Years ago I took the Buddhist precepts with the Kwan Um School of Zen and the first precept was pretty clear –

I vow to abstain from taking life.

The commentary on this precept states that:

Killing roots out our seeds of love and mercy.  To kill another is to feast on one’s  friends and relatives.  Some day we shall be in one of the three painful realms in payment for our killing, for it is by bestowing life that we receive human life in return.

A few weeks ago I started killing fish for food.  This is something I’d done only a few times in the past 35 years since becoming a Buddhist and, mostly a vegetarian or vegan.   After coming down with SIBO and becoming gluten and casein intolerant I found I could no longer keep eating a vegetarian diet.  This was a hard pill to swallow at first, I was very hesitant to eat meat.  I wondered if it was right to eat other beings in order to stay alive myself since in reality the animals that I would be eating were as deserving of life as I was  even though I am a human and higher on the food chain.

I tried for a few weeks just to live on fish, something I’d eaten off and on over the years after giving up red meat and poultry.  Then I added poultry since I couldn’t just eat fish all the time thinking I could live on non-mammal flesh only.   Within a month I came to the realization that I needed to eat some actual meat with fat and began eating bison, venison, beef and pork.  I really had no choice in the matter, I had to stop being a vegetarian in order to stay alive and meat meals were effectively medicine for me at this point.   I have serious doubts as to whether I’ll ever be able to go back to a vegetarian diet at this point, I sort of foresee being on the Specific Carbohydrate Diet for the next 1-2 years and then with luck can move to a more general Paleo diet after that.

Granted, there is no explicit precept that states Buddhists cannot eat meat though most American Zen practitioners I know of are vegetarian or vegan.  I’ve heard Tibetan Buddhists eat a lot of meat because they need to living in an area where plant life is scarce but animal protein can be found.   The precepts are specifically against killing or against eating meat that was killed for you personally.   This to me seems to be kind of a loophole in the prohibition against killing.  It is OK to eat some meat as long as it was just randomly killed and then you got it but isn’t acceptable to go kill your own dinner or accept a dinner killed for you by a friend.  This seems to skirt the responsibility for what you are doing, eating another living being in order to sustain your own life.

I decided that the responsible thing to do given my situation was to get personally involved with my food gathering and yes, kill for my meals and eat meat that was specifically killed for me.  This is keeping more in line  with the Paleo lifestyle I am aiming for.  I started with fish since they are plentiful in my local lakes and I’ve killed and eaten my share of fish in the past, especially growing up.  I thank each fish for giving its life for me before quickly dispatching it and cleaning it.   I’ve been eating trout about every other day for the last few weeks since I started this practice of fishing for food instead of just for sport and practicing catch & release like I’d always done in the last decades.

I personally know the pig I’m going to be having killed and butchered this fall to supply me with pork for the next year.  I am currently searching for a grass-fed cow for the same reason, to buy a local, well cared for animal that will supply me with food and yes, it will be killed and butchered specifically for me.   I’m signed up for butchering class so I can learn how to properly cut up an animal myself.

This fall I am considering, for the first time in 36 years, taking up hunting again to help supply game meats.    I know several people who supply their families with meat through hunting and they take full responsibility for the food they are eating, even butchering and packaging the meat themselves.   I remember reading a chapter in a Zen book by Marion Mountain from the Minneapolis Zen Center years ago about her partner being a deer hunter and supplying venison which she ate, figuring he was killing the deer in a responsible manner even if it went against the first precept.

There is a Zen saying to “know when to keep the precepts and know when to break the precepts.”  I am now feeling that breaking the first precept and taking responsibility for your food seems to be more in line with the precepts as a whole than just focusing on the literal meaning of the first precept itself so I will continue to be a Buddhist who kills for their food as long as I have to eat meat in order to stay healthy.