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Video Information: An interview with Kip Andersen on Veganism, 29.03.2017, Advait Bodhsthal, Noida, India
Context:
~ What is veganism?
~ Why do people treat animals cruelly and severely damage them?
~ Why is non-vegetarianism so common in the world?
~ What are all the Vedas' fundamental lessons?
~ What is the reality of man?
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:
~ What is veganism?
~ Why do people treat animals cruelly and severely damage them?
~ Why is non-vegetarianism so common in the world?
~ What are all the Vedas' fundamental lessons?
~ What is the reality of man?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ .
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00A lot of times we hear about people defending drinking dairy, and having cows milk and dairy,
00:07and they're defending potatoes, they're defending being Hindu, to be a good Hindu, to drink
00:14from the mother cow.
00:16Can you talk about that a little bit?
00:19What's your theory on that?
00:22If you have named the Vedas, what is the central teaching of all the Vedic literature?
00:45If you want to really know what the Vedic teaching is, you'll have to go to the Upanishads.
00:53The Upanishads are called Vedan, which means the summit, the climax of rape.
01:07And they go into the reality of man.
01:16And what is the reality of man?
01:19The Upanishads are very forthright and unequivocal about it.
01:26They say man is the truth itself.
01:36You are nothing else except the truth.
01:41You are the ultimate finality.
01:49You are total.
01:52Now, if this is the position that the Vedic literature takes,
02:01then one cannot operate from a point of incompleteness, hollowness, or desirousness.
02:14A lot of what we do, please see, we do just in order to gain fulfillment.
02:24We say that the purpose of human life is progress, don't we?
02:32And we assess a human being according to how much he has been able to progress and contribute to progress.
02:42And what is progress for us?
02:44Knowing more, collecting more.
02:46Knowing more, collecting more.
02:50I am not trying to unnecessarily be simplistic.
02:56Please go into it.
02:58When you know more, when you collect more, is it something that happens only on the outside or does it also affect your self-worth?
03:10When you know more, your self-worth rises.
03:14When you collect more, again your self-worth rises.
03:18The Upanishads say that your self-worth, that which you are, is anyway infinite.
03:26You are anyway total.
03:30Now go out and play.
03:32You are anyway perfect and complete.
03:36Now do whatever you want to do.
03:38But do it from a point of perfection.
03:42Do it from a point of completion.
03:44Do not do in order to gain something.
03:48Do not do in order to rise.
03:50Act as if you are already there, as if you are already complete.
03:58That is what the Vedas are all about.
04:04Now, around this center, a lot has been said.
04:08Just a whole lot.
04:18If I am already complete, how do I relate with you?
04:24Do I look at you with hungry eyes?
04:29Then there is a certain fullness.
04:32And then the relationship is called love.
04:35I do not seek to harm you.
04:37You do not exist then as a means or a resource for me.
04:45The cow you named.
04:51Would the keeper of the cow,
04:56would the cow herd,
05:00still keep the cow if the cow stops giving milk?
05:09If the relationship is of love,
05:11then one does not really bother what the other one is supplying to him.
05:17I want to inquire into the relationship of the cattle keeper,
05:23the rearer of cattle, with his cattle.
05:27You call the cow as your cow.
05:29You are in what sense?
05:31You are in the sense of something close, lovable, intimate,
05:35or you are in the sense of possession.
05:39And these are two very very different things.
05:44Calling this as my pig,
05:51and calling God as my God,
05:56are two very different expressions.
05:59When you say my cow, what do you mean?
06:03I dare say we mean something that can be milked.
06:08And the day it stops producing milk,
06:13the relationship is severed.
06:15And off it goes to the butcher.
06:18The animal goes to the butcher.
06:21So any Hindu who would have ever understood the Ved,
06:30cannot have a relationship like that
06:36with a cow or a buffalo or a goat
06:39or anything or anybody in the universe.
06:46It's direct, straightforward.
06:50To be a Hindu is to live in a pre-existing,
06:57everlasting, never exhausting, completeness, totality.
07:05To be a Hindu is to be always at the summit.
07:10That is the essence and the teaching of the Upanishads.
07:19You are not even the son of God.
07:25You are God himself.
07:30Now will God's desires be contingent on a little animal?
07:38Will God say that if I cannot get the meat or the fur or the milk,
07:46then I feel bad and small?
07:49Do you see God chasing a dog to kill?
07:56Do you see God artificially inseminating a buffalo?
08:03And the Upanishads are saying,
08:05if you go into yourself, if you realize your true nature,
08:11you verily are nothing but God.
08:19So Hindu is bound to have a very harmonious relationship with existence.
