What are the non-vegetarian dishes?

In daily diet, meat dishes and vegetarian dishes are divided into two categories. Meat dishes refer to foods with fishy smell, not only animal meat, but also spicy and irritating foods. Meat dishes are generally divided into chicken, duck, fish, and some onions, ginger, garlic, and leeks. Generally speaking, spicy and irritating foods or foods with fishy smell are called meat dishes, while vegetarian dishes are relatively light.

What are the meat dishes?

All food containing animal ingredients is considered meat. Such as chicken, duck, fish and meat. In ancient times, "meat" specifically referred to spicy vegetables. Such as, onions, garlic, leeks, and shallots. What modern people call meat dishes were called "fishy" by the ancients. Therefore, the "meat and fish" we talk about now is the collective name for these two categories.

Buddhist Five Meals

The meat in Buddhism at that time did not refer to chicken, duck, fish, etc., but rather spicy vegetables such as garlic and shallots. According to the "Lingyun Sutra", the five pungent vegetables in Buddhism are garlic, shallot, asparagus, shallot and chives; eating the five pungent vegetables raw will increase anger and make people easily angered; eating them cooked will stimulate lust and make people more lustful. In today's Theravada Buddhism, some people who practice Theravada Buddhism can still eat some meat.

The Brahma Net Sutra states: "Buddhist disciples should not eat the five pungent vegetables. Garlic, scallion, onion, chive, scallion, and turnip. These five kinds of food should not be eaten. If one eats them intentionally, he will commit a minor offense." [1]

When Buddhism was introduced to China, some precepts were modified through the process of localization. For example, eating sentient beings with sentient abilities was considered the same as killing. Therefore, now most sects except Tantric Buddhism do not allow the eating of sentient beings such as chicken, duck, fish and meat. Modern Northern Buddhism, that is, people who practice Mahayana Buddhism, are forbidden to eat meat.

Of course, under special circumstances, monks can eat meat. For example, in the case of rejoicing in the opening of precepts. However, the conditions must be fully mature, and we should not use this excuse to kill indiscriminately.

The annotation of "Compendium of Materia Medica" says: "Cicong is winter onion; Xiecong is mountain onion; Xingqu is a vegetable from the Western Regions, which is said to be the Chinese cilantro." Xingqu is also said to be onion.

Taoist Five Meats

According to Er Ya Yi, the five vegetarian foods of Taoism are leek, garlic, rapeseed, coriander and shallot. Brassica rapa is a type of rapeseed today.

"Compendium of Materia Medica" records that "the practitioners of the body-cultivation tradition use shallots, garlic, leeks, brassica rapa and coriander as the five kinds of meat." The so-called practitioners of the body-cultivation tradition should belong to the Taoist school.