Video Information: 19.07.2021, in conversation, Rishikesh, Uttarakhand, India
Context:
What is the relation between Vedanta and veganism?
Why should one respect all forms of consciousness?
How to go beyond ones' physical nature?
Why we choose to be a vegan?
How are the dairy industry and Meat industry are connected?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~
#acharyaprashant
Context:
What is the relation between Vedanta and veganism?
Why should one respect all forms of consciousness?
How to go beyond ones' physical nature?
Why we choose to be a vegan?
How are the dairy industry and Meat industry are connected?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~
#acharyaprashant
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00A lot of stuff about culture for a bit. You know, Lord Krishna used to have ghee and butter
00:14but he would love animals and he was amazing. And some people call it mythology, I call
00:19it consciousness. But apart from that, we have a lot of symbologies of animals being
00:27used but loved at the same time. So, culturally, what was the idea then of including animals?
00:37You see, we are not supposed to emulate the actions of the avatars, the incarnations.
00:53That's not how India has been because time changes. Everything that is time bound, everything
01:04that was present in a particular passage of time is bound to change over the next centuries,
01:22millennia and so on. Now, what is it that you learn from Krishna? The Gita or the fact
01:34that he was consuming milk and butter? Very few people actually read or understand Gita
01:46but we love to use the fable of Shri Krishna to justify dairy consumption. You have to
02:01take from the gods that which is timeless because they come from the timeless dimension.
02:14You cannot take from them their dressing sense, their sartorial choices, their language. If
02:23you want to emulate what Shri Krishna used to eat, then you must also emulate the dress
02:33he used to wear, the language he used to speak and all the other things that he did. He is
02:40said to have thousands of wives for example, would you want to emulate that?
02:46The quality was also not very precise, when they say Lord Krishna had a thousand wives
02:54or he had so many cows etc. I mean that was also some 4000 years ago.
03:00That's right and all of that is very symbolic, all of that is extremely symbolic and that
03:05is meant to teach you something and the great teachings of Shri Krishna are contained in
03:14the Srimad Bhagavad Gita. That's what is to be learnt from the great avatar and that's
03:24what is timeless, everything else is time bound and what is time bound must be allowed
03:30to pass away with time. There is no need to stick to it and keep dragging it and trying
03:37to emulate it and it becomes an anachronism that benefits just nobody.
03:47A lot of people had, in those days, they would take care of animals and cows and be with
03:56them like family, but none of that happens today, but if somebody would say that we will
04:01do that, do you think that gives anybody a green signal and this is of course without
04:06any judgement towards them.
04:11You see, if someone is so full of love and compassion towards animals, first of all he
04:23will have a spiritual understanding because love, compassion and understanding, both realisation,
04:30these go hand in hand.
04:33So this argument that I am extremely fond of the cow and I'll take care of the cow just
04:40as those in the old golden times used to do and therefore I'll proceed, this argument
04:49is both impractical and unrealistic.
04:55So I don't think it holds much truth today.
05:04This is a very interesting conversation, I am trying my best not to dive deep into spiritual
05:11questions and stick to the topic.
05:13You will have to, you will have to, you will have to, you see anything worthwhile, anything
05:18worthwhile needs to have a deep foundation.
05:22You cannot have a high-rise building without a sufficiently deep foundation, so if you
05:30are to bring about such an important change in the way people relate to the animal world,
05:38then the thing will have to have a spiritual foundation otherwise it cannot succeed.
05:44Especially in a country like India where we are so driven by what a lot of our religious
05:55practices has been and we sometimes don't understand the science behind them and a lot
06:01of them are actually very relevant also, it's not like they are not and they are very useful
06:05if you understand science but some of them are, for example, animal sacrifice, now that
06:12is something which is beyond me, I've never been able to wrap my head around it because
06:18on one hand we think that we need to be compassionate and loving and even when we are offering something
06:25to God, it's not that we're asking something, we're always praying and gratitude, thank
06:29you for giving us this and on the second hand we want to give something to God for like
06:35that's the life of another being which we don't own anyway, can you debunk this?
06:42There is nothing to debunk here, even those who engage in such acts of cruelty know very
06:51well that this is all largely bogus.
06:55Really? Do they? I mean because I've actually witnessed this in temples, so I went to one
07:02temple and I saw blood, I was in the state of shock for a whole week.
