Vegan India Conference Interviews Acharya Prashant
Questioner: Let's talk about culture for a bit. You know, Lord Krishna used to have ghee and butter. He loved animals, and some people call it mythology. I call it as well. But apart from that, if we have a lot of symbology of animals being used but loved at the same time, so culturally, what was the idea then of including animals?
Acharya Prashant: You see, we are not supposed to emulate the actions of avatars, the incarnations. That's not how India has been. Because time changes. Everything that is time-bound, everything that was present in a particular passage of time, is bound to change over the next centuries, millennia, and so on. Now, what is it that you learn from Krishna?
The Gita or the fact that He was consuming milk and butter?
Very few people actually read or understand Gita, but we loved to use the fable of Sri Krishna to justify dairy consumption. You have to take from Gods that which is timeless because they come from the timeless dimension. You cannot take from them their dressing sense, sartorial choices, and language. I mean, if you want to emulate what Sri Krishna used to eat, then you must also emulate the dress he used to wear, the language he used to speak, and all the other things that he did. He is said to have thousands of wives, for example. Would you want to emulate that?
Questioner: It is not very precise when they say Lord Krishna had thousands of wives or he had so many cows. I mean, that was also some four thousand years ago.
Acharya Prashant: Yes, right.
And all of that is very symbolic. All of that is extremely symbolic and is meant to teach you something, and the great teachings of Sri Krishna are contained in the Srimad Bhagavad Gita; that's what is to be learned from the great Avatar, and that's what is timeless; everything else is time-bound. What is time-bound must be allowed to pass away with time. There is no need to stick to it and keep dragging it and trying to emulate it, and it becomes an anachronism that benefits just nobody.
Questioner: A lot of people used to have animals and cows and be with them like family. None of that happens today, but if somebody says that we will do that, do you think that anybody agrees that this is passed without judgment towards animals?
Acharya Prashant: You see, if someone is so full of love and compassion towards animals, first of all, he will have a spiritual understanding because love, compassion and understanding, bodh, realization, go hand in hand. So, this argument that I am extremely fond of the cow and I will take care of the cow just as those in the old golden times used to do. This argument is both impractical and unrealistic. So, I don't think it holds much truth today.
Questioner: This is a very interesting conversation. I am trying my best not to get into spiritual questions but to stay on topic.
Acharya Prashant: No, you'll have to. You'll have to.
You see, anything worthwhile needs to have a deep foundation. You cannot have a high-rise building layout with a sufficiently deep foundation. So, if you're to bring about such an important change in the way people relate to the animal world, then the thing has to have a spiritual foundation; otherwise, it cannot succeed.
Questioner: Actually, in a country like India where we are so driven by a lot of religious practices and we sometimes do not understand the science behind them, and a lot of them are actually very relevant also; it's not like they are not. They are very useful if you understand science. Some of them are, you know, for example, animal sacrifice, and now that is something, that is beyond me. You know, I wrap my head around it because, on the one hand, we talk about how we need to be compassionate and loving, and even when we are offering something to God, it's not like we are asking something; we always pray in gratitude, thank you for giving us this. On the other hand, what's this if we want to give something to God, like the lives of other beings that we don't own in any way? Can you debunk this, please?
Acharya Prashant: Oh, there is nothing to debunk here. Right? Even those who engage in such acts of cruelty know very well that this is all largely bogus.
Questioner: Really, do they? Because I have this in the temple. I went to one temple, and I saw blood out, and I was in a state of shock for a whole week.
Acharya Prashant: People know that. It's just that there is the whole momentum of the past and the unwillingness and the lack of strength and courage to break away from it. I have spoken to hundreds and thousands of people, and in private, almost everybody admits that they know this kind of thing is hollow and inauthentic.
Questioner: Wow.
Acharya Prashant: But then there is this entire momentum for the whole community. Nobody wants to stick out like a sore thumb; nobody wants to be the one to call the bluff. So, in their private lives, yes, people realize, and people also bring about changes, but when it comes to the public domain, there remains a kind of taboo to openly speak out against such things.
Questioner: I am shocked. Sure, I mean, you put it beautifully that it takes courage. So, it's interesting to see that even in, and that's why one has to go beyond any labels and just feel that, as you said in the beginning, 'Our conscience is the guiding factor.' So, when that feels incorrect, that shows those were the ground rules of Bharat or whatever.
Acharya Prashant: And Palak, I'll give you a rule of thumb—A lot of old religious scriptures, they talk about 'The animal'. That animal could be a horse, a lion, or a snake, and the animal is to be defeated, won over, conquered, or sometimes even slaughtered.
What is this 'Animal'? You could call it the metaphor of the animal or the architect of the animal. What is 'The Animal'? This animal is not the poor goat walking on the street. We are dealing with symbolism here; this animal is our own physical nature.
Questioner: Ignorance?
Acharya Prashant: Yes, Ignorance. That which we have inherited from our evolutionary past. That which is the carry forward from the time we spent in the jungle is 'The Animal' and that animal we all carry within us. That is present in our bodily cells, in every tissue of the body, that animal is present.
What is that animal?
That animal is to be slayed, conquered, or slaughtered. What is that animal? That animal is an entity that knows no consciousness and is driven purely by biology. What does biology want you to do? Biology wants you to eat, sleep, get married, procreate, have kids, have territorial occupations, chase one male or one female, and all these things. That's the animal.
Right?
