Vegetarian Since Birth? || Acharya Prashant, in conversation (2021)

Acharya Prashant

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 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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.

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