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Bharat: Vedanta and Veganism || Acharya Prashant, in conversation (2021)
Acharya Prashant
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#acharyaprashant #Vedanta #Veganism #Animals #crueltyfree
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?
Music Credits: Milind Date
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Category
📚
Learning
Transcript
Display full video transcript
00:00
Namaste. Acharyaji, before we even jump into the connection of Vedanta with animal rights
00:10
or veganism, before that I wanted to understand is that, personally, what is the connection
00:18
between Vedanta and India, Bharat? Well, you see, Vedanta is the culmination of the philosophy
00:38
of the Vedas. So, the Vedas are encyclopedic in nature, they talk about a lot of things.
00:49
Their topmost philosophical content is known as Vedanta. So, the Vedas originated in India,
01:02
so Vedanta is a very much home-grown philosophy of the soil, that's the relationship between
01:12
Vedanta and territorial India, and if we talk of India, the living conscious entity, then
01:24
Vedanta is the root from which all the philosophical systems, in some way or the other, take their nutrition.
01:38
So we have had so many streams of thought in India, we have had religions, sects and
01:47
their branches and so much else, but the undeniable fact is that all of that finds
01:58
its inspiration in Vedanta. In fact, it would not be an exaggeration to say that there can
02:06
be no spirituality without Vedanta. Vedanta talks of and addresses such a simple and fundamental
02:18
issue, that you cannot avoid it, if you want to live in truth, if you are someone who wants
02:26
to understand life. So, that's Vedanta for beginners. Superb! Acharyaji, that's what
02:38
I was asking. That is beautiful, that's almost like Sanatana Dharma, the eternal principles
02:45
of life, where that is the foundation. And how old is this belief system in India? Are
02:52
there any traces? Can we trace it? First of all, it is not a belief system. Religions
03:01
are belief systems. Vedanta is extremely exploratory in nature. It does not really ask you to believe
03:11
in anything. It carries no dogmas. It carries no fables, no stories. You really don't need
03:22
to posit anything, assume anything or take anything for granted. That's the fundamental
03:31
beauty of Vedanta. Experiential in nature? Not even experiential, because even experience
03:38
depends on the experiencer. Therefore, all experience is in some way subjective and therefore
03:47
flawed and open to questioning. What you experience might be very different from someone else
03:54
does or what I do. The three of us might have the same object in front of us, yet our experience
04:03
with respect to the object might be entirely different. So, therefore experience too cannot
04:09
be taken as the truth. This is the level of rigor at which Vedanta operates. It goes right
04:19
to the experiencer, to the entity that says, I, I live, I feel, I sense, I say, I think
04:29
and questions it. Who is that entity? From where does it come? How much trustworthiness
04:36
does it have? That's Vedanta. Beautiful. Yes, there is a saying, Aham Brahmasmi. So, I am
04:47
that I am. And does that also mean that it is asked to reincarnate again and again and
04:53
that is in different form. Before we move ahead, I just forgot to answer the second
05:01
part of your question. How old is Vedanta? You see, if I talk of the Upanishads specifically,
05:12
which are the cornerstone of Vedanta. Vedanta consists of Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita
05:18
and Brahma Sutra and out of these three, the Upanishads are the fundamental. Then the
05:25
oldest Upanishads, you could say were written, composed around 4000 years back and from that
05:42
time onwards, it has been a continuous stream. So, there are Upanishads then that were composed
05:53
before the Buddha. Then there are Upanishads that were composed in the Buddha stage. Then
06:00
there are Upanishads that have been composed in the Christ era and the most recent of the
06:09
Upanishads are well no more than a 1000 years old. So, that's the chronology. It's not one
06:18
particular book, the Upanishads. These are parts, these are excerpts from the bodies of the Vedas.
