Responsible Living: Explorations in Applied Buddhist Ethics - Animals, Environment, GMOs, Digital Media by Ron Epstein; Footnote 7 of Chapter 2; Buddha Root Farm: Dharma talks delivered by the Venerable Tripitika Master Hsuan Hua during a Buddha Recitation Session on Buddha Root Farm on the Smith River near Reedsport, Oregon, August, 1975. Buddhist Text Translation Society, 1976, p. 64On the body of one single animal are a hundred thousand, in fact, several million little organisms. These organisms are fragments of what was once an animal. The soul of a human being at death may split up to become many animals. One person can become about ten animals. That's why animals are so stupid. The soul of an animal can split up and become, in its smallest division, an organism or plant. The feelings which plants have, then, are what separated from the animal's soul when it split up at death.
Although the life force of a large number of plants may appear sizable, it is not as great as that of a single animal or a single mouthful of meat. Take, for example, rice: tens of billions of grains of rice do not contain as much life force as a single piece of meat. If you open your Five Eyes you can know this at a glance. If you haven't opened you eyes, no matter how one tries to explain it to you, you won't understand. No matter how it's explained, you won't believe it, because you haven't been a plant!
Another example is the mosquitos. The millions of mosquitos on this mountain may simply be the soul of one person who has been transformed into all those bugs. It is not the case that a single human soul turns into a single mosquito. One person can turn into countless numbers of mosquitos.
At death the nature changes, the soul scatters, and its smallest fragments become plants. Thus, there is a difference between eating plants and eating animals. What is more, plants have very short life-spans. The grass, for example, is born in the spring and dies within months. Animals live a long time. If you don't kill them, they will live for many years. Rice, regardless of condition, will only live a short time. And so, if you really look into it, there are many factors to consider, and even science hasn't got it all straight.
What do you all make of this? On the surface, this is all sorts of wrong view and nonsense. What is the Master saying here? I'm having trouble believing one should be taking these words at face value.