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Acharya Prashant: In general, human beings are not cannibals. We do not eat other men and women, do we? Why don't we ask ourselves: “Why don't we eat other men and women? If flesh is what we want to eat, then why kill animals?” There are many who say, “Eating flesh is alright.” If eating flesh is alright, why is it not alright to eat human flesh? It is not alright to eat human flesh. A line is drawn between the human being and the animal. You say, “No, the human being cannot be eaten because he is highly conscious.”

I want you to draw the line between the apple and the animal. You are anyway drawing a line. It's not that you eat flesh wherever it is available. A new-born has no defenses at all; you can easily kill it and eat it, can’t you? I am talking of a new-born human baby. Why don’t you kill a human baby if flesh is all that you want? Why don't even habitual flesh eaters eat human babies or human beings? It does not occur to them, right? I am asking them to introspect—why don't you eat human beings? You don’t eat human beings because human beings are conscious, because human beings are hungry for liberation. And consciousness is your only hope and consciousness is your only savior. Therefore, you do not want to disrespect consciousness by killing a conscious being.

Even the most ardent supporters of flesh eating do not become cannibals. They do not eat human beings. They do draw a line. I am asking: If you are drawing a line, why must only human beings be beyond the line? Why can not you be more discreet in keeping somebody out of bounds? Right now, you are drawing the line in such a way that animals are within the edible territory, and human beings are outside the line, they have been exempted. Now, draw the line with more discretion, more compassion, more consciousness.

Keep even animals outside the line, which means that you will still be killing someone to eat. And who would that be? You would probably be killing plants; you would probably be killing grass. And now that you are killing creatures, beings, things that are less conscious, see whether you still keep being more discreet. Is it really impossible to eat without killing a plant? It is possible, at least it must be tried. If you cannot altogether avoid killing plants, see whether you can minimize it. I understand that even the best of your efforts would not fully succeed. Some plants would probably always need to be killed for human consumption, and that would mean that something conscious is still being killed. But that is the maximum you can do.

Now, in fact it is not violence because it is the very constitution of your body that is acting. Violence is only when you deliberately kill. If killing is happening because it is unavoidable, then it is not violence. Your entire intestine is home to countless fungi and bacteria. And even as they are taking birth, they must be getting killed as well. Some food that you are taking might be acidic or alkaline, and it is killing a lot of microorganisms in your system. You are not responsible for those deaths, because your very body is designed in such a way that those deaths are going to happen. So, you cannot call that as violence, you cannot feel guilty about those things.

In the Bhagavad Gita, Shri Krishna calls all that as akarma. He says it is not even action, it is akarma. It is something you didn't do; it just happened. So, how are you to feel guilty over it? You breathe in and certain microorganisms travel into your respiratory tract, get trapped and get killed. You are not responsible. And that is non-violence. So, let nobody say that because somebody eats an apple hence somebody else is entitled to eat an animal. No, eating an apple and eating an animal are not the same thing. And if eating an animal and eating an apple are the same thing, then eating an animal and eating a human being are the same thing by the same logic, extending the same logic.

So, if someone comes to you quoting this kind of a logic that “you know, if I am eating the goat or the chicken then you too are eating the rice grain and the wheat grain, and the rice plant and the wheat plant have been slaughtered. So, if I am guilty of violence then you too are guilty of violence because you have killed rice and wheat. And if you continue to eat rice and wheat then I will continue to eat goat and chicken.” Then ask the fellow to extend this logic: “If apples and animals are the same thing, then animals and human beings are the same thing. Eat human beings as well! And if you do not eat the human being, then extend the same logic to not to eat the animal as well.”

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