Two years ago, 5-year-old\u00a0Luiz Antonio stole the hearts of many around the world when he refused to eat meat, telling his laughing\/weeping mother (translated from Portuguese), \u201cWhen we eat animals, they die. Why? \u2026 I don\u2019t like that they die\u2026\u00a0These animals \u2026 you gotta take care of them \u2026 and not eat them.\u201d<\/p>\n
And now, another child, this time from Ireland, will melt your heart with her tear-filled explanation to her father, \u201cI don\u2019t like what people eat, animals. I just don\u2019t want them to be chopped up.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPigs are nice. Chickens are nice. Cows are nice,\u201d she continues.<\/p>\n
https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Sl9lDtTOE_U<\/a><\/p>\n The place of vegetarianism in Buddhism<\/a> is often debated. As discussed here:\u00a0A Buddhist Sutta on the ethics of eating meat<\/a>, there is no injunction against monks eating meat, so long as it isn\u2019t procured (read: chopped up) specifically for them as far as they know. Likely in line with his pragmatic approach to applied ethics, the Buddha refused to make vegetarianism a rule in his community. Instead he suggested a sort of non-picky-ness, saying that monks and nuns should accept whatever is offered with gratitude.<\/p>\n At the same time, he taught against the efficacy of animal sacrifice, common in his day, and set out the first precept (to be followed by willing lay people as well as monastics) that one should abandon causing harm to living beings. Animals, in Buddhist cosmology, are also seen as not so different from humans insofar as any of them might have been humans in a past life (and in the infinity of time, all beings, it is said, have at one time been our mothers) and we as humans have likely been animals in some past life and could quite possibly be one in a future life.<\/p>\n