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~~~~~
Video Information: An interview with Kip Andersen, 29.03.2017, Noida, India
Context:
~ Which food should we take?
~ How to know, which food is eatable?
~ How to understand veganism?
~ Why should one stop consuming eggs and milk?
~ Why do human cause cruelty and extreme harm to animals?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~ .
Be a part of the Live Sessions: https://acharyaprashant.org/hi/enquir...
Want to read Acharya Prashant's Books?
Get Free Delivery: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/books?...
~~~~~
Video Information: An interview with Kip Andersen, 29.03.2017, Noida, India
Context:
~ Which food should we take?
~ How to know, which food is eatable?
~ How to understand veganism?
~ Why should one stop consuming eggs and milk?
~ Why do human cause cruelty and extreme harm to animals?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~ .
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00Do you think, do you feel it's possible to be spiritual and animate?
00:09No, it is not at all possible. It is just not possible.
00:17Why?
00:23Because to be spiritual is to simply know.
00:30The spiritual one would know who he is and what is happening through him.
00:44He would not be blind to what is kept on his plate.
00:50To be spiritual is to be not fragmented.
00:56One would then really know what is this thing called hunger,
01:02what is this thing called food and what is this thing called food chain.
01:08One would just not open the can
01:16and take the flesh and munch it.
01:21One would know where the whole thing is coming from,
01:25coming from both in a physical way and in a mental way.
01:32When you know where the entire thing is coming from,
01:36it simply does not happen.
01:41You see, a spiritual man does not relate to the other in terms of body.
01:52It is something of the I.
01:57I often ask those who consume meat,
02:02instead of proceeding with a packaged product like meat,
02:09why don't you slaughter the thing yourself?
02:12And when you slaughter the animal yourself,
02:16why don't you know it fully even as you slaughter it?
02:23After all, even from a perspective of self-interest,
02:27if something is going into your body,
02:31it makes sense to know it fully.
02:36Why don't you look into its eyes as you slaughter it?
02:39And when you look into the eyes of an animal,
02:43and if you are really awake,
02:47you will only see your own deep innocence
02:52which might be hidden from you.
02:56It is impossible to see anything or anybody else
03:00when you really look around.
03:03And that thing that you look at
03:07and that which looks back at you
03:10is most prominently visible in the eyes.
03:15It is visible everywhere.
03:16It is visible even in a leaf.
03:18It is visible in the sand.
03:21It is visible in stone.
03:24But given the limits of our identification and consciousness,
03:29it is the most visible in the eyes.
03:32So look at the animal.
03:34Pause.
03:36Meditate for a while.
03:38And then go ahead and slaughter it if you can.
03:41You will only be slaughtering yourself.
03:43I repeat, those eyes are your own primitive eyes.
03:49And when I say your own primitive eyes,
03:52that brings us to another interesting way of looking at it.
03:59You see, that which you call as man
04:02is divinity at the core,
04:12then animal by evolution,
04:23and intellectual by society.
04:35The animals that you see outside of you are all present within you as well.
04:42To really know an animal
04:49is to know that of yourself
04:55which remains hidden, suppressed
05:00beneath all the social conditioning.
05:03Have you looked at kids playing?
05:09If you look at kids playing and if you look at animals playing,
05:12you won't find much difference.
05:14In fact, human kids go along very well with animal kids.
05:20Later on, when we cover ourselves
05:27with a lot of acquired knowledge,
05:29with a lot of social conditioning,
05:31then the animal within us gets suppressed.
05:37And the more suppressed it gets,
05:39the more we live in frustration and sorrow.
05:42What does that tell us?
05:47That tells us that the more we are violent towards the animal on the outside,
05:51actually the more we are violent towards the animal inside of us.
05:57And if we are violent towards the animal inside of us,
06:00we cannot live in any kind of relaxation.
06:09I just returned from a learning camp.
06:14It was on the Himalayas.
06:17There we saw a lot of these jungles being hacked down.
06:21And I said, when man is hacking down these jungles,
06:27he is actually destroying the greenery within himself.
06:32When man is polluting the rivers,
06:36he is actually polluting that which flows within himself
06:41and keeps him wet from the inside.
06:46So you cannot have this misbehavior towards animals
06:54unless you are adamant that you will misbehave towards yourself as well.
06:59You are the universe.
07:02You look into the animal and you see yourself.
07:05Now how will you misbehave?
07:08You look into the animal's eyes
07:13and you find you are looking at a mirror.
07:15How will you misbehave?
07:19You pollute a river and you find that you are polluting yourself.
07:22Now how will you do that?
07:23And that is not a concept.
07:24If you really look at a river,
07:27you are reminded of something very very ancient within yourself.
07:31That is why you are attracted to the river.
07:34Have you ever wondered why men go to the forests and to the hills?
07:38Why you enjoy a waterfall so much?
07:41It is because the waterfall is you.
07:44It is because that pristinely clear gargle is your own.
07:56That is why you like it so much.
08:00That animal is your innocence.
08:03That animal is what you are if all language is taken away from you.
08:11And you are really craving to be that animal.
08:16That is why given the first convenient opportunity,
08:23we like to do away with our clothes.
08:25Have you seen how kids often resist clothes?
08:30Even if their mothers would deck them up,
08:34the moment they find an opportunity,
08:37they would just unbutton themselves and go around naked.
08:41That is the animal within us seeking expression.
