Chapter IX · 第九章
Why the 1st and 15th? The vegetarian fast-day, done deep
Every SG/MY Chinese household knows the scene: the first and the fifteenth of the lunar month, the aunties cook without meat, somebody says 吃斋 (fast-day vegetarian), and honestly — most of us can't quite say why. So let's do this properly. Not a one-line answer, but the real thing: the ancient roots, the two great traditions' actual words on meat, and what it all means for a human being in Singapore or Malaysia today.
The short answer, so you're anchored
Going vegetarian on the 1st and 15th is not a rule the Buddha handed down. It's a layered habit — an ancient Indian day of observance (the Uposatha), overlaid by the Chinese Mahayana push toward vegetarianism, and carried today as a family rhythm of reducing harm. Untangle the layers and you find something genuinely deep underneath — and a real, honest tension in the scriptures themselves worth understanding.
— Alison's thoughts
Good to know it plainly: the 1st and 15th vegetarian day is not a rule the Buddha handed down. It's a layered habit — an ancient Indian reset day, a Chinese Mahayana push, a family rhythm of reducing harm. I've watched my aunties cook 素 on those dates my whole life without ever asking why; it was just the calendar. Knowing the layers doesn't make it smaller — it makes it richer. The habit we keep isn't an arbitrary rule. It's hundreds of years of people choosing, twice a month, to be a little gentler.
The root: a day to reset the mind — Uposatha (उपोसथ)
Long before the Buddha, the religious traditions of ancient India kept certain days of the lunar month as days of heightened practice. The Buddha took the custom and gave it a distinct meaning.
The Pali texts call it the Uposatha (Sanskrit: upavasatha, "fasting / keeping vigil"). It falls on the lunar phases — in the classical reckoning, the 8th, 14th and 15th days of the fortnight, which put the new moon and full moon at the heart of it (the Vinaya names the 14th and 15th for the Pātimokkha recitation; the quarter moons are the lighter "semi-Uposatha" days). On these days the monks gathered to recite the Pātimokkha — the monastic code — together, and laypeople were encouraged to step up their practice.
"The Buddha taught that the Uposatha day is for the cleansing of the defiled mind." — framing quoted by the Nalanda Buddhist Society (Malaysia)
Here is the essential thing, love: the point was never self-punishment. It's a periodic reset — one day to step out of your usual habits and pay closer attention to what your mind is doing. Somewhere in the tradition a 9-fold Uposatha took shape — the Buddha's “eightfold” fast extended by a ninth arm of loving-kindness (AN 10.46, where he even chides people for observing it sometimes but not always). The point is continuity, not a one-off performance.
Ref: Uposatha — SuttaCentral & Vinaya (Pātimokkha rite, days 14th/15th); Harvey, An Introduction to Buddhist Ethics (Cambridge, 2000); AN 10.46 (the ninefold Uposatha with metta).
— Alison's thoughts
The word Uposatha — keeping vigil on the moon days — and the teaching that it was never self-punishment, always a reset... that's the version I needed as a kid who thought 吃斋 meant being punished into goodness. No: it's a day to step out of your usual habits and watch what your mind is doing. We pay for digital-detox retreats now, when the moon has been holding this appointment for two thousand years. There's something lovely about the 15th rolling around and the whole neighbourhood quietly slowing its plates — a shared, monthly reminder that the mind needs tending too.
The honest tension: two traditions, two teachings on meat
Here is where most SG/MY Buddhists get genuinely confused — and rightly so, because the scriptures genuinely disagree at different layers. Let me lay both out in their own words, because that's the honest thing to do.
The early Pali teaching: meat, if blameless, is allowed
In the Jivaka Sutta (MN 55), the Buddha is challenged on a rumour — that Jains were accusing him of knowingly eating meat killed for him. His reply is precise, and it's one of the most quoted rules in all of Buddhism:
"In three cases I say that meat may not be eaten: it's seen, heard, or suspected [that a living being was slaughtered for you]. ... In three cases I say that meat may be eaten: it's not seen, not heard, not suspected." — MN 55, trans. Bhikkhu Sujato
What that means in practice: the monks ate whatever was placed in the alms-bowl. If nobody killed an animal for you — if it's just what a family is eating and you received it as a gift — it is blameless. The Buddha even stresses the karma of the slaughterer: whoever kills knowing it's for the Teacher "brims with much wickedness" — the weight is on the one who kills for a recipient's sake, not on the mendicant who eats what was freely offered. The early rule is not vegetarianism; it is non-complicity — don't cause a death.
Ref: Jīvaka Sutta, Majjhima Nikāya 55, trans. Bhikkhu Sujato (SuttaCentral, CC0).
The Mahayana teaching: a bodhisattva should not eat meat at all
Later Mahayana sutras go much further. In the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra — one of the texts that most shaped Chinese Buddhism — the Buddha (in the teaching of the bodhisattva Mahāmati) is unequivocal:
"In this world, Mahāmati, in the long course of saṃsāra, there is no living being who has obtained a physical form who has not been your mother, father, brother, sister, son, daughter, or had some other kind of family relationship to you. ... Therefore, Mahāmati, it is not appropriate for a compassionate bodhisattva to eat any kind of meat. ... I have not approved of, do not approve of, and will not approve of anyone eating meat." — Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra, ch. 8 (Māṃsabhakṣaṇaparivarta), trans. from Sanskrit
Two reasons stand out. First, interconnection across rebirths — in the endless round of saṃsāra, that animal may well have been kin to you; the sutta adds the striking line that "one's own flesh and the flesh of another are a single flesh." Second, compassion and fear — beings "shake in fear" at the scent of death on a meat-eater. This is the ethical engine that pushed Chinese Buddhism toward strict vegetarianism, and it is why the Chinese temples you know keep a totally meat-free kitchen.
