Cruelty originates from Religion?
Questioner: Hold my salutations to Acharya Ji. So I extend my warm welcome to all of you. It was a very rainy day today but in spite of that many of you have come for the interactions and many of you have also joined online. So I welcome all of you with my whole heart and today our topic is basically where to draw a line between uh right and wrong in many activities that we do on a day-to-day basis.
So basically is there any absolute dimensions to it when you say the concept of right or wrong is there any absolute dimensions to it or is it all relative; is a confusing question that we all have Now saying that but in spite of that we have a lot of confusion. We basically need to take the right decisions at the right time and also in the right way so that we can have our mental health balanced and also our physical health balanced.
So we have Achara Prashant Ji to interact with us on this topic today and uh it's my pleasure and privilege to welcome you sir to this event.
Acharya Prashant: I'm glad to be with you.
Questioner: Thank you. Thank you so much. So I would like to commence today's session with a question from my side. U so my uh basically first question is about spreading the concept of veganism. So I have heard from many religious discourses that cruelty and compassion originate from the same source and they are inseparable. So my first question is that is that true and what is your…
Acharya Prashant: No not at all. Oh, not at all. You see there are certain things that are not of the mind. They are not actually things at all but for want of a better word let's just call them things. So obviously cruelty is of the mind and then what we usually call as care and concern in our layman language that too is of the mind. But compassion is a different animal altogether, suits when we are talking of veganism to call compassion as a different animal in a different dimension.
So the opposite of cruelty is not compassion. The opposite of cruelty is often either attachment or possessiveness or taking care of those who are related to you by way of self-interest. So that's the domain of duality. So yes, it is true that the mind wanders about in duality and then there is hope and there is hopelessness and then there is friendship and then there is enmity. So all these are aspects of duality but compassion does not sit anywhere in the dualistic framework.
Compassion is when one can transcend the usual center of the mind. Let me elaborate please. Operating from my usual egoistic center, if it is in my perceived interest to hurt someone, demolish someone or simply slaughter and eat someone that we'll call as cruelty. Now the act is of butchery and debauchery and you know, it appears very violent. The violence is very obvious. But it's not the act that we must focus on but the actor. The actor is the ego. The actor is the ego. Now please see that when we express care and concern towards those who are related to us, let's say by blood or by interest or simply by accident then are we not again operating from the same center? So the center has not changed. The center has not changed. Now that's duality.
Just as when you have a simple pendulum oscillating the extremes that it swipes they change but the center does not change and that's when you call it the normal run of duality. You know the thing is oscillating from this side to that side but it is hinged at one particular place to a particular center. In the case of human beings that center is called the ego.
So operating from my ego, I like to take care of this one and operating from the same egoistic center I want to hurt the other one and often I want to hurt the other one just so that I can take care of someone else. Like a butcher slaughtering animals so that he can take care of his family. That's duality.
He's the same person when he's slaughtering and he's exactly the same person when he takes the proceeds of the slaughter and hands it over to his family to his son, daughter or wife or somebody. These two acts appear very very dramatically different. You know, slaughtering an animal versus let's say caressing a baby. How different do they look? But let's please say that they come from the same center.
And had it not been for the purpose of taking care of that baby, the fellow would probably not have needed to slaughter the animal. So these two things are linked and that's why two aspects of duality are said to be as inseparable as two faces of a coin. But compassion is altogether different.
Compassion is when you are not operating from ego at all. Compassion is not about the ego wearing a pleasant face. Compassion is about transcending your limited self-interest. So cruelty and compassion in no way are two sides of the same coin.
So when we say that we actually pull down compassion to the level of cruelty and and when we do that obviously we have a vested self-interest. We want to prove that the compassionate ones are actually no different than the cruel ones. And in that way, the cruel ones want to save their skin. They want to say, you know, it's a thing of my choice. I'm being cruel. Another moment, another situation, I exhibit compassion. Similarly, you are being uh compassionate in this particular case. At some other point, you two will become cruel. So, there is really no difference between the two of us.
So, this is just a very silly kind of tactic that people use to justify their cruelty. Compassion is what makes us human. The usual center of self-interest which we are calling as the ego is something that we find among animals as well. Animals do team up, animals to display friendliness but only towards those who would be of some tangible use to them.
Questioner: Thank you very much sir. This was actually an enlightening session. I was having this doubt for so many years. Ever since I have turned out to be a vegan. I was a vegetarian when after I knew the cruelty behind it, I turned out to be a vegan. But ever since I was trying to make people understand what is the essence of veganism. This is one of the questions which I was not able to clearly make people understand. So I think I mean the second question has no validity now. My second question has whether compassion can stay as a single entity. Now I understood….
Acharya Prashant: Please repeat the question, nevertheless please.
Questioner: The second question was if the if they are two sides of the same coin then whether compassion will exist as a single entity but from your explanation I understood that they are not
Acharya Prashant: Obviously. Obviously! See compassion has to exist in a standalone way not uh another side of cruelty. It is because you see we've used the word compassion very loosely in our vernacular, in our uh in our everyday conversations we use that word in a very unconscious way.
So for example, if a mother is exhibiting a certain behavior towards her child, we start calling that love and sometimes even compassion. But that's not that, that's not that. If I am being good towards someone who is related to me via self-interest, that is not compassion. Compassion is a relationship free of self-interest.
You see, the dog on the road can hardly give me anything. In fact, there is a danger if I go close to it, it might turn upon me, bark or even bite. But still if I want to do something nice to it that probably comes close to compassion. Taking care of the ones uh who are related to you by way of a reciprocal arrangement can hardly be called compassion.
I do good to you and uh in the bargain you will do good to me. That that's not compassion. Taking care of people who belong to your own sect or community or ideology that too again cannot be called compassion or taking care of people because that would fetch you or fame or or something recognition that again cannot be called compassion. Wherever self-interest is involved compassion is ruled out and self-interest is seen both in cruelty and in the normal kind of care and concern. None of these belong to the same plane as compassion.
Questioner: Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much.
