enough to make their hair stand up. Alone in solitude or else in empty houses, they fall victim to spirits that come and prey upon their vital strength. They easily succumb to fits of rage and the sudden onset of intense anxiety and dread. They lose all mastery of the way they eat and gorge themselves excessively. Food and drink and every vital nourishment they cannot properly digest. Worms infest their bowels, and they fall victim to contagious ailments, leprosy, and other ills. Yet, thus beset, they never think that eating meat might be the cause."

“I have declared that food can be either as wholesome as medicine or as dreadful as the flesh of children eaten and consumed as food. Meat is the food of ordinary people, Mahamati, but the Aryas reject it utterly. Meat consumption is the source of many evils; it is wholly destitute of virtue. It is not the food on which the wise sustain themselves. How could I permit my followers to taste of such unwholesome and unfitting nourishment as meat and blood? I say rather, Mahamati, that those who follow me should eat the food that Aryas themselves consume and that the common folk reject? Food that is productive of good qualities and is free of taint the wholesome foodstuffs of the wise of old. For my disciples, I prescribe a fitting nourishment: rice and barley, wheat and peas, every kind of bean and lentil, butter, oil, honey, treacle, fruits and sugar cane. I do this, Mahamati, because the time will come when fools whose minds are busy with speculation will chatter about the Vinaya. And strong in their desire for meat due to habit, they will say that flesh is wholesome fare."

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