February 28th, 2010
So, as it happens, I’m living with nine chickens, only one of which is rubber. The rest are about two weeks old – give or take a few days – but they act like they’re thirteen, never cleaning up, backtalking, etc. Why on earth? you may ask. A) My family buys the expensive free-range omega-FA eggs, at about $3.5/dz so we’re hoping to cut that cost by more than half, and B) teach the kids a bit about where food comes from in the process. C) The bit about having a bunch of pets is just gravy.
Thing is, here in town we’re only allowed to have hens. [We're only allowed 6 + indefinite rubber ones, but more on that another time.] There are a few breeds, called “sex link,” (of which we have a red one) that show the sex by the color as soon as they’re born. For the others, there’s a fair amount of guesswork involved. At about eight weeks the roosters begin to try out their crows and show their hand.
As a Buddhist, and generally-besides a lover of animals, I do my best to refrain from harm, but SOP for discovering a rooster is to take them back to the feed store and wash your hands of it. What happens to those roosters? I’m in a semi-rural area, so one likes to think that they go to a good home and spend their days makin’ it with the ladies, but for all I know they get hammered on the head and thrown in a dumpster. [Apparently the breeding houses grind the male chicks into generic protein goo at the factory – some good karma there, eh?]
All of this brings to the fore a dirty bit about animal husbandry in general: at the root of it all is using animals to produce food, even if it is simply unfertilized poultry menstruation. (Yes, I know what I said. Side note: ever had scrambled egg with ketchup? It’s better than it sounds.) How as a Buddhist does one balance the appropriation of a lifeform for one’s own profit, with the cherishing of all beings as one’s mother? The monk or nun is prohibited from hoarding food, and must beg daily and eat before noon, and never of meat killed specifically for them (or that has changed hands less than three times, etc.) All of this is great as skillful means to aid the generation of compassion, but as a general paradigm for the masses it seems pretty unworkable, simply passing the buck for the karma involved in food production from the eater to the one willing to actually get the food.
[Objection/digression/side-note: is there a way to include meat in the diet while doing less than passing the buck to someone else who would accumulate the bad karma, and if not how can simply passing hands three times eliminate the karmic outflow in an otherwise seamless closed system? Even commercial vegetable production involves massive wholesale slaughter of field mice and rabbits and worms, etc. Does this mean the only true ahimsa diet is fruit? What about beings that would have eaten that and will now be hungry or at least distressed looking for more food?]
The other extreme of this is to simply own up to the dirty work and not put anything in your mouth that you haven’t caused to be on the table, becoming a hunter-gatherer essentially. The thought appeals, even though it goes against certain aspects of Buddhist vows, simply because of the very real realness of it: you want to eat that? you turn it into food. Done with mindfulness and wisdom I can imagine the yogi being able to generate even much greater compassion and much faster than the one who does everything properly and relies on alms, thanking the universe for the nourishment that falls before them, unaccepting and unthinking of the death and sadness – the dukkha – that goes into every bite no matter how hard we work toward the contrary.
My chickens, for the record, are slated for a life of relative luxury, wandering around a quarter acre of suburbia, being groomed and held and entertained, fed an all-natural (and corn-free) diet in a posh insulated and winter-heated coup for the duration of their lives. (We aren’t allowed to slaughter and eat backyard chickens even if that were something I would do.) All in exchange for a life of celibacy, maybe preparing them for monk- or nun- hood in a future life.
B’kawk!
