00:00Namaste. Acharya Ji, before we even jump into the connection of Vedanta with animal rights
00:09or veganism, before that, I want you to understand is that, personally, what is the connection
00:17between Vedanta and India, Bharat? Well, you see, Vedanta is the culmination of the philosophy
00:37of the Vedas. So, the Vedas are encyclopedic in nature. They talk about a lot of things.
00:47Their topmost philosophical content is known as Vedanta. So, the Vedas originated in India.
01:01So, Vedanta is a very much homegrown philosophy of the soil. That is the relationship between
01:11Vedanta and territorial India. And if we talk of India, the living conscious entity, then
01:23Vedanta is the root from which all the philosophical systems in some way or the other take their
01:35conclusion. So, we have had so many streams of thought in India. We have had religions, sects
01:45and their branches and so much else. But the undeniable fact is that all of that finds its inspiration
01:57in Vedanta. In fact, it would not be an exaggeration to say that there can be no spirituality without
02:09Vedanta. Vedanta talks of and addresses such a simple and fundamental issue that you cannot avoid it if you
02:21want to live in truth, if you are someone who wants to understand life. So, that's Vedanta for beginners.
02:31That is beautiful. That's almost like Sanatan Dharma, right? The eternal principles of life where
02:45that is the foundation. And how old is this belief system in India? Are there any traces? Can we trace it?
02:55First of all, it is not a belief system. Religions are belief systems. Vedanta is extremely exploratory
03:05in nature. It does not really ask you to believe in anything. It carries no dogmas. It carries no fables,
03:17no stories. You really don't need to posit anything, assume anything or take anything for granted. That's the
03:27that's the fundamental beauty of Vedanta. Experiential in nature. Not even experiential because
03:35even experience depends on the experiencer. Therefore, all experience is in some way subjective and therefore
03:45flawed and open to questioning. What you experience might be very different from someone else does or what I do, right?
03:55The three of us might have the same object in front of us, yet our experience with respect to the object
04:03might be entirely different. So, therefore experience too cannot be taken as the truth. This is the level of
04:11rigor at which Vedanta operates. It goes right to the experiencer, to the entity that says I. I live, I feel, I sense,
04:25I say, I think and questions it. Who is that entity? From where does it come? How much trustworthiness does it have?
04:35That's Vedanta. That's Vedanta.
04:39Beautiful. Yes, there is a saying which Aham Brahmas means. So, I am that I am. And does that also mean that, you know,
04:49it is us who reincarnate again and again and that is in different forms.
04:53Before we move ahead, I just forgot to answer the second part of your question. How old is Vedanta? You see,
05:05if I talk of the Upanishads specifically, which are the cornerstone of Vedanta. Vedanta consists of Upanishads,
05:15the Bhagavad Gita and Brahma Sutra. And out of these three, the Upanishads are the fundamental. Then the
05:23oldest Upanishads, you could say, were written, composed around, well, around 4000 years back. And from
05:39that time onwards, it has been a continuous stream. Right? So, there are Upanishads then that were composed
05:51before the Buddha. Then there are Upanishads that were composed in the Buddha stage. Then there are Upanishads
05:59Upanishads that have been composed in the Christ era. And the most recent of the Upanishads are, well, no more than a
06:11thousand years old. So, that's the chronology. It's not one particular book, the Upanishads. These are parts,
06:23these are excerpts from the bodies of the Vedas. Though some Upanishads have an independent existence also. But their
06:33genesis is spread over a vast stretch of time. Yeah, please.
06:39Very interesting. So, what is the relationship between this
06:47The Rupush of the Dhanath I tell? With veganism or with just animalism? Yes. The relationship is extremely deep,
06:57very organic. And these two things, spiritual understanding and veganism are actually inseparable.
07:09You see, when the Upanishads, when Vedanta asks the question, who am I, then after removing all the fluff and all the falseness, one comes to see that one is the consciousness that is asking this question.
07:37One is the experiencing entity and if you have heard Acharya Shankar's famous Nirvana Shatkam, then there he continuously negates what one is not.
