Teaching Kids Respect for Others' Choices || Acharya Prashant, with IIT-Madras (2023)

Acharya Prashant

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Transcript

00:00 Namaste Acharya ji. So I'm Rahul here. I'm finally a PhD student from Department of Biotechnology,

00:10 IIT Madras. So I'll just elaborate my question here. I have a kid who will go to school in

00:17 next couple of years. So now I wish that he gets exposed to lots of friends with different

00:24 cultural background and he knows and respects these cultures. Now in our country the food

00:30 habits that they change from region to region, culture to culture, communities to communities

00:37 and I've seen that most of the time adults they discriminate among each other depending

00:41 on their food choices, especially when it comes to vegetarian and non-vegetarians. So

00:48 my kid too will have friends who would be vegetators unlike him. So how to upbring my

00:54 child such that he respects other cultures, be friends with them all, does not discriminate

00:59 among people but at the same time he doesn't get influenced by their food choices, by their

01:05 food habits. Then it's not so much about respecting others' choices, you see. Then it's actually

01:13 about knowing where his own are coming from. I must know where my own choices are coming

01:21 from. If I know the entire process of choosing, then it will become possible for me to realize

01:30 how others make their choices. You see, hatred etc. breed only in an environment of ignorance.

01:42 You cannot be a hater if you understand. If I do not understand why a certain individual

01:51 behaves in a certain way, I'll just take his behavior as the only thing available or visible

02:01 because that actually is the only thing visible. I'm not able to see what's behind that behavior

02:06 and that behavior includes the food habits. I'll not be able to see where he's coming

02:12 from and if I cannot see that, then all I have available to me is his behavior and his

02:21 behavior is something that is contradictory to my own and then there is conflict. So the

02:31 attention should not be so much on living harmoniously with others or being tolerant

02:39 towards others' behaviors and choices or food habits. It's much more to do with knowing

02:47 why the kid is behaving in a particular way. Usually what happens is that kids are handed

02:55 over these things from the parents without much explanation. If your kid is vegetarian,

03:04 obviously that's not by choice. That's because he's coming from a vegetarian family. Now

03:12 that's not really very good. Not that the kid should not be vegetarian, but that the

03:18 kid should be vegetarian with an understanding of vegetarianism. Why must I be vegetarian?

03:29 Why must I eat this and not that? What is meant by eating? What is my relationship with

03:37 other sentient beings? Because the apple or the grass or the leaf too is sentient and

03:49 that's one of the arguments meat eaters very readily use. They say, well, you see even

03:56 plants have life. So how are you vegetarians any different from us meat eaters? Your kid

04:07 should know. If your kid does not know, then he might very readily turn to meat or he might

04:17 get into some kind of bigotry and start hating meat eaters. Both of these are not right,

04:28 not auspicious. I must know why I eat the way I do. And if I know why I eat the way

04:36 I do, then you know, you cannot just stop at being vegetarian. You'll have to go all

04:44 the way and turn vegan. And then I'll also be able to see why others eat the way they

04:53 do and then I'll not express hatred etc. towards their choices, but would rather be

05:00 able to address the root of the problem. The root of all problems sounds very old fashioned

05:08 and boring perhaps, but the root of all problems is just ignorance, lack of self-knowledge.

05:16 When one does not know his insides, then one makes all kinds of foolish decisions including

05:28 the decision about what is there on your plate. Are you getting it? So kindly don't just

05:38 train or condition the kid. That's not what can be called as education. Education is about

05:49 wetting the child's curiosity, sharpening his appetite to ask questions. Let him ask

06:04 questions. If he sees a little girl his own age, he must ask, "Why is she wearing the

06:13 way I don't? Why does she look different? Why is her hair done differently?" These

06:21 are the questions that the kid must ask and if the kid is not asking these questions,

06:26 there is a problem. Not only kids his own age, if he looks at adults, he should be able

06:36 to ask, "Why is this man walking this way and the other one is doing something totally

06:41 differently? Why do you keep facial hair and someone chooses not to have any? Why does

06:53 someone have a shaven head? Why is somebody carrying such a long beard?" So make the

07:02 kid ask these questions. Otherwise, he will just become a trained kind of programmed kind

07:09 of machine, which is no good. And when you are awake, then it's possible to see that

07:24 the others are asleep. If you too are as deeply asleep as others are, will it ever be possible

07:34 to identify that the others are acting out of their sleep? To see that the others are

07:44 asleep, you need to be first of all awake and when you are awake, then you do not get

07:51 angry at the random blabberings of the sleeping ones. It happens. You are sleeping and just

08:01 murmuring something, uttering some random thing which could also probably be abusive

08:06 happens sometimes. And then the awakened one cannot get offended. He knows what's going

08:14 on. This fellow is in his dreams. He is in a very elementary, very lowly state of consciousness.

08:24 How can he get angry at him? I cannot go and slap him because he has just uttered some

08:31 foolish thing in his sleep. What do I rather do then? I wake him up. So that fellow is

08:44 eating in a particular way, wearing in a particular way, speaking in a way, believing in a way.

08:49 I see where all of that is coming from. But before I can see where others' behavior is

08:55 coming from, I must know from where does my own come. So turn the child into a pulsating

09:23 mass of raw consciousness, eager, eager and eager, lively, looking at the world with great

09:34 wonderment, curiosity, not afraid, not easily contented, a bit combative. "No, Daddy, I

09:46 don't agree. Give me a better response if you can and if you can't, admit".

09:53 Yeah, that's really helpful. Thanks.

10:05 [Music]

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