🧔🏻♂️ Want to meet Acharya Prashant?
Be a part of the Live Sessions: https://acharyaprashant.org/hi/enquiry-gita-course?cmId=m00026
📚 Want to read Acharya Prashant's Books?
Get Free Delivery: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/books?cmId=m00026
📝 Read 3 handpicked wisdom articles, just for you: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/articles?cmId=m00026
~~~~~
Video Information: 04.04.23, with Ahimsa Fellows (Online-talk), Greater Noida
Context:
~ What are the most common reasons for veganism?
~ What do vegans struggle with the most?
~ What are the three pillars of veganism?
~ Why do relatives not understand veganism?
~ Is it impossible to be spiritual and not vegan?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~
Be a part of the Live Sessions: https://acharyaprashant.org/hi/enquiry-gita-course?cmId=m00026
📚 Want to read Acharya Prashant's Books?
Get Free Delivery: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/books?cmId=m00026
📝 Read 3 handpicked wisdom articles, just for you: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/articles?cmId=m00026
~~~~~
Video Information: 04.04.23, with Ahimsa Fellows (Online-talk), Greater Noida
Context:
~ What are the most common reasons for veganism?
~ What do vegans struggle with the most?
~ What are the three pillars of veganism?
~ Why do relatives not understand veganism?
~ Is it impossible to be spiritual and not vegan?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00Many of us were already acquainted with the amazing phenomenal work that you do with your
00:07videos and other things.
00:10But in preparation for this talk, many of us got familiar.
00:13So based on that, we've got some queries.
00:16So the first question is that in many of your interviews, you mentioned that one cannot
00:24be spiritual if one eats animals at the same time.
00:29So when cruelties behind milk and meat consumption are highlighted, people who are not vegan,
00:36they tend to get very defensive.
00:39So this question has two parts.
00:42The first part is what does such defensiveness indicate from the prism of spirituality?
00:49And secondly, that given that the meat and milk consumption and demand has increased
00:54dramatically in India.
00:56So does this point towards a large scale spiritual crisis?
01:01And if so, what kind of an approach can be taken by talking to people about animal cruelty
01:07and also veganism?
01:09This was Sunaina's question.
01:12It's a bit of a tricky affair to introduce the fact of animal cruelty to someone without
01:26alleging or insinuating that the person is some kind of a criminal.
01:34So one has to be sensitive to the response of the listener.
01:44And to be fair, education or awareness towards such things is pretty low.
01:58So if the person has not yet known of these things, he or she can be extended some benefit
02:10of doubt.
02:12It is possible that the person never had the opportunity to be educated in that regard.
02:22Vegans sometimes exhibit a holier-than-thou kind of attitude, an aggression that is counterproductive.
02:30Even I am guilty of that.
02:31I have seen that.
02:33But when you look at someone who comes from a meat-eating family or the traditional kind
02:47of Indian Vaishnav family where milk and kheer and dahi are a staple, then it comes as a
02:58shock to that person that milk involves cruelty.
03:06It's a totally alien and a disturbing concept.
03:10So it has to be brought out with due expertise.
03:17That does not mean that you have to be especially trained in communicating these matters.
03:21Just that one has to be sensitive that the other person might not really know or even
03:28if he knows, it is his environment that has been too much on him and so far it has been
03:35next to impossible for that person to quit all these food items or habits.
03:43So these things have to be gently brought out.
03:46Understand, you see, when you are familiar with the pain and the suffering that animals
03:50go through, that disturbs you and that makes you rush to help them.
04:01It becomes difficult to be gentle and patient and a little slow and measured, right?
04:08Because you have just seen the hell that the goat or the cow or the buffalo have to go
04:16through.
04:17You are acquainted with that.
04:21So you are agitated and when you see someone consuming meat, you almost want to slap them.
04:28I appreciate that feeling.
04:30But also look at that person, he might come from a family of generations of meat eaters.
04:38And when that fellow was two years of age, that was when he was served his first morsel
04:45of biryani or chicken piece or something, right?
04:51So it's almost flowing in his veins now.
04:55He has to be a bit gently weaned away from all that, right?
05:04So one has to be relentlessly at it.
05:09The bombardment on social media has to be incessant.
05:19But when it comes to personal confrontation, one has to remember that the objective is
05:28not to shame the other.
05:30The objective is to help the animal.
05:33Just shaming the other won't help.
05:36In fact, it is possible that the other becomes aggressive in his defense.
05:44And that aggression might mean that he says that not only do I continue to eat, but I'll
05:49actually consume flesh in double the quantity.
05:55As some kind of signal of childish defiance, people do that.
06:03So it's a tricky thing.
06:05We want to rush, but we'll have to rush gently.
06:12That's something I'm not only telling you, that's something that I remind myself often
06:15because I too want to rush.
