Owl precepts Q&A part 1 - killing

Question Rinpoche—in terms of the precept of avoiding killing—what is meant by ‘Tantrikas extend themselves to others . . . without abuse to the continuity of their own worthwhile existence’ . . . ?

Ngak’chang Rinpoche One should not feel bound to martyrdom in the fulfilment of vows. The idea of serving others until one falls apart is not only perverse – but somehow easier than being helpful to others whilst looking after yourself. If you merely ignore yourself and live only for others, you can avoid practising awareness. If you have to take yourself into account, then there is immediately a question of degrees and of where the balance might be found. That balance can only be discovered within awareness – where compassion is spontaneously present. It is not compassionate to martyr yourself. If you think of how it might feel to be the recipient of benefits which arose through someone’s martyrdom . . . how would that be? It might not be particularly nice. Even in terms of minor martyrdom – if someone is depriving themselves so that you can enjoy yourself – how much fun is that?

One of the most important things with all these precepts, is the knowledge that one cannot keep them. This is an interesting principle with all of them. It is always problematic. Especially in relation to meat and alcohol, there is always this big discussion going on; I think there was a whole thing in ‘Tricycle’ once about this. Some people would not even allow you to call yourself a Buddhist if you drink alcohol. What is one saying, when one is saying something like that? It is really saying: ‘I deny you the right to practice. You should go and do something else.’ It is an odd view to have.

Q Rinpoche, the Buddha didn’t forbid eating meat?

R No. Shakyamuni did not forbid anything – he simply pointed out the principle and function, and then gave advice. The precepts are expressed as ‘trainings’ not as a set of commandments.

Q What did he say about alcohol?

R Give me a shot of ‘Red-Eye’, bar steward? [laughs] The vow is to avoid intoxication – to avoid ‘that which clouds the mind’. Now certainly, if every time you start to drink you hit the bottle until you are in a state where your mind is clouded – then this is not useful. It is better to abstain if your relationship with alcohol is abusive. Different communities of Buddhists look upon these vows differently – but then there is no problem with how other people practise them. From the point of view of the ’ug gDong mKha’ ’gro sNying thig mDo, one has to be happy with how any other group interprets them; and to recognise that how they interpret them is fine according to their particular path. Khandro Déchen and I are not personally offended by other views – but people often are. Some people believe that other views cannot exist – and this arises from ‘truth-orientation’ rather than ‘method-orientation’. If one is ‘method-oriented’, then difference does not mean wrongness. If you are ‘truth-oriented’ then there may sometimes be conflict – because methods do conflict. Air-conditioning and central-heating conflict – but if someone understands their use, then they do not conflict, and it is understood that you do not have them operating at the same time.

Q Is the articulation that the precepts are basically not fulfillable – unique to Dzogchen, or unique to Khyungchen Aro Lingma’s gTérma?

R I do not know how unique it is. It is not part of the gTérma. That is merely part of our own expression of them. [laughs] I guess we were trying to be helpful. You see . . . to recognise that you cannot keep them is useful in terms of trying to keep them. They were always put across in the Sutras, as a training: ‘I attempt the training to refrain from . . .’ If you bear in mind that you are going to fail—and that it is not a terribly big deal if you fail—then you can attempt not to fail. If by chance you should succeed – then you can perhaps avoid canonising yourself for the achievement.

Q Because it is the awareness around it?

R Awareness is always the central issue. In the West the precepts have gradually come to be seen as commandments. We are so commandment-based. There were precept Nazis writing into Tricycle at one time saying that if you were not vegetarian that you could not call yourself a Buddhist.

Q But you couldn’t actually be a hunter could you?

R It depends who you are asking? If you are asking me, then I would say ‘yes’. If you buy a sausage at Safeway, then you are a hunter. You may be a pretty effete sort of hunter; but you are a hunter nonetheless: You hunted it down, and there it is – you’ve tracked it down to its lair and ceased it. It is no different. If you are going to eat the sausage, then you may as well have hunted the animal from whom the meat was derived. That is the view which Khandro Déchen and I hold. It is not exactly traditonal though.

Q There are some cagey ideas about meat having to be ‘passed through three hands . . .’ Where did that come from? What difference does that make?

