If God stands for innocence, trust, surrender, then animals are closer to God. But man values himself by his ability to exploit. If you always feel hollow and hungry, then the entire universe is but a resource for you. One then wants to exploit the man, the woman, the child, the animals — everything. So, someone who does not want to look at the universe as a resource will not want to kill or consume anything in a violent way.
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Questioner: How to understand religions, the treatment of animals and the role they play in religions?
Acharya Prashant: When you say religions, just for the sake of the conversation, I would want to divide them into two streams:
So, the Judeo-Christian view is that God has dominion over man and man has dominion over animals, something similar also comes up in the third Abrahamic religion, Islam, which talks about Allah having created all the animals, fish, insects for the sake of man.
And, then there is the view of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism which talk of Ahimsa
