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~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Video Information: 07.12.2020, Interview Session, Rishikesh, Uttrakhand
Context:
~ Does killing by a lion and killing by a man a same thing?
~ Does a carnivore animal have a choice not to kill?
~ How killing any animal affect human consciousness?
~ Why should one turn vegan?
~ What is the relationship between veganism and spirituality?
~ How is veganism related to compassion?
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: 07.12.2020, Interview Session, Rishikesh, Uttrakhand
Context:
~ Does killing by a lion and killing by a man a same thing?
~ Does a carnivore animal have a choice not to kill?
~ How killing any animal affect human consciousness?
~ Why should one turn vegan?
~ What is the relationship between veganism and spirituality?
~ How is veganism related to compassion?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00So, since the last 7-8 years I have very actively been involved in animal rescue, because I
00:10relate to their faces and their suffering more than anything else.
00:14So, what is we all know the condition of animals, how dismal, how torturous.
00:25We know about Jallikattu, we know about these kind of mad animal spots, brutal spots, dog
00:35bites and bull fights and stuff.
00:38So, how do we resolve all this, how do we resolve this, what is your take?
00:50Because I have been actively been there rescuing and feeding and taking care and stuff.
00:55And it is a massive juggernaut and sometimes depressing also to see how it is right from
01:05the slaughter to, you know, I mean everybody in my family is a non-vegetarian except for
01:11me.
01:12So, every time they all come over and you know, you know, so there is this debate every
01:19time.
01:20So, you know how, how do we, again I know it does boil down to them.
01:25It is very simple, the way our bodies are, we can take in animal flesh.
01:39The fact is, there is nothing in your body that does not want animal flesh.
01:50You can bring up a child on 60-70% meat and fish and egg and this kind of diet and the
02:02child can grow up into a physically strong and mentally active human being, it is very
02:11possible.
02:12So, Prakriti, this physical nature has no objection to humans eating flesh, just as
02:26Prakriti has no objection to a lion killing a deer for food.
02:36We may keep saying, oh, it is not good, this, that, forget it.
02:43Meat eaters in general you may find are sturdier, taller, all those things, yes, of course,
02:52we know that meats are not good for the body, we also know the health benefits of veganism,
03:00we know all those things, but still, the majority of the world consumes flesh copiously
03:11and is still more or less healthy.
03:15If you look at Nobel Prize winners, more than 90% of them would be flesh eaters.
03:20So, it is not as if they are just doing physically well, they are doing materially and intellectually
03:28well as well.
03:32So, and if you compare non-meat eaters, vegetarians or vegans to flesh eaters, you may even find
03:44that the flesh eaters are more prosperous, because the West is more prosperous and the
03:50West is largely meat eating.
03:55So, there is no material argument against flesh consumption, first of all, let us get
04:02that straight.
04:04You cannot convince someone of health benefits, you cannot convince someone of prosperity,
04:10you cannot convince someone of mental health, all those arguments have very little weight
04:18and that is why those arguments have largely failed.
04:22You go and tell someone that meat eating is not good for you and the doctors say that,
04:28well, that is true.
04:30In one particular position, the doctor will tell you, avoid red meat, in another position,
04:35the same doctor will tell you, eggs are very good for you, oh, this kid is underweight,
04:39give him chicken soup.
04:43So, medical science is quite equivocal on that.
04:52You cannot very unambiguously declare that medical science is against flesh consumption,
05:00because it is not.
05:07What is it then, that would make a person quit harassing animals, whether in the form
05:18of jelly kattu or a leather belt or a shiny purse or a fur coat or milk tea or of course
05:34flesh or zoos or pets or so many other forms of exploitation or even the things that we
05:49do to stray dogs.
05:52What would convince a person to not do all those things?
05:55You cannot have, remember, any material argument, yes, there are a lot of material arguments,
06:01of course, I know, I have been into this since long, but none of those material arguments
06:08clinch the day for you, they are not decisive, they can make you think, but they will not
06:16force you into submission.
