On Sat, 23 Nov 1996, ombodhi thoren st john wrote:

>Karma?  just don't run over my dogma.  karma = cause & effect.
> many tibetan buddhists eat meat, but don't kill the animal themself (bad
> karma), foisting it upon the (usually foreign, definitely lower "caste")
> butcher.  i personally don't buy this karmic switcheroo.  i've heard the
> dalai lama ate meat, went vegetarian, then his physician(s?) advised him to
> include meat, and now he eats meat.  in his speeches he instructs tibetans
> to try cutting down their flesh intake.  i would like more solid
> confirmation of this, if anyone knows.

This is true.  It was in a book I must have read a few years ago.
Essentially he decided to go vegetarian for philosophical reasons.
People gave him a lot of advice on how to do it and he followed their
advise.  I don't remember exactly what the advice was but remember
thinking "This is really bad advice".  As best as I remember the advice
was something like to eat a lot of protein - mainly lots of nuts and
beans.  It seemed to me that the advice did not come from people on actual
vegetarian diets themselves.  Anyway he did this for awhile, ran into
health problems, and his doctor told him to quit and go back to eating
meat.

I don't remember the name of the book.  It might have been a question and
answer type book.

An issue for Tibetans living in Tibet was that there just wasn't that much
to eat other than animal products.  So in Tibet the procedure was to
technically only purchase meat that had been already slaughtered for
a non-buddhist.  They also ate a lot of butter and milk products.

I went to a talk once by a Tibetan Lama in D.C.  During break we went
upstairs for refreshments.  There was a lot of fruit and some raisins and
nuts there.  It looked like plenty of stuff for a raw food vegan.  I went
to take some of the fruit but was told it was for the lama (this was by
the lady who's house it was).  I should have a cookie instead.  I was a
bit put out but didn't say anything.  Anyway I figured that the lama was a
probably a raw foodist.  As I remember he was something like 70 years old
and very skinny.  Seemed to be in pretty good health.  He had completed
some huge amount of years in retreat.

Michael