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will repeat this. So there is no danger, if only one person eats on one day a small piece of meat."
He said, "Eat everything that has fallen into your begging bowl."
And this became for the cunning mind of man a loophole, that, "Buddha is not against meat; just you have not to kill, he is against killing. If meat is given to you, offered to you, you have to respectfully receive it."
So now in China and Japan, all the Buddhists are non-vegetarian. Not a single Buddhist is vegetarian. And in every food shop, restaurant they make it clear that here non-vegetarian food is available which has not been especially killed -- it is from animals dying on their own.
Now, so many animals don't die on their own. And in fact, few animals do; you will never find how they die. Have you seen a cow or a crow dying, dead? Once in a while perhaps because of electric wires... otherwise before dying, somehow they disappear. They disappear deep in forests, they disappear into mountains, to find a peaceful grave.
Just nearby, there is one of the national deer parks with thousands of deer. I used to go there often. It is deep in the forest, just one small resthouse and a big lake, and in the night thousands of deer will come to drink water. And in the night their eyes shine like stars. You see lines of stars moving around the lake, reflected in the lake. It is one of the most beautiful scenes that I have ever seen.
I have watched those deer. I enquired of the resthouse peon who took care of the resthouse, "Have you seen any deer dead?"
He said, "Millions of people must have come to see this park; nobody has asked such a question. No, I have never seen a single deer dead."
And I asked him, "Don't you ever wonder where they disappear?"
He said, "The very question has never arisen in me."
From where in China, in Korea, in Taiwan, in Burma, in Japan -- in all Buddhist countries... It seems the animals have a special joy: they come into the restaurants and die on their own -- spontaneously. And not a single Buddhist monk ever raises the question that, "This is absolutely absurd, this is not possible. Animals have to
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