06:19You cannot have a final argument that you present to a flesh eater and he will turn
06:26vegetarian in a flash, that is not going to happen.
06:31They have such creative ways of arguments.
06:34And many of their arguments are factually not misplaced, when they say those things,
06:41they are factually not misplaced.
06:44So, what is it that makes a person just do away with all this nonsense and violence?
07:01The argument cannot be material.
07:04The argument has to be related to your identity as a suffering consciousness, when you realize
07:19who you are, then you will not do things that hurt you.
07:33I am suffering and I am suffering because I do not love myself enough, had I loved myself
07:38enough I would have taken care of myself, I am suffering in the inner way, that animal
07:49is so much like me, that animal is conscious, so much like me, so much like me.
08:00If I can exploit that animal, if I can wreck suffering on that animal, I can do the same
08:08to myself.
08:11The more I am violent towards that animal, the more I am violent towards consciousness
08:21itself, because remember, it is a mark of low consciousness to consider consciousness
08:31as fragmented, please get the flow of the whole thing.
08:38I am suffering because my consciousness is lowly, it is a characteristic of lowly consciousness
08:46to think that my consciousness is different from your consciousness, the very otherness
08:55is a characteristic of low consciousness, so I am already suffering because my consciousness
09:04is low, that is making me live in hell and because of my low consciousness I think that
09:10that dog or that goat or that chicken is a separate, totally isolated, totally entity
09:21that I can slaughter without any repercussions on my own well-being, that is a mark of my
09:29own lowness, now if I slaughter that, I am just extending, reinforcing my lowness therefore
09:38my suffering, it is a mark of high consciousness to understand that consciousness is not fragmented,
09:49the thing within that bird is the same as the thing within me, not only the same, it
09:55is one, therefore if I hurt the thing within the bird, I am hurting the thing within me,
10:01I don't want to hurt myself therefore I am not going to hurt the bird, are you getting
10:07it?
10:08So only when you are greatly interested in your own inner well-being, will you quit flesh
10:15consumption or animal harassment or cruelty, otherwise you will continue and you will have
10:22a thousand reasons, several of them very difficult to argue against, realization of
10:34one's own true identity and depth in wisdom, this is the only way, exploitation of environment
10:50and cruelty towards all living forms is going to stop or reduced, otherwise it is going
10:57to continue, what is bad is that even those who are vegetarian are usually vegetarian
11:07for very flimsy reasons, I am born in a Brahmin family or a Jain family or some other reason,
11:14therefore I don't take to eat meat, now this is such a shallow reason, it will just yield
11:21any time, yield to pressures, yield to circumstances, yield to company, I am a college going boy
11:34and it's a thing in my modern circle to be vegan, therefore I am vegan, without having
11:43any spiritual core, I am vegan, now this kind of veganism is going to be very short-lived,
11:48it's not going to work, plus that fellow is going to remain violent in spite of being
11:54vegan and if you are violent, then that violent is going to seep into your relationship with
12:02animals in some way or the other, you may not be an active flesh consumer, but you would
12:07still be contributing to animal cruelty in some way or the other, because the violence
12:11within you has not abated, so the only way we can address this violence in the relationship
12:23between man and animals or man and woman, man and man, this entire issue of relationship
12:31is by addressing the question of identity, unless we realize who we are, if we think
12:38of ourselves as men, women, rich, poor, young, old, we will stay very distant from the truth,
12:50doesn't matter what your gender is, how much money you have, which caste you come from,
12:57you and I are the same, because you have sleepless nights, I have sleepless nights, you have
13:04nightmares, I have nightmares, you do not know what you want, I do not know what I want,
13:13unless we realize we are all one in our suffering, unless we look into a dog's eyes and see our
13:22own pain, it will be very difficult to stop us from hurling a stone at that dog, you have
13:36got this chicken and you have the knife in your hand, you look at the chicken and if
13:42you cannot see something that's just from within you, you just cannot see almost your
