Religious Vegetarianism

From Hesiod to the Dalai Lama

Kerry S. Walters, Lisa Portmess, Kerry S. Walters, Lisa Portmess

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2001
• Print ISBN: 9780791449721, 9780791449714
• eBook ISBN: 9780791490679
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Comparative Religion

Stretching back more than two thousand years and spanning diverse traditions, religious vegetarianism has an ancient and rich history. In this book, Kerry S. Walters and Lisa Portmess gather writings that reflect devotional as well as more analytical responses to age-old questions of animal suffering, dietary practice, and human responsibility. These include writings from ancient Orphic and Pythagorean authors, writings that span centuries of Indian and Buddhist thought, and writings from the Judaic, Christian, and Islamic traditions. Interesting both to those well-versed in the literature of vegetarianism as well as to others encountering it for the first time, are tensions within traditions over the use of animals for food—whether such use is consonant with fundamental values of the faith, whether religious law or tradition requires vegetarian practice, and what place animals are thought to hold in the order of nature.

Table of contents

• Religious Vegetarianism: From Hesiod to the Dalai Lama
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction: Ambiguous Permission, Journeying Souls, Resplendent Life
• The Orphic-Pythagorean Tradition
• The Indian Tradition
• The Buddhist Tradition
• The Judaic Tradition
• The Christian Tradition
• The Islamic Tradition
• For Further Reading
• Sources
• Index