Bharat: Vedanta and Veganism || Acharya Prashant, in conversation (2021)

Acharya Prashant

‍♂️ Want to meet Acharya Prashant? 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?...   Read 3 handpicked wisdom articles, just for you: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/articl... ➖➖➖➖➖➖  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? How can only true  Spirituality heal the entire earth? The whole problem is the product of human mind. How will human consciousness Develop?   Music Credits: Milind Date  ~~~~~

Transcript

00:00Namaste. Acharyaji, before we even jump into the connection of Vedanta with animal rights

00:10or veganism, before that I wanted to understand is that, personally, what is the connection

00:18between Vedanta and India, Bharat? Well, you see, Vedanta is the culmination of the philosophy

00:38of the Vedas. So, the Vedas are encyclopedic in nature, they talk about a lot of things.

00:49Their topmost philosophical content is known as Vedanta. So, the Vedas originated in India,

01:02so Vedanta is a very much home-grown philosophy of the soil, that's relationship between Vedanta

01:13and territorial India, and if we talk of India, the living conscious entity, then Vedanta

01:25is the root from which all the philosophical systems, in some way or the other, take their nutrition.

01:38So we have had so many streams of thought in India, we have had religions, sects and

01:47their branches and so much else, but the undeniable fact is that all of that finds

01:58its inspiration in Vedanta. In fact, it would not be an exaggeration to say that there can

02:06be no spirituality without Vedanta. Vedanta talks of and addresses such a simple and fundamental

02:17issue that you cannot avoid it, if you want to live in truth, if you are someone who wants

02:26to understand life. So, that's Vedanta for beginners. Superb! Acharya ji, that's what

02:38I was asking. That is beautiful, that's almost like Sanatana Dharma, right? Eternal principles

02:45of life, where that is the foundation. And how old is this belief system in India? Are

02:52there any traces? Can we trace it? First of all, it is not a belief system. Religions

03:01are belief systems. Vedanta is extremely exploratory in nature. It does not really ask you to believe

03:11in anything. It carries no dogmas. It carries no fables, no stories. You really don't need

03:22to posit anything, assume anything or take anything for granted. That's the fundamental

03:31beauty of Vedanta. Experiential in nature? Not even experiential, because even experience

03:38depends on the experiencer. Therefore, all experience is in some way subjective and therefore

03:47flawed and open to questioning. What you experience might be very different from someone else

03:54does or what I do. The three of us might have the same object in front of us, yet our experience

04:03with respect to the object might be entirely different. So, therefore, experience too cannot

04:09be taken as the truth. This is the level of rigor at which Vedanta operates. It goes right

04:19to the experiencer, to the entity that says, I, I live, I feel, I sense, I say, I think

04:29and questions it. Who is that entity? From where does it come? How much trustworthiness

04:36does it have? That's Vedanta. Beautiful. Yes, there is a saying, Aham Brahmasmi. So, I am

04:47that I am. And does that also mean that it is us who reincarnate again and again and

04:53that is in different form. Before we move ahead, I just forgot to answer the second

05:01part of your question. How old is Vedanta? You see, if I talk of the Upanishads specifically,

05:12which are the cornerstone of Vedanta. Vedanta consists of Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita

05:18and Brahma Sutra and out of these three, the Upanishads are the fundamental. Then the

05:25oldest Upanishads, you could say were written, composed around 4000 years back and from that

05:42time onwards, it has been a continuous stream. So, there are Upanishads then that were composed

05:53before the Buddha. Then there are Upanishads that were composed in the Buddha stage. Then

06:00there are Upanishads that have been composed in the Christ era and the most recent of the

06:09Upanishads are well no more than a 1000 years old. So, that's the chronology. It's not one

06:18particular book, the Upanishads. These are parts, these are excerpts from the bodies of the Vedas.

