Why Some Buddhists Avoid Garlic and Onions

Some Buddhists avoid garlic and onions as part of a discipline concerning the five pungent plants. This is especially relevant in Chinese Mahayana food practice. The restriction concerns specified plants and their place in religious training; it is distinct from avoiding meat.

A vegetarian dish can therefore meet one person's requirements while containing ingredients another practitioner avoids. Before preparing an offering or joining a temple kitchen, learn what the community means by its food description.

Two food rules in the Brahma Net Sutra

The Chinese Brahma Net Sutra, T1484, places a rule against eating meat beside a separate rule against consuming the five pungent plants. The meat passage appeals to compassion for beings. The following rule names five plants and prohibits deliberately eating them, including their presence in food.

This arrangement helps explain why an onion can become a question in a meat-free kitchen. The text is not claiming that an onion is animal flesh. It gives another dietary instruction within its bodhisattva precepts. Keeping the two rules distinct makes their application easier to understand.

The five names in this Chinese passage are dasuan, gecong, cicong, lancong, and xingqu. Dasuan is garlic. Turning the remaining historical names into a single modern English shopping list requires interpretation, so the text's five entries should not be casually replaced with whichever five strong-tasting ingredients come to mind.

The rule also concerns an ingredient in a dish, not just eating the plant by itself. Removing visible pieces after garlic has been included in a sauce does not give a cook reliable grounds for describing that sauce as prepared without garlic.

Why the Shurangama Sutra discusses them

The Shurangama Sutra, T945, discusses the plants in its account of three gradual stages of cultivation. The first removes conditions that aid unwholesome activity; the next concerns disciplined conduct, and the third the turning back of attention from outward involvement. Avoiding the five plants belongs to that particular training context.

The passage associates eating them cooked with increased sexual desire and eating them raw with increased anger. It also describes the departure of protective beings and vulnerability to deceptive teaching. These are claims within the scripture's religious account of samadhi. They should not be presented as established nutritional findings about what a serving of onion does to everyone who eats it.

Cooking the ingredients is therefore not an exemption in this passage. The text addresses both raw and cooked consumption. A request for food without these plants calls for an ingredient decision before preparation, rather than an assumption that heating solves the issue.

There is also more here than a rule against an unpleasant smell. The passage concerns the conditions of religious practice and the preservation of its direction. Explaining it solely as good manners leaves out that setting. Conversely, repeating its warnings to frighten a dinner guest does little to explain which ingredients the kitchen has agreed to use.

Why the English lists can look different

In Hsuan Hua's Shurangama commentary, the explanation names leeks, garlic, shallots, scallions, and onions as plants familiar in its local setting, then adds asafoetida as another relevant plant found in India. That qualification matters when a reader expects every English list to contain exactly five interchangeable grocery terms.

For a cook, the community's list resolves the immediate task. Ask whether it excludes all onions, scallions, chives, leeks, garlic, and asafoetida, and record the answer. Do not substitute an unfamiliar plant merely because its name was absent from a short English sign.

A kitchen can work creatively within the practice

Dharma Realm Buddhist University's 2025 culinary-program interview gives a concrete example. Student Amanda Setera describes learning to prepare food without eggs, garlic, onions, or other pungent plants, including familiar dishes such as chili and burritos. The account places this cooking within service to the community and religious practice.

The example is useful because it concerns learning to cook within an accepted discipline. It does not require every meal to resemble the same plain bowl. The tenzo's work in a Zen kitchen offers another perspective on taking the ingredients and people being fed seriously.

Start with a recipe already used by the kitchen. If changing a seasoning, show the ingredient list to the person coordinating the meal. Keep notes about the approved change with the recipe, so the next volunteer does not have to reconstruct the decision.

Check the whole dish

For prepared sauces, stocks, seasoning mixes, or fillings, inspect the ingredients rather than relying on a meat-free description. Ask about the components used in preparation as well as the garnish. A soup can lack visible onion while having onion in its stock.

When food has already been made and its ingredients are uncertain, say so. Labeling a dish accurately is more useful than arguing that a small amount should not count. The person responsible for the kitchen can decide how to handle an unsuitable dish without making its contents a mystery to others.

A particular food discipline also should not become the sole test of another person's Buddhism. The Five Precepts and the bodhisattva rule discussed here have different formulations. When sharing a kitchen or bringing an offering, the immediate responsibility is to understand the practice being followed and describe the food honestly.