And that's what you find happening all the time in the jungle, and that is what separates man from the jungle: that man's life has a purpose beyond eating, sleeping, and procreating. When I say 'Man', I mean mankind, both men and women. And a man who lives much in the same way as the creatures of the jungle do, is wasting his life because he has not risen above the jungle; he has not really allowed his consciousness to be elevated. And that's the entire purpose of religion and spirituality: to raise your consciousness to the highest level possible—the animal aspect of you to drag your consciousness down to just food and sex. The human aspect, or the human responsibility, is to lift yourself up and away from the demands of the bodily animal. Therefore, the scriptures take the symbol of an animal, and then they say, "This animal is to be won."But unfortunately, people in ignorance think of animals as the poor goat or the cow or the buffalo or the chicken, and they keep slaughtering the physical animal, which is all so foolish, absolutely absurd.
Questioner: It's been, irony of it.
Acharya Prashant: Yeah. The symbolism has not been understood, nor has the symbolism been exploited to meet the animal's needs. Because you enjoy the taste of the animal. So, you say, "I am killing the animal because my religion sanctions it." Now, the religion does not sanction the killing of an animal. Religion is saying you conquer the inner animal; now, instead of conquering the inner animal, you're feeding the inner animal, the flesh of the outer animal. And by feeding the inner animal the flesh of the outer animal, you're only making the inner animal stronger, and now this inner animal will overpower you. This inner animal will rule over your consciousness, so that's a double whammy.
Questioner: Very interesting. People might identify with the idea that there is something called Shava and Shiva. Shiva is consciousness, and Shava is something complete ignorance. So, when we were referring to conquering the animal, it essentially meant conquering the inner animal instincts or being conscious or evolved. I won't use the word 'evolved,' but yeah, aware.
Acharya Prashant: Yes.
Questioner: And I mean, the irony is amazing because Truth is so simple; it's in front of our eyes, but we make it so complicated.
Acharya Prashant: You see, it's the animal within that dislikes the Truth, you know because you see the real animal, the ones that are in the jungle, they have nothing to do with the Truth. They lead a very innocent and simple life, in a way. They have no inner yearning to be liberated, to know, to realize; they don't want to know; they have a set cycle and live in that particular way. One deer is not very different from another deer; one lion is much the same as another lion, and the differences are minimal. But human beings are very different because our primary identity is consciousness; one human being is very different from another human being because we think because we have a purpose in life.
No animal has a purpose to life; animals just live. And we could even be envious of them in that sense; they don't even have a responsibility to carry. But we have one enormous responsibility, which is to self-realize, which is to know who we are. And if we don't fulfill that responsibility, you know very well, we remain restless, we don't feel good, and then there is neurosis and many other things. And it's just that one doesn't enjoy life at all if one is not doing what is expected of one as a human being. So, yeah.
Questioner: Many people don't even realize that they are supposed to have a higher purpose. When people find their purpose, sometimes we see them completely changing, and this happens with many people who are involved in animal rights. I wanted to know about your story. When did you make the connection, and how did you turn vegan? I am very curious to know this.
Acharya Prashant: You see, I was vegetarian from birth firstly. I was born into a vegetarian family. And I was into spiritual literature from an early age and I do not really remember one day or one episode that made me particularly conscious towards animals but even in my earliest memories I had this affection towards all living entities.
So, it was there, but I was not a vegan. When I was in IIT, in my second year or something, there was a Hindi story I read that was a good story, an autobiography of a calf, a cow's calf. So, how it is born and what it has to go through, and then how it was denied milk, how it was castrated and then how it was exploited in the field, and ultimately how it was dispatched to the slaughterhouse.
So that made me quit milk at that time; however, the entire full concept of veganism was not known to me at that time, so I left milk but continued taking milk products for another decade, almost more than a decade or fifteen years then it was probably waiting to happen that I quit all this together.
So I had my rabbits, and there was one particular female rabbit that had an injury in one leg, and it was incurable, so the doctors had asked me to euthanize it, but I had refused. So, it required daily care; the dressing had to be changed, the wound had to be famed, and these things. And she could not run, so all the other rabbits ran around and were away and did this stuff, and this one would stay with me all the time. And then, one day, she died.
It was my mistake. Actually, I did not know much about their autonomy; I probably allowed her to eat some stuff that she shouldn't have taken, so I was in grief, and two or four days after that, I watched the movie 'The Ship of Theseus'. There was this scene where they were conducting experiments on rabbits and one of those rabbits looked so much like Nandu, my rabbit, and that was the moment, sitting in the cinema hall there, at that time, I decided to do away with everything that involved anything related to any animal. So, that was the moment, and after that, it didn't really require any effort; that day and this day have been seven years now. We will have to look at that movie's release date, that long, a time. So, it's been quite effortless, so once it was left, it was left.
Questioner: Amazing. Thank you for sharing that touching story with us. I am pretty sure a lot of people will identify because it's truly when you see a chicken, a dog, or a rabbit pass a road and a car is coming, then your mouth isn't watered. We didn't feel like, 'Hey, that is the dog I am gonna eat for dinner!'
Acharya Prashant: Now, I'll take the liberty of sharing another interactive story in grief because you just talked about watching a goat or chicken or something. I was driving down one particular road, and there were these butcher shops by the side. And it was late in the night, 9 or 10 or something, and one chicken just somehow managed to escape the butcher's knife. It was about to be slaughtered, and I came running right in front of my car, and I jammed the brakes, and the butcher was running from behind and picked the animal up and took it back. I drove on around five hundred meters, and then I decided that I couldn't leave the animal like that, so I took a turn and came back, bought the chicken, and brought it to my place and stayed with us for many years. We have just so many memories, photos, videos, and anecdotes.
Questioner: How beautiful. Very adorable. Acharya ji, it's been an honor to hear about your perspective and practice in daily life. I think true leaders lead by example, and you're certainly doing that. So, this will encourage a lot of people. Thank you so much. That was the time we had, but I am sure that at some point if you give permission, we would love to speak at length about this because it is very interesting.
Acharya Prashant: It would be my pleasure.