R None at all. Whether it is scurrying around in the undergrowth or supine in the refrigerator section at the local supermarket makes no difference. I think that vegetarians would agree with me on this point. If you eat it you killed it. But we should not be harsh in our judgement of people who follow a principle – even if that principle is somehow . . . dubious. Having meat pass through the hands of three people is method – a method which stems from Sutra and the Outer Tantras where purity is important. It helps to maintain a sense of purity if one can feel ‘I didn’t kill it; and it wasn’t killed for me.’ This idea originally came from the fact that monks and nuns had to accept whatever was put in their begging bowls. If they found sausages in ther begging bowls they had to eat them. That was the idea. The idea was not to reject anything. Anyhow—no matter the number of hands intervening—Dza Paltrül Rinpoche refused to eat meat. He did not go for that angle.

Q But he did accept it from DoKhyentsé Yeshé Dorje?

R Naturally. DoKhyentsé Yeshé Dorje was his Tsawa’i Lama, and Inner Tantra takes precedence over Outer Tantra and Outer Tantra takes precedence over Sutrayana.

Q When one eats meat, should one always have the thought in one’s mind ‘This is the flesh of a being.’

R Yes – but more than that, one should remember that the animal did not want to die. That is important – and one should always authenticate with mantra. When you pass road-kills, you should authenticate a connection with mantra. That is an important action for a practitioner. There is a Thödröl mantra which is valuable for this purpose, which relates with the six dimensions of duality: ’a: A: Ha: Sha: Sa: Ma: [editors note: transmission is required before practising this mantra] These six syllables have the same function as the syllables of the mantra of Chenrézigs: Om Mani Pemé Hung:

Q Is that what is on the inner rim of the gÇod drum?

R The same.

Q When one does that, is the essential feeling or remembrance that one cannot separate oneself from that other being?

R Yes.

Q I’m trying to get at . . . I’m sort of getting into eating certain animals that are new to me; and I’m wondering, is it not good to get into a long, complex thing in your mind about what you are doing?

R No – that is rarely useful. It has to be a moment—a moment of recognition—not a moment of guilt and misery. When you are driving a car—especially in the summer—the windshield is a charnel ground, a mortuary of mosquitoes. We need to authenticate this with mantra as well. You see – here the vow not to kill is broken by everyone who drives a car. This is why a vegetarian car driver cannot claim that she or he does not kill. We all kill – simply by being alive.

Q Making that connection though – can that just be a sense of wishing that being well, whatever that being is?

R Certainly – whenever you see the insects on the windshield. It is important to not ignore that.

Q Rinpoche, does this precept also includes plants?

R Yes – from the point of view of the ’ug gDong mKha’ ’gro sNying thig mDo. And we can practise that by not wasting food. I like the attitude the American Indians have about hunting. It seems sane. They talk about animals making their give-away; and that they also have to make their give-away. Everything has to do this. I am eating this now – but I am hunted as well. I am hunted by life – and in the end life will hunt me down and kill me. Maybe an animal will get me, or maybe old-age will get me – but something or other will definitely get me. They had respect for what they hunted. Hunting is honest. You use a bow and arrow, or a gun. You hunt the animal and you bring it back. One of the things that is so sick in our culture is factory-farming – cooping animals up in cages. This is deranged and depraved behaviour.

Q One needs to respect everything; plants and animals. But if one has a stronger feeling for animals? For me, that is a different practice.

R This is why we do not have any carnivorous regime here – apart from Tsog’khorlo. It is important that you go with your feeling on this. You follow your compassionate perception in terms of what is real for you. Certain apprentices will be vegetarian—others not—and there is no saying which is better. If you have a compassionate feeling, then you go with that – but you must acknowledge the relativity of your choice. All such practice is relative and relatively valuable according to the individual. Everyone should practise—in this respect—what they need to practise, according to relative circumstances and to the emotional impact of their circumstances. If you take that into account; then it becomes compassionate activity. Simply being vegetarian on purist principle, and vituperating against carnivores and omnivores lacks any real sense of compassion. If you take your food ethics as relative practice—as an individual practice of bodhicitta—then it can be profound. Simply snarfing sausages does not make you a Tantrika – it might just define you as a cretin.

