http://cttbusa.org/vegetarianism/cttbveg2.asp Interesting view of why eating flesh is violence, from a talk given in Hawaii.
I loved this <3. To eat meat is absolutely to cause suffering, so abstaining from eating meat makes absolute sense from a Buddhist perspective. I am not educated enough to call myself a Buddhist without feeling artificial, but I find truth in a lot of their philosophies. When I was very young, I would refuse to consume meats because, as I explained to my parents, "they taste too alive." I can now dismiss those ascertains as the strange statements of child, but sometimes I still wonder.
I don't think this is correct by default. What about roadkill (just one example)? The most suffering it could possibly cause is on my stomach. In all seriousness, some animals suffer more in their natural habitat where they possibly die and rot without being eaten by a mammal (smaller animals will feast on it of course) than others that live in captivity and are basically born to be consumed one day.
That leads to the Good Life theory that suggests a living, sentient being bred simply to live as a resource has a good life compared to wild cousins. Often refuted by comments that enslaved humans don't have a good life.
It depends on the details of those animal lifes bred in captivity. It is retarded to make some theoretical principle out of it that they don't have good lifes simply because 'they're in capticiivty'. Going by real life examples it is hard to argue that a lot of animals living in captivity all their life have worse lifes than wild animals of the same species. A lot of them don't. Space, open air, a relatively natural environment and/or even some choice for the animal to go outside at their own leisure or scratch a calcium rock etc. etc. should all be taken in account. Obviously the more they get seen as just a resource or product the more chance animals in captivity don't have such good lifes indeed. This is obviously happening as well. But to state it as a principle that it is always like that with animals in captivity is awfully wrong (even when they are held with the goal to be consumed one day). It doesn't work or is entirely correct as a dogma.
http://13497-presscdn-0-48.pagely.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Farrowing-3.jpg http://thetuscangun.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/pboar1_1383865c.jpg
Bit too simplistic drummin. I could post pics too if i wanted of a sick animal taken care for in captivity and one in the wild that dies slowly and in the end gets eaten alive. For example. Maybe being part of the food chain is simply what is causing suffering.
I stated two POV in post #4. You are trying to turn the thread to a debate of those POV. Which is a viable thread of its own. I need more folks making threads in here, so please, please open the discussion. Did you read the talk linked in the OP?
If I may play devil's advocate: From one type of Buddhist perspective there are no individual entities to begin with. The doctrine of interdependency states that everything is dependent on everything else. A pig, for example, is not just the physical being that we describe as a pig, but the entire set of circumstances that allow the pig to exist. That would include all past genetic material and mutations that allow a pig to manifest at this time, the flora and fauna needed for its present existence, the various atmospheric gases, water, gravity, Van Allen Belt, etc.; all that are needed for the pig to exist. If any are removed...the pig may cease to exist (remember everything is related so the removal of even a minor element implies the removal of a part of every element). Looking at it this way, the pig is merely another manifestation of myself, and everyone and everything else. So, who is doing the eating and who is getting eaten? Of course the pig still squeals if you stick it with a fork.
Same thing. Violence against who by whom? One reason this is not discussed much in the open...some can take it as a licence to commit violence. The thing is an enlightened individual has no desire to commit violent acts against someone, or thing, else as he or she realizes it is also violence against themselves.
And there's a prohibition on harming oneself, so by extension, the argument could go, any violence is covered by that prohibition.
