Animal Cruelty

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… read_more

Acharya Prashant: You look at the last few centuries. Even the declaration of the rights of man came just three hundred years back. Then came the declaration of the rights of slaves. And in the last century came the Declaration of the Rights of Women.

I am seeing that in… read_more

Questioner: We know that currently the Earth is overpopulated. People around me very loosely say that the people who are physically, mentally, or economically not so well off, they are better off dead. So, I want to ask, what is your take on this? And what do you think is… read_more

Questioner: We have a question by Pooja. So people who try to become self-aware and you know knowledgeable of themselves. They usually became the black sheep of their families.

Question by Pooja is what can we do if our loved ones, that is spouse, parents, friends are not receptive to… read_more

Acharya Prashant: If all those who oppose beef and cow slaughter would really know that the beef industry and the dairy industry are deeply interrelated, would they still be milk lovers? The majority of opposition to beef in India comes from those who love milk. That’s very, very strange.

Look… read_more

Questioner: It is said specifically that butter, milk, and ghee is good for health, and this is what our mother cow gave to us as an offering. What would you say about that?

Acharya Prashant: You see, these are very basic things. To be a believer in the Vedas is… read_more

Acharya Prashant: You might be an MBBS, or an MD, or a DM, but you could still be quite illiterate; you might still not have basic knowledge regarding the nutritional value of various food products. You could have a quack graduating even from the best medical college.

And you are… read_more

Acharya Prashant: There are a few myths that need to be dispelled. Yes, man has had the inclination and the capacity to eat meat since a very, very long time. But even when man was in the jungle, he was primarily herbivore. And this is born out by scientific analysis… read_more

Questioner: Pranam, Acharya Ji. I’m Atul Kulkarni, I’m M.Sc. Physics student here in IIT Patna, and first of all, thank you very much for accepting our invitation. Sir, my question is a little contextual, so I’ll read it out if you allow me.

Acharya Prashant: In context of?

Questioner: Contextual… read_more

Acharya Prashant: The whole issue is because you have left the jungle and yet not reached where you set out to reach; you are stuck in between.

Man is in a very precarious position. Animals are well settled; the free ones, the Buddhas are also well settled. Man is unsettled.… read_more

Acharya Prashant: Love and responsibility have to be reasonless. They have to be mad. One has to be crazy enough to put in everything for a seemingly trivial creature.

I don’t know whether you have heard this story from the life of the Buddha. One man was carrying a goat… read_more

Questioner: Thank you Acharya Prashant Ji for taking our questions. My question pertains again to public policy.

We are all unique in our own ways and we have unique aspirations and needs so it's difficult to generalize and categorize us as a whole population into a few buckets of major… read_more

When consciousness is your only hope, your only liberator,

How can you kill consciousness wherever it is?

If you are the body, then your real benefit lies in appeasing the body.

But if you are the mind that is crying out for liberation,

Then you must be very clear on … read_more

Questioner (Q): Talking about this recent controversy between PETA and a dairy producer, people are saying that lakhs of people are going to lose their employment if they switched to plant-based milk. So, what do you have to say about this?

Acharya Prashant (AP): See the employment argument, I appreciate… read_more

If you see an animal being slaughtered for somebody’s diet and something within you cries out, then the animal has been saved; maybe not that particular animal but several other animals. Why was the animal killed in the first place? Because somebody wanted it killed. So, the want led to… read_more

Every time you walk past a meat shop or come across a menu containing a lot of flesh, let that harden your resolve. No point throwing that menu on the waiter’s face. The waiter is a puny fellow. He didn’t even write the menu; he has nothing to do with… read_more

You are in grief even when somebody disrespects you.

In fact, you are in grief the moment somebody is not loving towards you.

So, Veganism is, in its true sense, Love.

Questioner (Q): What is spirituality? How would you explain it to someone who knows nothing about it? How is… read_more

Veganism cannot succeed if you just keep talking of animals. You keep saying, “Oh, it is bad to look at animals as a commodity. It is bad to exploit animals.” If man is exploiting man, why will man refrain from exploiting animals?

So, veganism has to be holistic, comprehensive. You… read_more

Australia is one of the last continents that man colonized. Of all the animals that weighed more than 50 kg, and were therefore very useful in terms of meat, 90% are extinct. How many? 90%! Such is the devastating and deadly touch of this new god. Those animal species were… read_more

Obviously it is inhumane to kill an animal to consume its flesh, and that’s one of the biggest indicators of our inner depravity. But then, who are the Americans really to point fingers at China? You kill pigs, you kill lambs, you kill cows—what to say of chicken and fish?… read_more

Find out from where in the world you can get all the nutrients that are not animal-sourced. Let industries come up. If it is required that artificial meat be made in order to satisfy people who necessarily want to have meat, I am all in favor of more technological research… read_more

Look at your food, how you kill animals and eat them—is that not rape? If rape is just the violation of body, are we not violating the bodies of animals all the time?