06:28
Though some Upanishads have an independent existence also, but their genesis is spread
06:36
over a vast stretch of time. Yeah, please. Very interesting. So, what is the relationship
06:45
between these Upanishads, Vedanta itself with veganism or with just animalism? Yes. The
06:56
relationship is extremely deep, very organic and these two things, spiritual understanding
07:06
and veganism are actually inseparable. You see, when the Upanishads or when Vedanta asks
07:19
the question, who am I? Then after removing all the fluff and all the falseness, one comes
07:32
to see that one is the consciousness that is asking this question. One is the experiencing
07:41
entity. And if you have heard Acharya Shankar's famous Nirvana Shatkam, then there he continuously
07:57
negates what one is not. I am not air, I am not water, I am not the body, I am not
08:05
the past, I am not the future, I am not this, I am not that. So, who am I? Then I am consciousness
08:13
and I am consciousness that must be purified to the maximum extent possible. I am asking
08:24
this question, who am I? Because the consciousness that I am suffers. It suffers because it is
08:31
impure, it is impressionable, it is contaminated. So, consciousness has to be respected, it
08:38
has to be kept pure. If consciousness has to be respected, then consciousness in all
08:45
forms has to be respected. You see, my suffering as an individual is because my consciousness
08:55
has not received the kind of attention and respect from me that it deserved. If I really
09:06
want to be free from suffering, then I have to respect consciousness. And if I have to
09:12
respect consciousness, then how can I deny that the consciousness of the animal in front
09:18
of me is not very different from my own, that the animal suffers in much the same way as
09:27
I do. There also has to be then a level at which a person starts identifying with consciousness
09:34
itself, you know, that's like a first step because a lot of people cannot go beyond the
09:40
physical and understandably so. Yes, yes, yes. You see, that's the trouble with living
09:48
in the physical. The more you live in the physical, the more you destroy the physical.
09:54
You see, when we say somebody is very body identified, it appears that that person would
10:01
be taking care of the body a lot or would be taking care of the material aspects of
10:06
the life a lot. Well, that's not really the case. When you are too attached to the body,
10:14
when you are too identified to material stuff, you find that you destroy even the material stuff.
10:19
For example, you look at the environmental crisis today, you look at the climate crisis,
10:25
all that is destruction on a material dimension. Because man loves material and therefore he
10:35
is creating havoc in the dimension of the material, the earthly dimension, the trees,
10:41
the rivers, the mountains, everything that is material is being destroyed. So, even to
10:48
let material stay in a healthy shape, one has to have a certain detachment from material
10:56
and that detachment from material can only come when you first of all identify yourself
11:02
not as material primarily, having a material dimension, but not material at the core, but
11:09
consciousness at the core and when you are consciousness at the core, you cannot avoid
11:14
admitting that the glint in the eye of the chicken or the goat is not very different
11:23
from the light in your own eye. How can you then proceed to slaughter the little thing?
11:31
Very difficult. I mean, it's also like having non-ownership, right? So, I don't own this
11:40
material, I don't own this body, I don't own that life form. Just identifying consciousness
11:46
as it is or what people sometimes call the creator. If one has any link to that and whatever
11:54
name that they call it, is when they start getting more sensitized to all beings, all
12:00
living forms around and I think animals are just one part of it. Is that what you meant?
12:07
You see, there is me and there is the material world and there is a relationship between
12:16
the two. When I do not know who I am, then the relationship between me and the material
12:23
world, and the material world consists of animals, inanimate things, persons, consumable
12:30
goods, everything. Then the relationship between me and the world gets totally distorted and
12:40
obviously I suffer and I make the world suffer. So, a person who is cruel towards animals
12:49
is actually quite likely to be inconsiderate and insensitive towards his or her loved ones
13:02
as well. But they might not even know it, right?
13:08
They might not even know it, but then, you know, it's like the virus. You may not know
13:15
that you have the virus, but the effects will be there for you to experience and for everyone
13:23
else to see and the suffering might not be just personal to you. If you have the virus,
13:31
then you cause suffering all around.
13:35
And according to the Vedic philosophy, isn't that, that we are insensitive to our own selves,
13:40
because like you said earlier on, it all starts with knowing yourself. So, if you respect
13:45
yourself, you by default respect another, by default respect you.
13:48
Well said. In fact, I have been emphasizing on this since a long time, that if you are
13:55
being considerate towards animals, then it is not even a purely selfless thing. For your
14:03
own good, please be sensitive to other conscious beings, other sentient beings, because if
14:10
you are not good to them, what it means is that you are not good to life itself and you
14:17
too are life. If you do not know how to respect the physical integrity, the very existence
14:26
of an animal, you really do not know how to have even self-respect.
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