Hollow Veganism || Acharya Prashant, in Conversation (2022)

Questioner (Q): Hello Sir. My question is related to your statement that vegans are somewhat distanced from spirituality. I like to think of myself as an intersectional vegan who is not looking at the subject of animal rights in exclusivity, and in fact is trying to understand those from a perspective of human rights as well and how they are intertwined.

I think that vegans are distancing themselves from spirituality because a lot of vegans are not getting the necessary direction that they need, to accept that the whole reason we need to do this is because we are distanced from spirituality. And what is happening is, when you are faced with the reality of the way we treat animals as well as humans, people are losing their faith in humanity itself and to some extent in spirituality.

Acharya Prashant (AP): No, I didn’t get the logic. When you have not even tried spirituality once, how do you lose your faith in it? How do I lose my faith in something? I have not even tried this once in my life and then I say I have no faith in it. How have you lost your faith in it when you never had any faith in the first place?

Q: Because of the way traditions have co-opted religion.

AP: So, have you no information, or knowledge, or access, or insight to see beyond that? There is enough material on the internet to see how spirituality is something way beyond tradition? How is it possible then that a well-read person with access to information technology continues to believe that tradition is spirituality?

There is enough material on the internet and there are books and they are all very easily accessible, they are in the public domain. Many of them are particularly famous. How is it still possible that a young person, a well-read person says that you know traditions are all very exploitative and I thought that religion is nothing but traditions, therefore I turn my back to religion? How is it possible?

Q: You have correctly put the issue that we are facing—the way traditions are co-opting religion and spirituality is the problem.

AP: Traditions can do whatever they want to do. And remember, traditions are not conscious on their own. It's vested interest of selfish people who use traditions for their own selfish gains in the name of religion. So, all that is happening and that is being done by dumb and mediocre people; but don't we know better than that? Don't we have access to resources to see that it's some kind of a very lame conspiracy? So lame that you can just push it and it will fall, there is nothing in it. So how are smart and sharp youngsters not able to see through the problem of ‘tradition co-opting religion’, as you said? How is it possible?

I will add another dimension to what you are saying. You know, it is very, very comforting to the ego to keep spirituality at arm's length; that might be the real problem. Because if you accept that spirituality is the solution, then you will have to self-correct. Spirituality is about looking into yourself, figuring out all the nonsense that keeps circulating within, and owning the responsibility to correct, purify and improve yourself.

That's what even the well-read population, even the intellectual population does not want to do. Because irrespective of how much knowledge you have and how deep your intellect is, the animalistic tendency to consume, to exploit, to be afraid, to be greedy, to be envious; that remains the same.

Even if to promote veganism, even if to save animals, if you turn to spirituality, you will have to feel uncomfortable, you will have to live with an inner conflict. And that's the reason why vegans want to keep these two very separated.

Q: Climate Healers is one of the founding organizations for the inter faith vegan coalition. So we did that in 2016.

AP: You see, even when we say we are going to have an interfaith vegan conference or something, what we say is, “Veganism is at the centre and now let's use faith to promote the cause of veganism.” That won't work. You will have to keep faith at the centre. And when faith is at the centre, then veganism happens on its own, and that is the only way veganism can happen.

I would have turned—very humbly submitting to you with no sense of vanity in it, because we still have a long, long, long way to go. So how can I start feeling proud at such an early stage? More than a lakh, probably five lakh people would have been turned vegan by our humble efforts. They have not been turned vegan, they have been turned spiritual. And because they have been turned spiritual, veganism has just happened. Just happened. Once you are spiritual, you just cannot bear to consume dairy or meat.

Q: That is precisely what happened to me as well. I became spiritual and then this automatically happened. And because I agree with you, that is why I am not able to accept that this can be applied to veganism as a blanket thing—that all vegans are away from spirituality. That's what happened to me.

AP: Obviously, nothing can be applied in a blanket sense, in a hundred percent perfect sense to anybody. But what is happening largely to the vegan community, that's what I am stating to you, right? You know of the intensity of our effort, so you would have known that we probably have deep experience with the vegan dynamics in this country. And it is from there that I am coming.

Q: So, from your experience, what is your advice on bringing this alignment back into the movement?

