Eating Meat and Offering

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Published on Wednesday, 01 June 2016 00:00

Q: Good Morning Garchen Rinpoche! I understand we have to do offering before eating to Buddha but if the food we eat is meat can we still offer to Buddha?

A: Especially we should offer the meat, because the meat come from a birth of an animal. So in the past life, they ate us and now we eat them. So if you offer this meat, then in the future if they are born again as an animal, they will not eat me in return, actually they will be born as a human being. Actually, first they are born in god realm and slowly then born in human realm. In human realm, they practice the dharma and slowly attain enlightenment. By offering it, they will not be born again as an animal. So think of it as eating the ignorance, so you cultivate love for them so that erases their ignorance.  Because flesh is actually related to the affliction of ignorance and think that deity devours it. When it become free from ignorance, then its mind is the Buddha and becomes completely pure.  

So you think that this will interrupt them and bring an end to being reborn as animal, if you eat the meat with love and compassion, you can benefit them in this way, it brings an end to being born as an animal. If you eat them without mindfulness, now you eat the animal, in the future they will eat you again in another life. They will go in circle, all life taking turns in different life times, you will eat each other. So therefore we should cultivate compassion for the meat and recite om mani pad me hung, it will not be again reborn again as animal, in this way having eaten the meat it has brought some benefit to these sentient beings.