Better Way - Zero Defects 0dfx
Add to My Profile | More Videos
Some people have been mouthing off (or is it "fingering off" since they were typing their comments, why does that sound so rude?) about vegetarianism, both here and over at Gudo's blog. I've commented on the subject numerous times. But here goes again.There's no requirement in Buddhism to be a vegetarian like there is in, say, the International Society of Krishna Consciousness or the Seventh Day Adventists. It's purely a matter of personal choice. I happen to have gone veg a year or so before I discovered Zen. In the past 25 years I've eaten meat about four times, and never because I really wanted to. I was either trying to be polite to someone who served it to me, or didn't know it was in what I was eating, or didn't want to food to go to waste. I don't crave meat and never did from the very beginning. I don't even think of it as food anymore. For me it's kind of like eating a shoe or eating a dead worm would be to "normal" people.
Neither of my teachers are vegetarian. Tim used to describe himself as a "liberal vegetarian," which, he said, was like being a liberal celibate. "Yeah, I'm celibate. But I still fuck sometimes!" Nishijima Sensei once told me he thought the world would be far more peaceful if more people were vegetarians. But he's not. He rarely eats meat, though he does eat fish pretty often.
The problem of vegetarianism in Zen practice is that it so often becomes a huge mental block. It's a tremendous way of defining the ego. This is why you'll hear stories of Zen teachers tricking their veggie students into eating meat. I probably won't do that to anybody, though. But you never know...
Anyway, tonight I'm going to go interview one of the members of the band Dengue Fever on behalf of Suicide Girls. The group plays Cambodian style rock and are the amazing beyond belief. Highly recommended.
I've got a number of interviews scheduled. It's a new thing, but maybe I can make some sort of a sideline career out of interviewing people. Coming up I'll be talking to Randy Blythe of the heavy metal monsters Lamb of God. Randy is a fan of my books and a Zen practitioner, a rarity in the world of metal as you can imagine. I'll also be talking to Nina Hartley, Eighties mega porn star whose new book Nina Hartley's Guide to Total Sex
, starts off with her recounting how she grew up as the daughter of a pair of Zen Buddhists. In her e-mail to me she said it was the first time she was going to be interviewed by someone who practices Zazen. Should be interesting! Tomorrow I'll be at a big Suicide Girls bash in support of their new association with PETA. I got mixed feelings about PETA, as you can imagine from the earlier part of this posting. But I do agree people should treat animals nicer. Besides, two of the SG's who'll be involved in the fashion show have been attending my Saturday morning sittings at Hill Street, so a reciprocal show of support is in order, I think.
Man, this posting has taken way longer that I ever thought. I gotta go! Bye!