AP: India has religiosity in its soil. You cannot talk to the Indian people in a language of ideology. Indians won't listen to ideology, but Indians will listen to the language of love, compassion, spirituality.

I understand it might be important to make a documentary in English. You have to speak to the people in their language and in their metaphor, and that's the reason why the vegan community in India is still so small. We are talking down to the people. We are treating as if we are at a higher intellectual station, and those people down there need to listen to us; this won't work!

Q: Yeah, it's unfortunate, because a lot of the learning of the activist community is coming from a more Western narrative and it doesn’t apply.

AP: Exactly. That Western veganism simply won't work in India. It has not worked, it will not work even in the future. But Indians will turn vegan on their own because they have that sentiment already by virtue of their pre-existing spirituality. The sentiment that animals are living beings, that even our gods have taken forms of animals often. You have Matsyāvatāra , you have Kūrma avatāra —all kinds of improbable animals have hosted our gods. Think of fish, think of a tortoise, and the gods in the heavens decide to take the shape of a fish or this or that, birds, even crows, think snakes.

So Indians, by their very spiritual training are already ripe to very quickly turn vegan. But you cannot impose imported western ideologies on them and hope that they will listen; they will not listen.

Q: Exactly. Thank you so much. So in your understanding of religion and spirituality, do you see religion as a path towards spirituality or do you see them the same? Also you say that gods and goddesses have taken the shape and form of animals as well. But there is also—please pardon my lack of awareness—but there is also some understanding that humans are in some sense superior because we are closer towards enlightenment. So, what is your thought on that as well?

AP: The one who is superior in the spiritual tradition is vested with a lot of responsibility, like the superior one in the family. What will the superior one in the family do? Eat up the small ones or bring them up? So that's the answer.

Unlike in Abrahamic folds, where the superior one is probably supposed to consume the smaller ones; or that's how it is interpreted. Though there again, I advise specifically the Muslim community when they say that it is mentioned in the Holy Quran that all the little creatures and all these, they are made for man. I ask them, “What does it mean ‘made for man’?” It means that they are made for the compassion of man. They are made as the responsibility of man to take care of them. We are the trustee, and the trustee is not supposed to consume what he has been entrusted with. Right?

You are supposed to take care of them—not assault them, not kill them, not consume them, not exploit them. So that's the thing you see, we worship and she put it very cutely in that thing, Bhūmi Devi , but it was written as Mummy Devi . Even though it was Mummy Devi , it sounded so nice to me that the Devi is the mother, the Devi is the mother and the mother is all this—where the cycle of procreation, life and death happens; we worship it. So, obviously we cannot be violent towards it. How can you be violent towards the article of your worship? Right?

So, we are already in that condition. It's just that spirituality has to be shown as different from the existing traditions of religion. That brings me to your original question—the relationship between religion and spirituality.

Religion is the outermost shell of spirituality. It is there so that the uninitiated ones might be somehow introduced to the basic principles, and initiated on that long road that passes through, firstly spirituality and then ends in liberation. So, religion was designed to be conducive to spirituality.

You could say, in terms of a model including concentric circles—Religion is the outer circle, Spirituality is the inner circle; and these two are concentric and liberation is the centre. The outer circle is religion, the inner circle is spirituality and liberation is the centre.

The problem is that the outer circle has moved infinitely outwards. The outer circle must be somewhat close to the inner circle, right? Only then can there be some communication between these two circles. Now, what has happened is that the outer circle has been sabotaged. The outer circle has been co-opted, taken away by our own animalistic tendencies. So, as it was said that tradition has simply walked away with religion, and that is what has happened.

That's why you see such a great difference, even dissonance between religion and spirituality. In fact, you just returned from OP Jindal University and in the last session that I had with them, one of the questions that was asked to me was, “Is India too religious to be spiritual?” And there is an entire video with the same title that is, ‘India is too religious to be spiritual’.

Such has become the degraded condition of religiosity in India. So, I fully understand that we have to fight all the impurities that have sneaked into religion, and in fact totally owned it up, possessed it. But fighting the impurities is very different from fighting religion itself. Along with the impurities, if you discard the essential religiosity, is that not the same thing as throwing the baby away with the bathwater?