07:07No, people know that, it's just that you see, there is the whole momentum of the past and
07:16the unwillingness and the lack of strength and courage to break away from it, I would
07:29have spoken to hundreds and thousands of people and in private almost everybody admits
07:40that they know that this kind of a thing is hollow and inauthentic but then there is this
07:52entire momentum of the whole community, nobody wants to just stick out like a sore thumb,
08:04nobody wants to be the one to call the bluff, so in their private lives, yes people realize
08:15and people also bring about changes but when it comes to the public domain, there it kind
08:24of remains a taboo to openly speak out against such things.
08:30Sure, I mean you put it so beautifully that it takes courage, so it's interesting to see
08:38that even in, and that's why as well, one has to go beyond any labels and just be in
08:45that space.
08:46I think like you said right in the beginning, our conscience is the guiding factor, so when
08:51that feels incorrect, those were the ground rules which were given to us by Bharat.
08:57And Palak, I will give you a rule of thumb, a lot of old religious scriptures, they talk
09:11about the animal, the animal, the animal could be talked of as a horse, as a goat, as a lion,
09:22as a snake and the animal is to be defeated, won over, conquered or sometimes even slaughtered.
09:36What is this animal, this, you could call it the metaphor of the animal or the archetype
09:43of the animal, what is the animal?
09:46This animal is not the poor goat walking on the street, we are dealing in symbolism here.
09:55This animal is our own physical nature, that is ignorance, that which we have inherited
10:08from our evolutionary past, that which is a carry forward from the times we spent in
10:16the jungle, that is the animal and that animal we all carry within us, that animal is present
10:25in our bodily cells, in every tissue of our body, that animal is present.
10:32What is that animal?
10:33The animal that is to be slayed or conquered or slaughtered, what is that animal?
10:40That animal is the entity that knows no consciousness and is driven purely by biology.
10:49What does biology want you to do?
10:51Biology wants you to eat, sleep, make merry, procreate, have kids, have territorial occupation,
11:01chase one male or one female and all these things, that's the animal and that's what
11:08you find happening all the time in the jungle and that is what separates man from the jungle,
11:16that man's life has a purpose beyond eating, sleeping and procreating and a man who, when
11:24I say man, I mean mankind, man and woman both, and a man who lives in much the same ways
11:32as the creatures of the jungle do, is wasting his life because he has not risen above the
11:39jungle, he has not really allowed his consciousness to be elevated and that's the entire purpose
11:50of religion and spirituality, to raise your consciousness to the highest level possible.
11:56The animal aspect of you drags your consciousness down to just food and sex.
12:03The human aspect or the human responsibility is to lift yourself up and away from the demands,
12:12the physical demands of the bodily animal.
12:16Therefore the scriptures take the symbol of the animal and then they say that this animal
12:21is to be one, but unfortunately people in their ignorance think of the animal as the
12:29poor goat or the cow or the buffalo or the chicken and they keep slaughtering the physical
12:36animal which is all so foolish, absolutely absurd.
12:43So the symbolism has not been understood or the symbolism is being exploited to meet animal
12:56needs because you enjoy the taste of the flesh of the animal.
13:01So you say, you know, I am killing the animal because my religion sanctions it.
13:06Now the religion is not sanctioning killing of the animal.
13:09The religion is saying you conquer your inner animal.
13:13Now instead of conquering the inner animal, you are feeding the inner animal the flesh
13:18of the outer animal and by feeding the inner animal the flesh of the outer animal, you
13:23are only making the inner animal stronger and now this inner animal will overpower you.
13:30This inner animal will rule over your consciousness.
13:35So that's a double whammy.
13:37Very interesting.
13:41You know, people might identify with this, there is something called as shava and there
13:46is something called as shiva.
13:47So shiva is consciousness and shava is something which is complete ignorance.
13:51So when they were referring to conquering animals, they essentially meant maybe animalistic
13:58instincts or being unconscious, not being, I won't use the word evolved but aware.
14:05Yes.
14:06And I mean the irony of it is amazing because truth is so simple, it's right in front of
14:13us but we make it so complicated.
14:19It's the animal within that dislikes the truth, because you see the real animal, the ones
14:27that are in the jungle, they have nothing to do with the truth, they lead very innocent
14:33and simple lives in a way.
14:35They have no inner yearning to be liberated, to know, to realize, they don't want to know.
14:42They have a set cycle and they live in that particular way.
14:47One deer is not very different from another deer.
14:51One lion is much the same as another lion, the differences are minimal.
14:56But human beings are very different because our primary identity is consciousness.