08:26If at all he has understood what Hinduism is,
08:30and if at all he takes the Vedic literature as the foundation of Hinduism.
08:38The Hindu is bound to see nothing but godliness.
08:47A Hindu is someone who is total and therefore sees nothing but the total.
08:56For a Hindu, this dead tree is not just a dead tree.
09:01Because he looks from a center, a point of totality,
09:06this dead tree too represents nothing less than the totality to him.
09:12He cannot be disrespectful towards it.
09:15And that is why you find Hindus worshipping just about everything.
09:21Someone may come and start prostrating in front of this stone, this rock.
09:26Someone may worship the soil.
09:29You must have heard about the multitude of gods and goddesses.
09:35There is an entire family, a plethora.
09:40And one can keep adding to it, you are free.
09:43You can devise your own god.
09:46You like that flower.
09:48And that flower gives you a scent of something beyond the so-called normal human limitations.
09:58You are free to worship the flower.
10:01You can even raise a temple devoted to this flower.
10:06Now how can then a Hindu go about with the butcher's knife in his hand?
10:15Also, to be a Hindu is to be totally surrendered to the total.
10:25The Hindu does not quite like anything that is small, little, petty.
10:35And if one is surrendered to the total,
10:39then there is a freedom from the responsibility of having to fend for oneself.
10:46Outwardly, yes, one goes and collects water and gets this and that and engages in the daily activities.
10:55But inwardly he very well knows that the final obligation to take care of himself rests not upon himself but upon existence.
11:11He knows that he is one with the soil and the soil will take care of him.
11:19He knows that just as the plants, the animals all know from where to derive their sustenance.
11:29And that knowledge is not personal.
11:31That knowledge is not even man-made or animal-made.
11:35It is very intrinsic.
11:37The fish knows how to swim.
11:39And the ocean is there before the fish comes and the ocean is there after the fish goes.
11:46Similarly, man arises out of the soil, arises out of the universe and goes back into it.
11:53Now why then be responsible for or worry about basic things like food?
12:01They will come.
12:03Not that, this is laziness, not that one does not do anything.
12:08One does do a few things.
12:10Then the fish has to swim and make its way and go to food wherever it sees it.
12:15But the fish does not have to be attached to the idea that it is responsible for its own upkeep.
12:27Then the fish lives according to its fish nature.
12:32Then the fish does not stalk for tomorrow.
12:40What do you feel the true human nature is?
12:43If you have gone away from true human nature, what do you feel true human nature is actualized?
12:52You see, as you spoke, I have to listen.
12:56And as I speak, you are listening.
12:59And that is happening effortlessly.
13:03This is human nature.
13:05To just know effortlessly.
13:08And if you look around, all is available.
13:13All that is to be known, all that ever can be known is all available.
13:21Just as both of us can listen to each other effortlessly and know.
13:27Similarly, true human nature is to know effortlessly.
13:32And it can be effortless only if it pre-exists.
13:36If there is an incremental knowledge.
13:39If something new is to be added, then effort would always be involved.
13:47True human nature is to know and to keep knowing that which one already knows.
13:59Now in this knowing, a few other things can also be said.
14:11Man does not always live in his true nature.
14:15So then the nature of the ego self is to keep moving towards the true nature.
14:22And that is love.
14:26And that is love.
14:28So man loves knowing.
14:31Man loves knowing.
14:35That knowing is total.
14:37To keep moving towards the total.
14:40And not to be limited to anything that is petty, small.
14:45Anything that makes him feel.
14:53That unless he does something, knows something in particular.
15:01Or collects something, his life has gone waste.
15:10There is a difference in the I, you see.
15:12An I that is contended looks at the universe in a very very different way.
15:22Compared to an I that believes that hunger is its reality.
15:31Talking of the omniscience.
15:37Hunger might be what you feel, but contended is what you are.
15:47And this distinction is extremely important.
15:52Hunger might be what I feel, but contended is what I am.
15:57Even in the moment of my death, I am immortal.
16:05So death is what I experience, but immortal is what I am.
16:11That is human nature.
16:13To carry these two together.
16:18And the experience of death only takes one to a realization of his immortality
16:29if one is deeply present to that experience.
16:35If one is close to that experience, not afraid of it.
16:40So you could say man has two natures.
16:44Or you could simply say that man has only one nature.
16:47The second only exists to keep moving towards the first.
16:52And end up dissolving in it.
16:56There is that in me which feels that I am little.
17:00Which feels that I am powerless.
17:02Which measures me by my dimensions and my collections and my knowledge.
17:06And there is that in me which knows no measurement,
17:12which knows no boundary, no logic, no intellect.
