Video Information: Shabdyog session, 19.9.2018, Advait Bodhsthal, Greater Noida, India
Context:
~ Why should one turn vegan?
~ What is the relationship between veganism and spirituality?
~ How veganism is related to compassion?
~ Why is adoption of Veganism, a need for the hour?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If you look into the eyes of an animal and do not see your own face, then you are a blind one.
~ Acharya Prashant
Context:
~ Why should one turn vegan?
~ What is the relationship between veganism and spirituality?
~ How veganism is related to compassion?
~ Why is adoption of Veganism, a need for the hour?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If you look into the eyes of an animal and do not see your own face, then you are a blind one.
~ Acharya Prashant
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00 If you are violent towards other beings, it only means that you are violent towards yourself
00:22 as well, because you and the other being are essentially one.
00:31 The differences are countless, but worthless.
00:43 You look at yourself and you look at a parrot or a goat or any small living being.
01:01 These eyes as biological instruments will only show you differences between yourself
01:11 and the other creature.
01:14 But if you have wisdom and compassion, you will see a great similarity.
01:21 Both of you are hungry for love and liberation.
01:35 And if you value your own hunger, how will you not value the other's hunger?
01:46 You are supposed to liberate the other.
01:52 In that lies your liberation.
01:55 You are not to annihilate the other.
02:00 If in the other's liberation lies your liberation, then surely in the other's annihilation lies
02:07 your annihilation.
02:10 But to see this equation, first of all you need to have the sensitivity, the attention
02:20 to clearly see that at a deep level you and the goat are one.
02:27 But if you are someone who accords a lot of value to things like culture, civilization,
02:34 language, knowledge, intellect, clothes, names, labels, then you will say, "Oh, goat is a
02:43 goat, a man is a man and a goat is such an inferior product of evolution and all that.
02:49 It's so very foolhardy.
02:52 Yes, the goat does appear inferior.
03:00 But the inferiority is in a very inferior dimension.
03:07 I do not deny that in the dimension of the intellect, the goat is inferior to the human
03:13 being.
03:16 But the dimension of intellect is itself an inferior dimension because in this dimension
03:21 you never gain liberation.
03:23 So how can it be a superior dimension?
03:29 In the existential dimension, you and the goat are one.
03:33 In the existential dimension, all beings striving for liberation are one.
03:43 And is there a being that is not striving for liberation?
03:46 No, not at all.
03:48 To be existent is to be desirous of liberation.
03:53 Otherwise, why would you exist at all?
03:59 We exist to be loved and liberated.
04:07 And you cannot have liberation in isolation.
04:11 Because as long as you are a believer in isolation, that itself is bondage.
04:22 To move towards your liberation is to realize that nothing like isolation exists.
04:33 Your deepest desire is also the deepest desire of your neighbor.
04:42 And the deepest desire of you and your neighbor is the same as that of the insect crawling
04:51 in your labor's lawn.
05:03 And of the bird perched on your terrace.
05:12 Come close to a stranger, an insect, an animal, a bird.
05:28 Spend time with them without bias.
05:34 And it will become very difficult for you to say that the animal is not a person.
05:49 The fundamental mistake that most human beings make is that they only have images about consciousness.
06:05 We never actually get close to the conscious beings that we kill and exploit for food or
06:12 convenience.
06:18 So we do not even have the basic respect, the courtesy, the decency to refer to animals
06:27 properly.
06:30 We look at an elephant and say it is moving.
06:41 Is the elephant a machine?
06:49 We do not see that all sentient beings are actually persons like us.
07:03 Mostly we do not see.
07:07 And when we are compelled to see, we pretend that we have not seen.
07:11 Because if we admit that we have seen, then we will have to mend our ways and that is
07:18 inconvenient.
07:20 [Music]