Q Rinpoche, if your country has a death penalty, aren’t you responsible for that death as well?

R As a Tantrika, yes. You have a connection—however tenuous—you have a connection. And that is not only if it is your country. Even if you visit a country where there is a death penalty it is the same. I travel to the USA. I use your roads. I use your toilets. I eat your food. I drink your water. There is always connection. I once read about a Buddhist retreat where there were children; and they got the children to play games of connection – to connect things with each other. Interesting—isn’t it—to think how you could be connected with a rhinoceros in Africa because of this, and this, and this, and this . . . It is possible to connect yourself with anything—stage by stage—even from the book you are reading, or a thing you own, or from a relative. Anything connects with anything; and going through those stages is illuminating.

Q I heard recently that someone had done a statistical model that, if you take all the people you know, that’s one set; then all the people they know . . . You are only five people away from everyone in the world.

Q2 ‘Six Degrees of Separation’.

Q3 Now when I buy stuff in stores, I like to see where it is made. We have a strong connection to people in China, because they make about two-thirds of all the things we buy in our stores.

Q4 From the point of view of Tantra, you would not discriminate about buying Chinese goods?

R No.

Q3 Not from the political point; but just from the point that there are a lot of people making stuff. And that stuff that they are making with their hands, I am now using. Not like, ‘their government is doing bad things . . .’

Q2 So the political, or maybe it’s just a human, instinct – that you don’t want to be connected to something that is bad, or nasty in any way – even if it involves oppressing people, killing people, or killing animals . . . The Tantric point of view is that you cannot really get away from the connection?

R Quite so.

Q2 Even if you are not a meat eater? The killing is occurring somewhere, somehow.

R Yes; even if you take a taxi ride from a carnivore: You give the taxi driver money – the taxi driver buys the sausage. There is nothing you can do to cut your link with that sausage.

Q2 So it is a matter of being aware – just the awareness?

R Quite so.

Q In terms of what you buy and what you do not buy . . .

R That is a relative consideration. It is in terms of what you feel your capacity is as a practitioner. If you are some great yogi or yogini, you would deliberately buy your groceries from all the worst dictatorships—in order to establish connection—in order to be of benefit for those people. If—like me—you are not such a wonderful practitioner, then you might not go that far. This would have to be gauged on your realistic sense of your practice.

Q4 Do you have to make sure that you don’t damage yourself with that practice? I mean of buying your groceries from the worst dictatorships—in order to establish connection?

R No. You simply have to ascertain that you are not an idiot or a bellicose Buddhist buffoon. You have to make sure—to the best of your ability—that you have real compassion. You have to have the integrity to know that you are not merely game playing. Whatever stance you take – you have to be real.

Q2 And no matter what you do, you are going to have your relationship with whatever it is – whether it is one of assistance, or one of objection, or one of support – it is always a relationship. Is that the primary thing?

R Yes.

Q5 So the Nazi and the Jew can be linked by compassion?

R An unusual question—but yes. However – my affirmative reply would need to be understood from the perspective of Vajrayana. One cannot simply make a statement like that outside the context of Dzogchen. It would not be an act of compassion to say that to anyone whose understanding was not authentically informed by the practice of compassion in terms of Vajrayana. The most important thing – is being real. The most important thing – is not to imagine that we can be pure in some way, simply by governing our external behaviour. The Jains used to wear spiked shoes that kept you off the ground, so that they did not squash insects. Jains wore netting ‘mouth covers’ so that they did not breathe in living beings. This is extremely worthy at one level – but somewhat naïve. The best way not to kill anything is actually to kill yourself and to lie there and rot, so that beings eats you . . . but then . . . what if some animal eats so much of you that they get indigestion and suffer? There is no way out of such insanity.

Q5 We tend to think of nature as morally neutral. I turn on the TV, and a lion is eating a zebra; and that is the way things are. In the animal realm, is there motivation? Can there be compassionate motivation there? If a lion is killing a zebra to feed her cubs, in some ways, can we call that compassionate motivation? It seems so natural. Our compassion seems more complicated.

R We are more complicated – which is both a problem and an advantage.

Q5 Is that why our intentions have this far wider kyil’khor? Is that right?

R I would imagine so.