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Video Information: 20.03.2021, Open Session, Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India

Context:
~ Does killing a lion and killing a man the same thing?
~ Do carnivores animal have the choice not to kill?
~ How does killing any animal affect human consciousness?
~ Why in nature all living beings are not vegetarians?
~ If killing is evil then why do carnivores, lions, and wolves exist at all?

Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~ .

Category

📚
Learning
Transcript
00:00Why in nature all living beings are not vegetarian?
00:13Why does life eat life?
00:18If killing is evil, why do carnivores, lions and wolves exist at all?
00:28Please understand, it is not killing that is bad.
00:37Killing does not operate in a vacuum.
00:44The killer is the one in question.
00:49Who is killing?
00:53Who is killing?
00:55If the lion is killing, then it is one thing.
01:00But if man is killing, then it is a totally different thing.
01:04Do not say that the moot question is killing, no.
01:10The moot question relates to the killer, not killing per se.
01:18Is that clear?
01:19If you can understand this, then the rest of things will be very clear automatically.
01:22The thing is not so much about killing.
01:26It is much more about, actually only about the killer.
01:32So there is a difference when the lion kills the deer versus when the man kills the deer.
01:40The lion kills the deer, the lion had no option.
01:44The lion is programmed to kill the deer, the lion kills the deer.
01:51The lion has no higher consciousness to attain by not killing the deer.
01:57The lion is not supposed to practice compassion.
02:03And if the lion will not kill the deer, the lion will die.
02:07The lion is almost like a machine.
02:10Will you say that your car is killing the fuel?
02:18But that's how it happens.
02:21You put fuel in the car and what happens to the fuel?
02:24It is burnt, turned into smoke, gone, finished, killed.
02:29But do you call it violence?
02:31No.
02:32The relationship between the lion and the deer is a bit similar.
02:38None of them, rather neither of them are creatures of consciousness.
02:43In that sense, they are more similar to machines.
02:47They do have consciousness, but their consciousness is lower with respect to man.
02:51When you take man as the benchmark, then both the lion and the deer are quite lowly in terms
02:58of consciousness.
02:59So, in that sense, I am comparing them to machines.
03:03They are like machines because they operate in very very pre-scripted ways.
03:08They are pre-programmed to do what they do.
03:11You don't have to teach the deer to eat grass.
03:16You don't have to teach the lion not to eat grass and herbs.
03:21If you give meat to the deer, the deer will simply walk away.
03:26If you give grass to the lion, the lion will simply walk away.
03:29It's not a matter of ideology.
03:31It's not a matter of teaching or training.
03:33It is designed like that.
03:35It is a machine.
03:36It will not admit anything else.
03:40So machines, therefore, obviously cannot be called as evil.
03:49It would be stupid to call a machine evil.
03:52It would be equally stupid to call a machine virtuous.
03:56Machines are neither vile nor virtuous.
04:00Now come to man.
04:02Man has consciousness.
04:04Man has decision-making ability.
04:07If man compares himself to a lion or a wolf, then he is debasing himself, is he not?
04:14You are a man.
04:15You are a creature of high consciousness.
04:16Why do you want to follow the dietary pattern of a wolf, which is a creature of a low consciousness?
04:25So man has choice.
04:27Therefore, man has to practice compassion for his own sake.
04:32Man has to ask himself, is it the only way possible to feed my stomach?
04:38Do I really have to kill consciousness to sustain consciousness?
04:43And even if I have to kill consciousness to sustain consciousness, does it have to be
04:48an animal which has a relatively higher level of consciousness compared to grass?
04:54Man is conscious.
04:57Animal is conscious.
04:59And the grass is conscious.
05:00All three are conscious, right?
05:02But man's consciousness is extremely high.
05:05And it has the potential to go even higher, greatly higher.
05:11The sky is not the limit.
05:14That high the man's consciousness can go.
05:17So man is conscious.
05:18The animal is conscious.
05:19The animal is conscious is an in-between kind of consciousness.
05:23The grass too is conscious.
05:24The grass's consciousness is very lowly, very basic.
05:29So if the man's body is designed in a way that it has to have food, and food will necessarily
05:36involve killing.
05:37You are very right.
05:38As you said, life eats life.
05:41You are very right.
05:42That for one biological form to survive, it has to consume another biological form.
05:47But I have the choice, which biological form do I kill for my physical sustenance?
05:53This or this?
05:55This is animal.