The bath water is dirty, so throw it away; and along with that you also threw away the baby in the bathwater. How wise is that? And you cannot have veganism sans Vedānta. Let me put that very, very clearly. I want that message to go out clear and loud to the entire vegan community in India and abroad. You cannot discard religion and still hope veganism to succeed, your ways have not succeeded today. In the past you have been trying for ten years, twenty years; you have not succeeded. You will not succeed even in the future. In fact, veganism without spirituality would be quite dangerous.

Q: Are you implying that religion is the exclusive way towards spirituality?

AP: You can be very spiritual without being religious. You can be very spiritual without being religious. And if you are spiritual without being religious, then you are truly religious.

Q: Yeah, the Dharma.

AP: The definition of Dharma is to constantly remember that the mind has to be brought to a realization, to a relaxation, to a point free of its own impurities, that is Dharma. That is Dharma nothing more than that. Pure and simple. Keep the mind pure—this is Dharma!

Q: Thank you so much. And it's interesting that you brought up the baby and the bathwater because Dr. Sailesh Rao (another panel member in discussion) has come up with a model of solving climate change, which is the climate bathtub model. So, Dr. Rao if you could briefly explain the model.

Dr. Rao: Just looking at fossil fuels, and I modelled it with a baby sitting in a bathtub and with water as the equivalent of the CO2 in the atmosphere—CO2 equivalent, CO2 methane equivalent.

AP: Let's please look at spiritual life. It is obviously minimalistic because you understand there is not much point in consuming, and consuming, and consuming. There is a bit of anti-natalism involved there because just as you don't want to consume a lot, you also don't want to procreate a lot.

All the values that you can revere and admire, they are anyway emanating from the spiritual life. Therefore, it is the spiritual life that will be conducive to even give birth to nonviolence, to veganism, to compassion, to communal harmony—to all the nice things we can talk of. All the goodness comes essentially from spirituality. No? Otherwise, why do we need to be spiritual? Because we are not already good.

Man as he is born is a wild thing. The baby that is born carries so many millions of years of baggage, evolutionary baggage. Look at the just born baby—full of ignorance, crying, full of filth, attached, afraid, deluded. No? That's the condition of the baby and that's the reason why we need spiritual education—because we are not born all right.

And as you go on correcting the baby by addressing his/her inner animalistic tendencies, life is set right. Veganism will happen even without making any specific or targeted or dedicated efforts. It will just happen. Just happen.

Q: So in my journey, the spiritual I got, I saw God in every bird, every tree, every butterfly, the lake, the cow and her baby. I see God everywhere. How can we now uplift India through this spirituality?

AP: Help us. We are doing that, attempting that, kindly support us. You have to bring the basics to the people. Let people realize that another way of thought and life is possible.

What is happening is that the mainstream current is extremely strong. The common man is totally unable to resist its speed, its flow, its power; so we all just get swept away. There has to be an alternate current, there has to be something else you can opt for; and that has to be brought to the public domain.

Q: Which brings me to the idea of creating a vegan university.

AP: Wonderful. Wonderful. Just as you had that vegan temple in the movie.

Q: So, a complete education system that around non-violence.

AP: Why not just as you have named the movie on Ahiansā , why not name the university on Ahiansā ? Ahiansā University.

When you have Ahiansā University, then it remains not merely about animals, then it starts including that one central animal as well. So, why be partial against human beings? When you say that veganism is a great value, why not include human beings in the fold? It's not only animals that we exploit or do we? We exploit fellow human beings as well.

So when you name it Ahiansā , then you are being fair to human beings as well, exploited human beings as well. No? When you say that I am a vegan, in some sense you have said, “Okay, I can be unfair to human beings, but I will be fair to animals.” Is that possible?

Ahinsā is all inclusive. It includes your relationship with animals, with human beings, with trees, with plants, with the river, with the mountain and also with yourself. Ahinsā includes your relationship with yourself as well. So Ahinsā is a far more inclusive and more powerful and more fundamental word.

Q: Yeah, we were calling it until now—the Jīva Karuṇā Vegan University.

AP: Lovely!

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