17:15The purpose of all that which is limited, which is measurable
17:23is to keep moving towards and into the immeasurable.
17:28So ultimately there is just one nature.
17:31Just one nature.
17:33The infinite, the immense.
17:35Immeasurable, simply.
17:38Now you tell me, where is space in this vastness of human nature
17:47to engage oneself in trivialities like hunting, catching, killing and stuff?
17:58One would rather play than kill.
18:04So do you think people misunderstood what is written there?
18:14Because they talk about humility and so on.
18:18And people still use the same scriptures to justify something else.
18:23So do you think they misunderstood what is written there?
18:28It was not just misunderstanding.
18:30It was deliberate misinterpretation.
18:33Deliberate but not probably conscious.
18:40Because we do not even know what sense we are making of what we are hearing, reading, looking at or eating.
18:50We operate from our centers.
18:54In the beginning itself I had said, if we are operating from a center of hunger
19:00and if we have become attached to it, then everything outside of us will relate to food.
19:12If I am a violent man, then everything that I read will relate to violence in some way or the other.
19:26In order to remain what I am, and the ego always seeks self-preservation, self-continuation.
19:32In order to remain what I am, I will read what I want to read.
19:39In fact, many scriptures have been really tampered with.
19:47And there is evidence available.
19:50Verses have been inserted, parts have been deleted in various stages of history
20:02because man wanted to use the scripture for his own convenience.
20:08The ego on one hand feels like a beggar
20:15and on the other hand does not want to take anything or anybody as higher than itself.
20:24So the ego does not even take God or the prophet or the scripture as higher than itself.
20:34The ego says, all of them exist for my sake.
20:37So if I want to consume, exploit, then I will have the scriptures to mean what I want them to mean.
20:51I pick up a book and the book is not going to come and tell me how to decode it.
21:00I am the one who will be making meaning out of the book.
21:06Another question specifically, because we hear that someone says specifically,
21:17butter or milk and ghee is for health.
21:22And this is a mother cow gave this to us for, she gave this to us.
21:27She is our mother. I have no other way to respect our mother cow to take her offerings.
21:32This is your special ego. Do you have a time where you go around and say that?
21:43And they mention the Vedas too a lot.
22:03Surrender to God is to say that one lives by the vishad, by the mechanisms of existence itself.
22:18One does not try to fabricate his own artificial ways.
22:26Does the cow go and drink the camel's milk?
22:33If one is really being religious, then one has to live as per the wishes of nature.
22:50God has given you your own mother and her breast milk.
22:58Which species drinks the milk of some other species?
23:09And if you had really needed milk even at the age of 20 or 40,
23:18then that milk would have been made available to your mother's body.
23:25On one hand, you are saying that you are religious.
23:28On the other hand, you are claiming that God has not sufficiently provided for you.
23:35Now, what kind of religiosity is this?
23:38You are saying, you know, God made a mistake.
23:43He gave milk to my mother's breasts only for six months,
23:48whereas I actually needed it for 60 years.
23:53So, God has made a huge blunder.
23:57So, now I will correct God's mistake by turning the cow into mother cow and milking her.
24:09If God really wanted you to drink the cow's milk,
24:13then you would have been born out of a cow.
24:16Now, why not try that?
24:24Man is already so fond of all kinds of medical acrobatics.
24:31And if one is so fond of cow's milk,
24:34why not try this, some kind of a scientific method of insemination,
24:39whereby human babies are born from cows.
24:44And designer cows that can keep providing milk for the baby,
24:52even when the baby is 60 years old.
24:55And actually, if you are 60 years old and still surviving on milk and ghee and butter,
25:01then you are a baby.
25:03Mentally, you have not gone beyond six months.
25:06Do you see a mature lion still sucking on milk?
25:14Do you see that?
25:16Or do you see even the little rabbit doing that beyond a few weeks?
25:21Man is the only one who even at the age of 80 craves for milk.
25:27That only proves how infantile we are from within.
25:33The mind has not really been able to get rid of the mother's breast.
25:40Pride will have something to say about that.
25:44So milk, milk, more milk.
25:47Of course, if you go into the psychology of it,
25:52you will only find sexual perversion there.
25:55Nothing else.
26:02I'm not convinced that man's body needs milk after a particular age.
26:10That age might be six months, one year, two years.
26:15Nature knows best.
26:18And according to her own innate intelligence,
26:24nature provides milk to the mother exactly as long as the baby needs milk.
26:31After that, if still the baby or the man or the family insists that milk must be fed to the human being,
26:42then it is a deviation from the course of nature.
26:52Then it is an ugly aberration.
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