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