08:44When you kill that duck,
08:48you are killing the kid within you
08:51because the kid identifies with the duck.
08:53The kid is the duck.
08:55The more you sit in a man-made place
09:01and have all this stuff on your plate
09:04which is actually just meat,
09:07the more you are acquiescing with the society,
09:11the more you are identifying with the intellect
09:15and the further you are going away
09:18from the rabbit and the squirrel within you.
09:22Even the lion, I don't want to be some kind of a species.
09:29Even carnivorous animals are alright.
09:34These jungles are very important to us
09:45not because they provide us stuff,
09:47because they are what we are.
09:50When you bring down a tree,
09:53you have brought down a part of yourself.
09:55And having brought down a part of yourself,
09:59you have unnecessarily made yourself incomplete.
10:03From completion you have moved to incompletion.
10:06How can a spiritual man do that?
10:09Spirituality is about moving from incompletion to completion.
10:13And killing this, destroying that
10:16is about moving from completion to incompletion.
10:21So it is not possible, not at all possible
10:24to be spiritual.
10:27And yet a consumer of this, that,
10:33and I am not referring only to meat,
10:35I mean when you raise crops,
10:39from a perspective of destroying them
10:43after their season and after their utility,
10:49it is much the same.
10:52In fact if you are that kind of a vegetarian,
10:55it will not really take much of a push
11:00to turn you into a meat eater.
11:04And that is why you see,
11:07it is not uncommon,
11:09in fact it is fairly common for vegetarians
11:11to flip into meat eating.
11:13That which was not there cannot suddenly appear.
11:17The seeds of violence were there
11:21even when one was a vegetarian.
11:23And that is why upon persuasion and upon opportunity,
11:26one moves to meat.
11:30Vegetarianism or veganism
11:34cannot be a taught quality.
11:37It has to be something of the heart.
11:40You cannot give arguments in favour of it.
11:45It has to be a destroyer of all arguments.
11:49You are really a vegan
11:52if in spite of all arguments you are still a vegan.
11:56Tomorrow a body of evidence may arise
11:59which says that if you are a vegan,
12:01then such and such minerals and vitamins
12:04get deficient within your body.
12:06Now in spite of all that evidence,
12:08and that evidence might be scientifically accurate,
12:11but if in spite of that evidence you say
12:15I am what I am and I refuse to do
12:18that which is against my nature,
12:21then you are really a vegan.
12:24Because veganism is about having the right relationship
12:27with the world around you.
12:30Veganism in its essence is religion.
12:33You cannot just say I am a vegan.
12:37You are actually stating your religion when you say that.
12:43One does not look at it that way,
12:45but that's what it really is.
12:49To be a vegan does not feel pleasurable.
12:57I know this might disappoint you, but please.
13:00It does not feel like anything.
13:02In fact to live rightly
13:05and to have a right relationship with the world
13:08is to gain freedom from various kinds of feelings.
13:13As long as one eats to get a certain feeling,
13:18the eating would always involve violence.
13:21So if you are promoting veganism,
13:26kindly do not promote a culture of feeling.
13:30Because all feeling is excitement.
13:33All feeling is experiential.
13:36All feeling is sensory and all feeling is fleeting.
13:40One does not live by his feelings.
13:44One cannot live by his feelings.
13:46One has to live by the truth.
13:49One feels a lot in his everyday life.
13:53And that feeling itself is man's hell and torture.
13:59Why do you enjoy sleep?
14:01You enjoy sleep because sleep is a cessation of all feeling.
14:07Sleep is a non-feeling and that's why it's the best feeling.
14:13Being a vegan, I do not feel a lot of things that others feel.
14:19I do not feel tension.
14:21I do not feel excitement.
14:23And because I do not feel pleasure,
14:25I also do not feel pain.
14:28It's a beautiful silence.
14:30It's a lovely thing.
14:32And this love that I am referring to is not a feeling.
14:36It's something far more deeper than feeling.
14:40I am tempted to use the word mystical.
14:44But that has its own images and connotations.
14:47So I would rather avoid.
14:51Don't live by feelings.
14:53Don't live by images.
14:55Don't live by experiences.
14:58You go to any of the restaurants and they will say,
15:03Come, experience this new kind of food.
15:07Is this new cuisine not really exciting?
15:13Now excitement, experience, feeling, emotion, titillation, pleasure,
15:19they are all words belonging to the same family.
15:22And as long as these words carry value in our mind,
15:30as long as these words carry value in our mind,
15:34man will not be able to be kind to himself or to the world.
15:42If excitement is a value,
15:44then there is a lot of value in hunting.
15:49If experience is a value,
15:54then it is always a new experience to kill a new species.
16:03Really understanding, that is the highest value,
16:07that is the highest freedom.
16:11And if one does need to have a feeling,
16:14the feeling can be, must be, to be situated in that understanding.
16:23This feeling is love.
16:26That is the only thing that one wants, really wants,
16:29then it really is love.
16:30I want to understand.
16:32I want to live by my nature.
16:34I want to live simply, innocently.
16:36This want is love.
16:39Love obviously denotes wanting.
16:43But what is it that one wants?
16:46One needs to look very carefully into that.
16:49What is it that I am wanting?
16:52That which you want will decide your life.
16:57So want only the highest, nothing less than that.
17:01Do not want feelings, they are not the highest.
17:04Rather, a freedom from feelings.
17:08That does not mean killing the feelings.
17:10That only means that one is not a slave of feelings.