A woman’s body is exposed and penetrated, and you say that is rape. And what else are… read_more

When you eat meat, when you eat chicken, you are actually not paying for the environmental damage that your plate of meat has cost. You are not paying for the climate change. You are not paying for the biodiversity depletion. You are not paying for the loss of tropical jungles,… read_more

One can become an entrepreneur, for example, in the field of killing animals, cutting animal flesh, and supplying freshly cut flesh to people at their doorsteps. And this might be a successful business model.

This kind of an entrepreneurship is idiocy, perversion, profanity. The evil was present right in the… read_more

Question: Pranaam Acharya Ji! I have watched many of your videos related to Veganism, and I would like to know your take on teaching Veganism to children. I know that Veganism has to be a thing of the heart and just forcing dry ideology is not good for anyone.

As… read_more

If you are alright seeing animals slaughtered for food, for consumption, for anything, you are bound to then be alright seeing yourself slaughtered as well.

The attitude that you have towards others’ suffering is bound to be similar to the attitude that you have towards yourself. If you can smilingly… read_more

The less you love yourself, the more likely it is that you will be a flesh eater. And the more you love yourself, the more you know your welfare. The more determined you are to help yourself out of this mess, the more loving and more compassionate you will be… read_more

If you can smilingly tolerate an animal being slaughtered for your diet, then you will equally well tolerate you being psychologically slaughtered for the profit of your profit-minded organization. If you are slaughtering a chicken so that you may eat it and fatten yourself, then you will equally well tolerate… read_more

There are many who say, “You know, eating flesh is alright.” If eating flesh is alright, why is it not all right 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… read_more

Questioner (Q): Dear Guru ji, we are so honored to be here today, Thank you!

Acharya Prashant (AP): I'm glad.

Q: Can you tell us the truth about the dairy industry? A lot of Indians might not know what's going on and for the ones that do know that's going… read_more

Instead of proceeding with a packaged product like meat, why don’t you slaughter the thing yourself? And when you slaughter the animal yourself, why don’t you know it fully even as you slaughter it? After all, even from a perspective of self-interest, if something is going into your body, it… read_more

Questioner (Q): Sir, everything was going alright back in November 2019; the world was operating as it does. And within three months, everything has just turned upside-down. We’re talking about the Corona outbreak.

It has always been enlightening sitting with you and talking about life. Most of us today are… read_more

If an apple and an animal are the same thing, then an animal and a human being are the same thing. Eat the human being as well. And if you do not eat the human being, then extend the same logic to not eat the animal as well.

The best… read_more

The meat eater is a self-deluder. You cannot eat meat without firstly lying to yourself. He will not want to know what the reality of meat consumption is. He will not want to know how animals are kept and how they are slaughtered. He will not know what the conditions… read_more

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 wheat plant have been slaughtered. So, if I am guilty… read_more

To be a lion does not mean that you are violent. To be a rat is not necessarily to be violent. In fact, the word ‘violence’ does not apply to the lion or to the rat; it applies only to the human being. The lion kills all his life but… read_more

There will be people who will be prepared to lay down their lives if they are asked to eat meat. They will say, “We are prepared to get killed, but we will not take meat!” I respect that sentiment. But these are the very same people who have no scruples,… read_more

Eat that in which you are causing minimum damage to consciousness.

So, eating an apple and eating an animal are not the same thing.

The less you love yourself, the more likely it is that you will be a flesh eater;

The more you love yourself, the more you know … read_more

Questioner (Q): When I see how meat is produced, how vaccines are produced, how wool is produced, how silk is produced, it seems so obvious that I am contributing to that cruelty by consuming those things. But it seems that the rest of the world does not see that; it… read_more

Questioner (Q): Hello sir, Valentine's Day is coming and for the past few days in our College there has been a an environment of romance and every day there is a new celebration. There is Teddy day, then Rose day and then chocolate day and we often see that these… read_more

We worship the cow, and we torture it no end. When people talk about desi gai ka doodh (milk from the Indian cow), desi gai ka ghee (clarified butter from the Indian cow), they do not even know what they are doing to the creature they call as ‘mother’.

Is… read_more

To date, mass extinction has occurred five times on Earth. Mass extinction means the complete destruction of all living beings. Five times in history, the Earth's temperature increased beyond limits, and life on the planet came to an end.

And now, the sixth mass extinction has begun! The reason for… read_more

Questioner: I am a research scholar. I am in my fourth year of PhD, and it is kind of my second inning. Earlier I was a teacher, I was teaching at a university, but I’ve left that and I have started my PhD.

I’ve been suffering from a condition for… read_more

A lot of progress, even in the material sense, happens only by inviting pain. That which we call as discipline, even in the loose sense, is nothing but an invitation to pain. Is there discipline without pain? You have to get up at some point in the morning—doesn’t that involve… read_more