Vegetarian Since Birth? || Acharya Prashant, in conversation (2021)
Full Video: No argument against flesh consumption || Acharya Prashant, in conversation (2021)
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ki6lN94uJgo&t=8s
Video Information: 07.12.2020, Interview Session, Rishikesh, Uttarakhand
Context:
~ Does killing by a lion and killing by a man a same thing?
~ Does carnivores animal have choice to not to kill?
~ How killing any animal affect human consciousness?
~ Why should one turn vegan?
~ What is the relationship between veganism and spirituality?
~ How veganism is related to compassion?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ki6lN94uJgo&t=8s
Video Information: 07.12.2020, Interview Session, Rishikesh, Uttarakhand
Context:
~ Does killing by a lion and killing by a man a same thing?
~ Does carnivores animal have choice to not to kill?
~ How killing any animal affect human consciousness?
~ Why should one turn vegan?
~ What is the relationship between veganism and spirituality?
~ How veganism is related to compassion?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Transcript
00:00 What is bad is that even those who are vegetarian are usually vegetarian for very flimsy reasons.
00:10 I am born in a Brahmin family or a Jain family or some other reason, therefore I don't take
00:16 to eat meat.
00:17 Now this is such a shallow reason, it will just yield any time, yield to pressures, yield
00:24 to circumstances, yield to company.
00:32 I am a college going boy and it's a thing in my modern circle to be vegan, therefore
00:42 I am vegan.
00:44 Without having any spiritual core, I am vegan.
00:46 This kind of veganism is going to be very short lived, it's not going to work, plus
00:51 that fellow is going to remain violent in spite of being vegan and if you are violent,
00:58 then that violent is going to seep into your relationship with animals in some way or the
01:04 other.
01:05 You may not be an active flesh consumer, but you would still be contributing to animal
01:10 cruelty in some way or the other because the violence within you has not abated.
01:16 So the only way we can address this violence in the relationship between man and animals
01:26 or man and woman, man and man, this entire issue of relationship is by addressing the
01:35 question of identity.
01:36 Unless we realize who we are, if we think of ourselves as men, women, rich, poor, young,
01:45 old, we will stay very distant from the truth.
01:51 Doesn't matter what your gender is, how much money you have, which caste you come from,
01:58 you and I are the same because you have sleepless nights, I have sleepless nights, you have
02:05 nightmares, I have nightmares, you do not know what you want, I do not know what I want,
02:14 unless we realize we are all one in our suffering, unless we look into a dog's eyes and see our
02:23 own pain, it will be very difficult to stop us from hurling a stone at that dog.
02:34 You have got this chicken and you have the knife in your hand, look at the chicken and
02:43 if you cannot see something that's just from within you, you just cannot see almost your
02:56 own face there, if you cannot see that that being is as much afraid of death as you are,
03:11 you will slaughter, you will slaughter.
03:20 Reality and idealism are too small to work against ignorance, ignorance is a mighty thing,
03:32 the only thing mightier than ignorance is the light of truth, Maya is no lightweight,
03:40 she trumps everything except the truth, the reality, if we want to counter Maya through
03:50 moralistic arguments and these modern ideologies and such things, we will fail.
04:06 The person is a vegan, but he wants a big house for himself, the person is a vegan and
04:12 he wants a big house for himself and of course in the house there is going to be no leather,
04:18 no fur and the house is big, hello sir, how are you vegan, where is all the electricity
04:25 going to come from, don't you know what causes the destruction of forests, you are indirectly
04:32 contributing to the destruction of forests and you call yourself vegan, how?
04:40 The fellow is a vegan, but believes that climate change is a hoax, what kind of veganism is
04:49 this?
05:01 We will remain cruel because there is nothing in our physical nature that forbids cruelty,
05:12 in fact whenever I speak about animal cruelty, people retort by saying that, but even the
05:22 lion kills the deer and that's quite a revelation, because that fellow is equating himself with
05:32 the animal, with the predator, in Prakriti we all are predators, even the deer is a predator,
05:41 even the deer is a predator, so the fellow is saying, I am not a conscious being, I am
05:49 an animal being, I am just like the lion and if the lion can kill, I too can kill, as long
05:54 as your identity is that of the physical being, which is the animal being, you will kill,
06:02 only when you realise that you are not going to be satisfied remaining the animal being,
06:11 will you acknowledge that you are the conscious being beyond the animal, then you will say,
06:17 I will not do what the animal does, because doing what the animal does is not going to
06:22 satisfy me, what the animal does is for the animal, I am not the animal, therefore I cannot
06:28 follow the ways of the animal.