長文の訳お願いします
Sakyamuni(566?-480 B.C.) was the
founder of Buddhism. He was born
into the Sakya clan in Lumbini in
present day Nepal. One day, one of his disciples went to a certain village that was living in fear of a terrible dragon. Even the birds were so frightened of the dragon that they would not fly over the village. The disciple spent a night sitting in Zen meditation, and the next day reasoned with the dragon so successfully that it converted to Buddhism. The disciple gained instant fame by this, and the vilagers went all out in their hospitality to him. They game him all the liquor he could hold, and he got completely drunk. Seeing his disciple who had just tamed a terrible dragob too drunk even to reason with a little frog, Sakyamuni forbade the drinking of liquor. Sakyamuni declared that liquor was to be avoided because, taken in excess, it leads to mistaked and confusion, and people are no longer able to distinguish the important from the trival.
One of the sutras states that drinking to excess leads to: 1) loss of wealth 2) illness 3) becoming argumentative 4) loss of reputation by revealing weak points 5) becoming prone to violence 6) loss of wisdom. These six points could refer to anyone, not just Buddhists. Some Buddhist sects are stricter than others, but where
liquor is concerned, all Buddhist priests take the non-drinking doctrine seriously, and preach it to Buddhist believers.
It may at first sound surprising, but Buddhism does not forbid the eating of meat. In the earliest days of Buddhism, lay people said to the ascetics, "You enjoy eating poultry and rice, but it's said you frown on worldly things. What exactly does
that mean? The ascetics replied, "The talking of life, theft, and adultery are all types of Worldly behavior. Simply shaving our heads and refusing to eat meat is not what true asceticism is about."
I have frequently visited Buddhist temples in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam. The monks eat the food they collect in their begging bowls each morning. The foods
are various: cooked chicken, sautéed fish, hardboiled eggs, and vegetables with white rice. All the food is delicious for having been donated with kindness by local people.
The oldest monk mixes all the different foods together by hand, and then encourages the other monks to eat, saying,"Help yourselves."
The oldest monk spoke about his job. "We never see animals being killed for food, and as long as the animals are not killed for our benefit, we receive the meat gratefully.
Everyone enjoys delicious food. I mix the food to make sure it is not too delicious, otherwise we will think more about food than about religious training."Devout Buddhists in Southeast Asia are not allowed to eat solid food from noon on. For the
rest of the day, they are allowed only water and tea. This, too, may be considered an austerity that is tied to food.
There are two large schools of Buddhism. One is found in Southeast Asia, and is said to be the original Buddhism practiced at the time of Sakyamuni. The other, found in East Asia (including Japan), broke away from the original Buddhism 200 years after the death of Sakyamuni. It is a reformist school that arose in response to the conservatism of ancient Buddhism. Some forms of East Asian Buddhism are strongly against eating meat and drinking liquor. They consider meat to be
"the food of the devil." This is why eating meat was banned in Japan and China.
India was originally a land of vegatarianism, meaning neither meat no fish is eaten, only vegetables. There are even extreme vegetarians who refuse to eat eggs. This was too extreme for the people of one province, who set up lots of signs reading "Eggs are vegetables!" In Japan in 675, meat eating by the Buddhist clergy was banned by Imperial edict. The edict was
not rescinded until 1873. Even so, in large temples that venerate ancient rituals, traditional Buddhist vegetarianism, called shojin cuisine, is still practiced.