05:57And this is grass.
06:01Given the choice, I will choose not to kill a relatively higher form of consciousness.
06:08And in this I fully admit that even when I am eating the grass or the radish or the apple,
06:15violence is still involved.
06:16But I am helpless.
06:20If I have to avoid even that level of violence, then I have to commit suicide.
06:27Or I shouldn't have been born.
06:29If the body is to be sustained, then the minimum level of killing has to happen.
06:36But what's important is the word minimum.
06:40Keep it to the minimum.
06:41Keep it to the minimum.
06:42It's not a matter of absolutes.
06:44It's not in binaries.
06:45You cannot say that I will not kill a living being at all.
06:49If you will not kill a living being at all, you won't survive.
06:52Simple.
06:53All living beings are getting killed in your throat, in your gut, on your skin, every moment.
07:01Even as you inhale, you take in so many microbes.
07:04And they are all getting killed.
07:08You don't even know, you take in a fizzy drink and you do not know what kind of slaughter
07:13it has done in your elementary canal from here till there.
07:24That's the minimum.
07:25What do I do?
07:26What do I do?
07:27Even as I step on the floor, something is getting killed.
07:31I cannot avoid it.
07:33But I should avoid what is avoidable.
07:36Killing an animal is avoidable.
07:37I should avoid it.
07:38By saying that, I am not at all saying that I am not guilty of killing at all.
07:46Even the purest vegetarian or vegan is committing some level of killing.
07:54But he can be exonerated if that killing has been kept to a minimum.
07:59That's the word minimum.
08:01Keep it to a minimum.
08:02Keep it to a minimum.
08:04Keep it to a level that is unavoidable.
08:08You should say this level, beyond this level, sir, I couldn't have gone.
08:12And if I need to go beyond this level, then I just need to give up the body.
08:16When you kill to eat, don't you have an option?
08:22As human beings, the lion does not have an option.
08:24If you have an option, why don't you exercise it?
08:26You have to answer.
08:29You have to answer.
08:30And science is totally out on this.
08:34There are no secrets left.
08:39When you eat flesh, you are doing great damage to even your own biological system.
08:45And you are doing great damage to this entire ecosystem.
08:49And still you are hell-bent on killing.
08:52You are doing damage to both your consciousness as well as your body.
09:01And needless to say to the environment, ecosystem, we have talked in detail on how flesh consumption
09:10is related to climate change.
09:14You still want to kill.
09:22I can only squirm in pain.
09:24Are you getting it?
09:27Will the veganism movement be successful if that movement only talks about the benefits
09:41of the body?
09:42Will the center get the same, less?
09:45No, you see, you cannot have a veganism movement.
09:51You need to have a spiritual movement.
09:54Turning vegan would be then a very smooth thing to do.
10:01But if you want to be a vegan without being spiritual, you will not be able to remain
10:05vegan for long.
10:08So forget veganism, turn to real spirituality and you will find that you have become a vegan
10:18even without consciously deciding to be one.
10:23If you are spiritual, how will you decide to slaughter consciousness itself?
10:33The reason why veganism is not very successful worldwide and especially in India is because
10:41it has no spiritual moorings.
10:45Without a strong spiritual base, veganism is bound to fail.
10:54For so long, Indians have avoided killing to the best extent possible.
11:06Even today, if you look at the total number of vegetarians in the world, more than half
11:14of them are Indians and that is not because of some vegetarian movement or veganism movement.
11:25That is because of the Indic religions.
11:29True spirituality necessarily begets compassion.
11:35There was no veganism and yet Indians were not known to massively kill.
11:44Obviously, there were sections of meat eaters as well.
11:50I am not saying all Indians were abstaining from meat.
11:54But by and large, the Indian diet did not consist of flesh.
12:00Why?
12:03Because of spirituality, because India was a country deeply steeped in religion.
12:10Obviously religion has harmed India in a big way in many different dimensions.
12:18But when you are discussing religion, you should not forget the massive contributions
12:28of religion either.
12:31Where there is a fault, we must call it out.
12:37But where credit is due, we should not be found miserly.
12:46That's the basic requirement of honesty or not.
12:52So religion has inflicted quite a lot of problems on India, we admit that.
13:00But we must also admit that the Indian consciousness has in many ways benefited due to religion.
13:11The benefits we must not only keep but also increase.
13:18The faults we must remove, reject, correct.
13:24That should be the right approach.

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