07:58I am not air, I am not water, I am not the body, I am not the past, I am not the future, I am not this, I am not that.
08:08So who am I, then I am consciousness and I am consciousness that must be purified to the maximum extent possible.
08:21I am asking this question, who am I, because the consciousness that I am suffers.
08:29It suffers because it is impure, it is impressionable, it is contaminated.
08:35So consciousness has to be respected, it has to be kept pure.
08:38If consciousness has to be respected, then consciousness in all forms has to be respected.
08:45You see, my suffering as an individual is because my consciousness has not received the kind of attention and respect from me that it deserved.
09:02Right?
09:03If I really want to be free from suffering, then I have to respect consciousness.
09:09And if I have to respect consciousness, then how can I deny that the consciousness of the animal in front of me is not very different from my own?
09:22That the animal suffers in much the same way as I do.
09:28There also has to be then a level at which a person starts identifying the consciousness itself.
09:34That's, you know, that's like the first step because a lot of people cannot go beyond the physical and understandably so.
09:42Yes, yes, yes.
09:44You see, that's the trouble with living in the physical.
09:48The more you live in the physical, the more you destroy the physical.
09:53You see, when we say somebody is very body identified,
09:57it appears that that person would be taking care of the body a lot or would be taking care of the material aspects of the life a lot.
10:07Well, that's not really the case.
10:09When you are too attached to the body, when you are too identified to material stuff,
10:15you find that you destroy even the material stuff.
10:18For example, you look at the environmental crisis today, you look at the climate crisis.
10:23All that is destruction on a material dimension.
10:31Because man loves material and therefore, he is creating havoc in the dimension of the material,
10:38the earthly dimension.
10:39The trees, the rivers, the mountains, everything that is material is being destroyed.
10:43So, even to let material stay in a healthy shape, one has to have a certain detachment from material.
10:55And that detachment from material can only come when you first of all identify yourself not as material primarily,
11:03having a material dimension alright, but not material at the core, but consciousness at the core.
11:10And when you are consciousness at the core, you cannot avoid admitting that the glint in the eye of the chicken or the goat
11:20is not very different from the light in your own eye.
11:25How can you then proceed to slaughter the little thing?
11:31Very difficult.
11:31I mean, it's also like having non-ownership, right?
11:38So, I don't own this material.
11:40I don't own this body.
11:41I don't own that life form.
11:43Just identifying consciousness as it is, or what people sometimes call the creator.
11:49If one has any link to that, and whatever name that they call it, is when they start getting more sensitized to all beings,
11:59or living forms around, and I think animals are just one part of it.
12:03Is that what you know?
12:03You see, there is me, and there is the material world, and there is a relationship between the two.
12:16When I do not know who I am, then the relationship between me and the material world,
12:22and the material world consists of animals, inanimate things, persons, consumable goods, everything.
12:31Then the relationship between me and the world gets totally distorted.
12:38And obviously, I suffer, and I make the world suffer, right?
12:43So, a person who is cruel towards animals is actually quite likely to be inconsiderate and insensitive towards his or her loved ones as well.
13:05But they might not even know it, right?
13:07They might not even know it, but then, you know, it's like the virus.
13:12You may not know that you have the virus, but the effects will be there for you to experience,
13:20and for everyone else to see, and the suffering might not be just personal to you.
13:29If you have the virus, then you cause suffering all around.
13:32And according to the Vedic philosophy, isn't that that we are insensitive to our own selves?
13:39Because, like you said early on, it all starts with knowing yourself.
13:43So, if you respect yourself, you by default respect another, by default respect.
13:47Well said. In fact, I have been emphasizing on this since a long time,
13:51that if you are being considerate towards animals,
13:57then it is not even a purely selfless thing.
14:01For your own good, please be sensitive to other conscious beings, other sentient beings.
14:09Because if you are not good to them,
14:12what it means is that you are not good to life itself.
14:15And you too are life.
14:18If you do not know how to respect the physical integrity,
14:24the very existence of an animal,
14:27you really do not know how to have even self-respect.
