Worse Than a Dog, Higher Than a God || AP Neem Candies
Acharya Prashant: You see, as the world is, man is in fact inferior to animals if a comparison has to be made. Look at the worst acts of unholiness, cruelty, insensitivity—they were not perpetrated by animals. Man is responsible for them!
In my talks I attack this notion very, very frequently. I like to share with my audience that if they can rise up to the level of a dog, then their life has been fulfilled. A dog never falls below a dog. Man falls much below man; man is much worse than a dog. It is another matter that man also has the potentiality to rise, but that potentiality is realized in one in a thousand cases. In 999 cases, man falls. And man is definitely worse than animals.
You want to see some innocence? You won’t see it in a human being’s eyes, at least not in a mature adult human being’s eyes. For innocence, you will have to go to animals; you will have to look into the eyes of a cow, or a dog, or even a crocodile; even there you will see innocence. But you cannot find innocence in the eyes of the metropolitan man or a woman. It is very difficult. At most you will find it in the eyes of human kids. But anybody who is beyond the age of fifteen would have fallen below the level of a dog.
So, this concept that man is superior to animals is highly misplaced. One has to ask: What is the yardstick? How are you making the comparison? Superior or inferior have to be decided on the scale of a value. Which value are you measuring? Really, the true values that determine the worth of any being are simplicity, innocence, truthfulness, ability to love. You decide on your own whether human beings have it or whether animals have it.
We were there yesterday, and a small pup started following us for no reason whatsoever. Now, you look at the size of that pup and you look at the loneliness of the pup: it’s a single being following a group of ten grownups of another species. A little dog is following ten large human beings. Not only is there separation in terms of size and age, there is also vast separation in terms of the species you belong to. And still the dog has faith, still the dog is following. Not only is it following, it is actually coming and offering itself. Any of the grownups could have just kicked it, and one hard hit might even be enough to finish the little pup off. But it doesn’t bother.
So, I ask, can a human being do this? Can one little human being, for example, follow a group of ten large lions, with faith, with trust? Not only follow them, actually go and embrace them? The pup wanted to climb all over us. Can human beings do that? Forget about lions! If there are six or seven burley dogs, would a human being dare to go near them?
So, if you want to see trust, if you want to see simple love, go to animals. Now, how do you say that man is superior to animals? When man has very little love as compared to animals, when man has very little innocence compared to animals, when man is far more destructive compared to animals and far more violent as compared to animals, how do you claim that man is superior to animals?
Please bring on those religious masters who are hellbent on saying that God created animals for human consumption. Are the texts of animals saying that? These are human texts written for human convenience, so obviously they will say that all the animals are there so that you may consume them, exploit them. If dogs were to write a holy text, would they say that “We are inferior to humans”? If chickens were to write a Bible of their own, would they say that “We exist so that we may be slaughtered in factories and packed”? If such texts are claiming such rubbish, it is proof that they are not holy at all, that they are just an ugly invention of the human mind to keep justifying its own excesses.
Full article link: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/articles/spirituality-and-veganism-1_2e5e3c0