06:28Though some Upanishads have an independent existence also, but their genesis is spread

06:36over a vast stretch of time. So, what is the relationship between this Vedanta itself with

06:51veganism or with just animalism? The relationship is extremely deep, very organic and these two

07:03things, spiritual understanding and veganism are actually inseparable. You see, when the

07:15Upanishads or when Vedanta asks the question, who am I? Then after removing all the fluff and all

07:29the falseness, one comes to see that one is the consciousness that is asking this question. One

07:40is the experiencing entity and if you have heard Acharya Shankar's famous Nirvana Shatkam, then

07:54there he continuously negates what one is not. I am not air, I am not water, I am not the body,

08:05I am not the past, I am not the future, I am not this, I am not that. So, who am I? Then I am

08:12consciousness and I am consciousness that must be purified to the maximum extent possible. I am

08:23asking this question, who am I? Because the consciousness that I am suffers. It suffers

08:30because it is impure, it is impressionable, it is contaminated. So, consciousness has to be

08:37respected, it has to be kept pure. If consciousness has to be respected, then consciousness in all

08:45forms has to be respected. You see, my suffering as an individual is because my consciousness has

08:55not received the kind of attention and respect from me that it deserved. If I really want to

09:07be free from suffering, then I have to respect consciousness and if I have to respect consciousness,

09:13then how can I deny that the consciousness of the animal in front of me is not very different

09:21from my own, that the animal suffers in much the same way as I do. There also has to be then a

09:31level at which a person starts identifying with consciousness itself, you know, that's like the

09:36first step because a lot of people cannot go beyond the physical and understandably so.

09:43Yes, yes, yes. You see, that's the trouble with living in the physical. The more you live in the

09:50physical, the more you destroy the physical. You see, when we say somebody is very body

09:58identified, it appears that that person would be taking care of the body a lot or would be

10:04taking care of the material aspects of the life a lot. Well, that's not really the case. When you

10:11are too attached to the body, when you are too identified to material stuff, you find that you

10:17destroy even the material stuff. For example, you look at the environmental crisis today, you look

10:23at the climate crisis, all that is destruction on a material dimension because man loves material

10:34and therefore he is creating havoc in the dimension of the material, the earthly dimension, the trees,

10:40the rivers, the mountains, everything that is material is being destroyed. So, even to let

10:48material stay in a healthy shape, one has to have a certain detachment from material and that

10:57detachment from material can only come when you first of all identify yourself not as material

11:03primarily, having a material dimension, alright, but not material at the core, but consciousness

11:10at the core and when you are consciousness at the core, you cannot avoid admitting that

11:18the glint in the eye of the chicken or the goat is not very different from the light

11:24in your own eye. How can you then proceed to slaughter the little thing? Very difficult.

11:32I mean, it's also like having non-ownership, right? So, I don't own this material, I don't

11:41own this body, I don't own that life form. Just identifying consciousness as it is or what people

11:49sometimes call the creator. If one has any link to that, whatever name that they call it, is when

11:56they start getting more sensitized to all beings, all living forms around and I think animals are

12:02just one part of it. Is that what you meant? You see, there is me and there is the material world

12:14and there is a relationship between the two. When I do not know who I am, then the relationship

12:20between me and the material world, and the material world consists of animals, inanimate

12:26things, persons, consumable goods, everything. Then the relationship between me and the world

12:37gets totally distorted and obviously I suffer and I make the world suffer, right? So, a person who is

12:46cruel towards animals is actually quite likely to be inconsiderate and insensitive towards his or

13:01her loved ones as well. But they might not even know it, right? They might not even know it, but

13:09then you know, it's like the virus. You may not know that you have the virus, but the effects

13:19will be there for you to experience and for everyone else to see and the suffering might

13:26not be just personal to you. If you have the virus, then you cause suffering all around.

13:33And according to the Vedic philosophy, isn't that we are insensitive to our own self, because like

13:41you said earlier on, it all starts with knowing yourself. So, if you respect yourself, you by

13:45default respect another, by default respect you. Well said. In fact, I have been emphasizing on

13:50this since a long time, that if you are being considerate towards animals, then it is not even

14:00a purely selfless thing. For your own good, please be sensitive to other conscious beings,

14:08other sentient beings, because if you are not good to them, what it means is that you are not

14:15good to life itself and you too are life. If you do not know how to respect the physical integrity,

14:24the very existence of an animal, you really do not know how to have even self-respect.

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