Dear Pied Piper,

Once again. with the greatest possible respect, your link is about Hinduism which has nothing whatsoever to do with Buddhism.

Without going into details in this thread:

1. Many Buddhists eat meat, especially Tibetan buddhists for the reason I mentioned above. I personally do not but that is my choice and mine alone and I would not even think about passing a value judgement about those who choose to.

2. No Buddhist condones suffering...it is the antithesis of the Buddhist way of life. All commited Buddhists have a personal commitment to the end of suffering for all beings. We practice this during our meditation (which often includes breathing exercises) and, especially so, in our "daily practice", i.e. putting what you have learnt about your own personal nature to positive use at all times.

3. "Individual salvation" is not part of any branch of Buddhism because Buddism is non-theistic and the idea of "being saved" is irrelevant. What all serious Buddhists strive for (and very few achieve incidentally) is "enlightenment" (i.e. a full understanding about the nature of yourself and of other things). Furthermore, in the Mahayana tradition of Buddhism which includes Tibetan and Zen Buddhism, one cannot become personally fully enlightened until there is an end to suffering and enlightenment for all sentient beings.

4. Karma in the Buddhist sense (we are talking about Pali and Sanskrit words common to both Hinduism and Buddhism but with different meanings in each) has nothing whatsoever with racism. It is rather the law of "cause and effect", i.e. in a simplistic sense "what you reap is what you sow" which is also a concept of major theistic religions. A Buddhist who commits bad or negative acts will therefore reap the consequences of those acts by the "karma" principle.

I hope you find these rather summarized explanations useful!

With very best regards,

Peace,

moo