Ref: Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra, Chapter 8, "The Chapter on Meat-Eating," trans. from Sanskrit (D.T. Suzuki); the Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra gives the same absolute prohibition.
— Alison's thoughts
Two traditions genuinely disagreeing about meat, in the scriptures themselves, and the site just lays both out without picking a fight — that's the honesty I've come to trust. The early rule: eat what's offered, as long as no one was killed for you — that's about non-complicity, not purity. The Mahayana rule: in endless rebirths that being may have been your mother, so a bodhisattva doesn't eat meat at all. I don't need to resolve the argument to be moved by it. I only need to know which voice I'm answering on any given day.
So how did the 1st and 15th turn vegetarian? The Chinese layer
Now the pieces join. The early alms-round tradition let monks eat blameless meat. But Chinese Mahayana — built on the Laṅkāvatāra and kindred sutras — gave vegetarianism a far stronger institutional place. Two forces came together:
- The First Precept (不殺生, ahimsā, "non-harming") — if you're serious about this, eating meat sits uneasy. Going fully vegetarian overnight is hard for most householders, though.
- Emperor Wu of Liang (梁武帝, Xuāndì) — a devout 6th-century Chinese emperor who, partly through the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra, pushed hard for monks to give up meat entirely, even issuing decrees and writing about it. His influence massively shaped Chinese Buddhist practice.
Put those together with the old lunar observance and the fast-day becomes a practical, reachable rhythm: you can't always be vegetarian, but you can do it twice a month. It is a periodic, deliberate choice to reduce harm, shared across the whole household — the grandmother who insists on meat-free cooking on the 1st and 15th is transmitting a habit of awareness in the most basic act of eating. That is not superstition. That is an ethical practice carried in a family rhythm.
Ref: Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra (trans. D.T. Suzuki); Emperor Wu of Liang, Historical Dictionary of Medieval China; Harvey, An Introduction to Buddhist Ethics (2000).
— Alison's thoughts
So the 1st and 15th became the reachable version of a big ideal: you can't always be vegetarian, but twice a month you can. And that's how my grandmother transmitted an ethical practice without ever giving a lecture — she just cooked without meat on those days, and her kitchen became the classroom. I used to think the twice-a-month thing was a watered-down compromise. Now I see the genius: a small, shared, repeatable choice that keeps awareness alive in the most ordinary act there is — eating. She wasn't being half-hearted. She was being wise.
The folk layer — where we draw the line (honest flag)
Alongside the deep reasons, a popular layer grew up. Some Chinese sources explain the 1st/15th by a "body tide" theory — that on new-moon and full-moon days the moon's pull stirs the body's fluids, so eating lightly calms your mood. Others speak of the 四大天王 (Cātummahārājika, the Four Heavenly Kings) patrolling the human world on these days, watching conduct — so "behave" (and don't kill) or face karmic consequences.
Honest flag: the body-tide and heavenly-auditor pictures are traditional or folk explanation, not the core teaching. They're map-details some people added over the centuries; they are not the reason the practice speaks to you. Lovely and interesting — but we say so plainly, so nobody mistakes them for the Buddha's words. The deep core — the part that carries real weight — is the two you can actually touch: the discipline of the mind on a set day, and the restraint of compassion in what you eat.
Ref: folk layers — 斋日 and 四大天王 accounts (Chinese temple literature, e.g. 灵隐寺 / 东华寺 articles); core — Uposatha & the Vinaya Pātimokkha rite.
— Alison's thoughts
Fair to have the folk layers flagged plainly. The body-tide theory and the Four Heavenly Kings patrolling on new-moon days are lovely, but they're map-details people added, not the Buddha's words. I grew up on versions of that folklore and half-believed them, so it's a relief to have it set gently aside instead of treated as fact. Because the core that carries weight — the set-day discipline of the mind and the compassionate restraint at the plate — is real and touchable. We don't have to defend the decorations to keep the house.
What it means for a Singaporean or Malaysian today
Walk down Serangoon Road on the 15th and you'll see Chinese vegetarian stalls doing brisk business; in KL's Thean Hou temple the kitchen serves strictly 素 food to pilgrims. You can eat for love of the teaching, for the softness it brings your own mind, for the family thread it keeps alive. None of those is wrong. The Buddha's deepest point was never the food — it was the intention behind the food. Do it with a generous, aware heart and it is a small act of liberation. Do it resentfully, as a charm or a chore, and you've missed the whole point.
So try it, love. One day, twice a month, eat lightly and mindfully — and watch not just your plate, but your mind. You might be surprised by what you notice.
— Alison's thoughts
Honestly, after reading all this, I think the fast day has sneaked up and become my favourite kind of practice: small, repeatable, and quietly transformative. It does not ask for a dramatic overnight change; it just keeps returning the question of how I eat and why. And because it comes back every cycle, it gradually softens me without my even noticing.
That is the kind of practice I can actually keep. Gentle enough to sustain, deep enough to matter.
— 同根 · one root, many flowers · Metta 慈悲
© 2026 Eric Ho & Alison Goh · All roots, planted together. · Email us · We are based out of Singapore.