06:17I want this whole cruelty to come to an absolute end right now.
06:26But that's not how it can happen.
06:30So one has to gently rush.
06:37And the second thing you said that, is it symptomatic of a wider spiritual crisis?
06:45Of course it is.
06:46Of course it is.
06:48Of course it is.
06:49The very philosophy of life has gone all wrong.
06:56We have been told that individual happiness is the purpose of life.
07:02One lives to consume, you live to be happy for yourself.
07:06Of course you can add these little goodies like compassion and helping someone and you
07:11know all these are little tidbits that you add to the overwhelming project of self-satiation.
07:20But they are just that, little tidbits.
07:24The overwhelming theme of life is personal pleasure.
07:28That is a philosophy we have been fed since our birth.
07:35And that philosophy is a very violent one.
07:43Not that someone teaches that philosophy to us via a classroom course or a textbook.
07:51It's just in the air.
07:54You look at a hoarding, a billboard.
07:57You look at the way a shop is structured.
08:01You look at the clothes people are wearing.
08:04You look at the voice of somebody, a marketing professional or somebody.
08:15And the philosophy is contained there, it's embedded there.
08:21So we are being subliminally educated, rather indoctrinated, conditioned in that philosophy.
08:31And that's the spiritual crisis.
08:34Spirituality is basically, simply about realizing who you are and the clear fallout of that
08:47is that you no more care for your personal desires.
08:51I am not the person, so how can I be so particular about my personal desires?
08:57That's what all spirituality is about.
08:59I am not the person I appear to be.
09:02That's not my reality.
09:04That's just my appearance.
09:05The person is my appearance.
09:07My reality is beyond the person that I appear.
09:14Therefore all the personal desires that I have, have to be taken lightly, cannot be
09:20given great importance.
09:23So that's what spirituality is, where you cannot give your personal desires great importance.
09:28Giving your personal desires great importance is to subject yourself to suffering.
09:33And freedom from suffering is the goal of entire spirituality.
09:38There is no other goal.
09:40We suffer so much, therefore spirituality exists.
09:43Spirituality is self-knowledge.
09:45Spirituality is not spirit business, basic self-knowledge, to see who I am and what I
09:51want and therefore how I must live.
09:53That's what spirituality or self-knowledge is.
09:56On the other hand, the philosophy we have been fed tells us that personal ingratiation
10:05is the sole purpose of life.
10:08So these two are obviously at odds.
10:11Spirituality and the philosophy the commoners believe in.
10:17Though nobody realizes that because nobody believes that he has a philosophy of life.
10:21We all think we have a certain opinion about life that is our own.
10:26All the opinions that we all have about life are not at all our own.
10:32They either arise from the bodily tendencies or from the social environment.
10:41Those are the desires that we chase.
10:44Bodily compulsions or social conditioning.
10:50Both together telling us be happy, be happy, be happy, be happy at whatever cost.
10:58The only antidote to that is self-knowledge.
11:02Self-knowledge tells you who is there to be happy, whom are you trying to please.
11:07Can we inquire into that?
11:10It's alright to be happy, but who exactly is the one being fed happiness at such great
11:18cost?
11:21It's like you are drunk and you are trying to feed yourself and you do not even know
11:25who you are and therefore where your mouth is.
11:29And some imposter, some fraudster is standing right behind you with his mouth wide open
11:37and you pick up the morsel and you feed and you're thinking you're feeding it to yourself.
11:43Somebody else is being fed when you are trying to fulfill your desires.
11:48Your desires are not fulfilling you, they are fulfilling somebody else, somebody else.
11:53That's the point of self-knowledge when you realize who you are.
11:57When you cannot spend your life pleasing somebody who you are not.
12:09So you know what that means, all of that.
12:13What that means is that if the system is to continue, the system of thought, the system
12:18of economics, the markets, the politics, the society, the family, the education.
12:27If all of this is to continue, self-knowledge has to be obstructed very sternly, very staunchly,
12:35very deliberately, very systematically.
12:39If self-knowledge advances, then everything that we see around us and see within us will
12:53be threatened and there are vested interests.
12:59So people will not allow real spirituality to prosper.
13:05But at the same time, it has become some kind of a moral fad to declare that one is spiritual.
13:14So what would then happen?
13:17Shady alternatives to real spirituality will need to be fabricated.
13:26Real spirituality would threaten the entire system within and without.
13:32Right from the kindergarten school to the parliaments of the world, everything will
13:41be threatened if real spirituality advances.
13:46So some kind of fake spirituality has to be created and patronized so that the systems
13:56and the vested interests can continue to prosper.
14:01That's what we are seeing all around us today.
14:03That would also mean that if you come up with real self-knowledge, you better be careful.
14:13You are in crosshairs.
14:17You are being watched and you are being targeted.
14:21That makes a lot of sense.
14:23Thank you so much.