15:02One human being is very different from another human being because we think, because we have
15:08a purpose to life.
15:09No animal has a purpose to life.
15:11Animals just live and we could even be envious of them in that sense, they don't really have
15:16a responsibility to carry but we have one enormous responsibility which is to self-realize,
15:23which is to know who we are and if we don't fulfill that responsibility, you know very
15:29well we remain restless, we don't feel good and then there is neurosis and lot of other
15:34things and it's just that one doesn't enjoy life at all.
15:39If one is not doing what is expected of one as a human being.
15:48So people at a lot of times, people don't even realize that they have, they're supposed
16:00to have a higher purpose or when people find their purpose, you know, sometimes you see
16:04them completely changing and this happens a lot for people who are into animal rights.
16:10I wanted to know about your story, when did you make the connection because, you know,
16:16how did you turn vegan, I'm very curious to know this.
16:23You see, I was vegetarian since birth firstly, I was born in a vegetarian family and I was
16:37into spiritual literature since an early age and I really do not remember one day or one
16:46episode that made me particularly conscious towards animals but even in my earliest memories,
16:56I had this affection towards all living entities.
17:03So that was there but I was not a vegan, when I was in IIT second year or something, there
17:13was a Hindi story I read and it was a good story.
17:21It was the autobiography of a calf and how calf, a cow's calf.
17:34So how it is born and what it has to go through and how it was denied milk and then how it
17:42was castrated and then how it was exploited in the fields and ultimately how it was dispatched
17:50to the slaughterhouse.
17:52So that made me quit milk at that time, however the entire full concept of veganism was not
18:07known to me at that time, so I left milk but continued taking milk products for another
18:17decade almost, more than a decade, 15 years, then it was probably waiting to happen that
18:26I quit all this altogether.
18:30So I had my rabbits and there was one particular female rabbit and she had an injury in one
18:47leg and it was incurable, so the doctors had asked me to euthanize it, I had refused.
18:55So it required daily care, the dressing had to be changed, the wound had to be cleaned
19:02up and these things and she could not run, so all the other rabbits would run around
19:07and be away and do their stuff and this one would stay with me all the time.
19:12So and then one day she died and it was my mistake actually, I did not know much about
19:23their anatomy, I probably allowed her to eat some stuff that she shouldn't have taken.
19:34So I was in grief and two or four days after that I watched this movie, The Ship of Theseus
19:42and in that there was this scene in which they were conducting experiments on rabbits
19:51and one of those rabbits looked so much like Bandhu, my rabbit and that was the moment
20:01sitting in the cinema hall there, at that time I decided to just do away with everything
20:07that involves anything related to any animal.
20:13So and that was the moment and after that it didn't really require any effort, that
20:20day and this day it has been what 7-8 years now, we'll have to look at the release date
20:27of that movie, that longer time, so it's been quite effortless since then, once it was left,
20:38it was left.
20:39Amazing, so thanks for sharing that touching story with us, I'm pretty sure a lot of people
20:47will identify with it, truly when you're seeing a chicken or a dog or a rabbit pass a road
20:54also and a car is coming in front of them, your mouth doesn't water, we don't feel like
20:58hey that is a dog, now what am I going to eat it for dinner, this is a baby chicken.
21:03I'll take the liberty of sharing another interesting story in brief because you just talked of
21:09watching a goat or a chicken or something, I was driving down one particular road and
21:17there were these butcher's shops by the side and it was a bit late in the night 9 or 10
21:25or something and one chicken just somehow managed to escape the butcher's knife, it
21:31was about to be slaughtered and came running right in front of my car and I jammed the
21:38brakes and the butcher of course came running from the behind and picked the animal up and
21:46took it back and I drove on for around 500 meters and then I decided that well I can't
21:55leave the animal like that, so I took a u-turn, came back and bought the chicken and brought
22:13it to my place and stayed with us for many years and we have just so many memories and
22:21photos and videos and anecdotes with it.
22:25That is adorable, Acharya ji, it's been a true honour to hear about not just your perspective
22:40but also practice in daily life, I think two leaders lead by example and you're certainly
22:46doing that, so this will encourage a lot of people.
22:51Thank you so much and that's all the time which we have but I'm sure at some time if
22:58you give permission I would love to speak to you at length about this.
23:01It would be my pleasure, it would be my pleasure, surely, certainly.
23:06Thank you so much.
23:07Thank you, thank you, thank you.