RICE AND MEAT

In Thailand, the meals revolve around rice. In fact the phrase for "time to eat" is literally "eat rice." Humans are believed to share the same mystical substance as that of rice, khwan. If you do not have rice with every meal you run the risk of suffering some kind of misfortune. In the north of Thailand, it is common to have a particular kind of rice, called "sticky" rice. You simply pick up some up and roll it into a ball with your hands and then use it to pick up whatever other food you will be eating with the meal. Villagers use bamboo to cook sticky rice within when they are out foraging in the woods. Two main techniques are used for the farming of rice: the slash and burn method that is common in the north and the flooding method that is common in central Thailand. The slash and burn method adds to the air pollution and requires increasingly large amounts of land in order for a farmer to stay productive and allow the land to rest after several years of production in one spot. With increasing production of rice, more forest lands have been taken over for farming.

Most Thai people, including the monks, are not vegetarians. Among the lowest economic strata, one might find some vegetarians, but mostly because of economics, not for any religious or philosophical reason. When I traveled to Thailand in January of 2003 for my second experience, I was joined by 11 students, most of whom are vegetarians. Everywhere we went, this was always the first question we were asked: Why don't we eat meat? We gave our various reasons and yet another contradiction arose for many of us: how a nation that espouses Buddhist principles, with a key principle of no-harm (ahimsa) why would it not be obvious why some of us do not consume meat? Given the ways that meat production is also wrapped up with abusive factory farming practices or the ways meat production requires great amounts of land in order to graze animals, for many of the students it seemed like a very "Buddhist" idea to abstain from meat. Yet in Thailand, where 90% of the people are Buddhists, meat consumption is a given. The monks, because they beg for their food, are required to take whatever is offered to them. They do not see the eating of meat as a contradiction, because they do not kill the animal themselves. One of the Buddhist groups in Thailand, Santi Asok, that is seeking to return Buddhism to what they believe are its main principles is vegetarian. This sect of Buddhism in Thailand has been deemed heretical by the Thai government. With the exception of a few Buddhist groups, such as the Chinese Mahayana Buddhist order of Kuan Yin, the Theravada Buddhists of Thailand are meat eaters.