13:55own face there, if you cannot see that, that being is as much afraid of death as you are,
14:11you will slaughter, you will slaughter. Morality and idealism are too small to work
14:25against ignorance, ignorance is a mighty thing, the only thing mightier than ignorance is the
14:34light of truth, Maya is no lightweight, she trumps everything, except the truth, the reality,
14:46so if you want to counter Maya through moralistic arguments and these modern ideologies and such
14:56things, you will fail. The person is a vegan but he wants a big house for himself, the person is
15:11a vegan and he wants a big house for himself and of course in the house there is going to be no
15:15leather, no fur and the house is big, hello sir, how are you vegan, where is all the electricity
15:25going to come from, don't you know what causes the destruction of forests, you are indirectly
15:31contributing to the destruction of forests and you call yourself vegan, how? The fellow is a vegan
15:40but believes that climate change is a hoax, what kind of veganism is this? We will remain
16:01cruel because there is nothing in our physical nature that forbids cruelty, in fact whenever I
16:11speak about animal cruelty, people retort by saying that but even the lion kills the deer,
16:24and that's quite a revelation because that fellow is equating himself with the animal,
16:32with the predator, with the predator, in Prakriti we all are predators, even the deer is a predator,
16:39even the deer is a predator, so the fellow is saying I am not a conscious being, I am an animal
16:48being, I am just like the lion and if the lion can kill, I too can kill, as long as your identity is
16:55that of the physical being which is the animal being, you will kill, only when you realize that
17:02you are not going to be satisfied remaining the animal being, will you acknowledge that you are
17:12the conscious being beyond the animal, then you will say I will not do what the animal does,
17:18because doing what the animal does is not going to satisfy me, what the animal does is for the
17:24animal, I am not the animal, therefore I cannot follow the ways of the animal, I'll do what a
17:31suffering consciousness must do and a suffering consciousness can hardly kill and expect freedom
17:39from suffering, I am suffering, I am waiting outside the doctor's cabin and what do I do there,
17:49I shoot lizards, the doctor is not going to be happy with that. So if we are all a part of the
18:09same consciousness, so when Ramana Maharshi says that there are no others or when Osho says,
18:16man ki aakanshaon ka vistaar hi sansaar hai, how do we, I understand that all you can do is be a
18:28good human and try to inculcate all you know the facts of consciousness into your being and around
18:39wherever you are, how do you reconcile when these two stalwarts say these kind of things,
18:47I mean if I have to tell it to a five-year-old. The five-year-old probably already understands
19:00it intuitively. Or say an 11-year-old. Depends on how badly distorted the 11-year-old is.
19:08Yeah. So it's not difficult to help them see that thing, no? They talk to dogs, they play with
19:22rabbits. They are always, they are living it, right? They are already living it. They don't go to the
19:28rabbit and wriggle their necks, you won't have seen five or 11-year-old doing that, right? Because
19:36there is already an innate realization that the stuff and me are the same. In fact in children's
19:45shows or comics or cartoons, you'll always find animals talking. This anthropomorphization itself
20:01suggests that kids see the same consciousness in animals as they do in themselves. Or nature or
20:08anywhere else. Or in nature, even trees have names. Even trees have names. Even toys have names. So
20:16it's not that difficult to see. It's just that when your mind is dominated by greed and lust and
20:25hunger, then you choose not to see these obvious things. I want to kill that goat because of my
20:33ideology or hunger or religious values, whatever, some nonsense. I will choose not to see what's
20:41there in the goat's eyes. It's a choice made. It's a deliberate choice towards self-delusion. If I
20:50look into the goat's eyes, I cannot slaughter the goat. Therefore, I'll look elsewhere and just.
20:54That's why many of my relatives also say, I can't see while cutting, but when I don't see while cutting, I eat it.
21:04You are cheating yourself in the worst possible way and you expect life to be kind to you. You expect not to be
21:23cheated by others. If you have grown such expertise in deception, be prepared to be deceived now.
21:32Amazing. Talking about these random happenings, as you said that, you know,
21:42ja ka gala tum kaati ho, fir wo kaate tumhar. Kabir said it very rightly.