Acharya Prashant addresses the question of why great spiritual figures like Swami Vivekananda had habits, such as eating meat, that may seem contradictory to their teachings. He begins by stating that "every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future." He emphasizes that it is natural for everyone, including saints, to have a past and that there is no reason to be surprised or regretful about it. Everyone is born in the same way and their consciousness evolves gradually as they understand things and move forward in life. To illustrate his point, Acharya Prashant presents a hypothetical scenario involving Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. He suggests that if Ramakrishna were alive today and someone informed him about the environmental harm caused by fishing, his greatness would be demonstrated by his immediate acceptance of this truth and his willingness to stop eating fish. However, people often fixate on such details, using them to justify their own actions by saying, "Ramakrishna also ate fish." They tend to ignore the numerous manifestations of a great person's greatness and instead latch onto any flaw they can find. Addressing the question about Swami Vivekananda directly, Acharya Prashant explains that he ate meat because he was human, and every human can have flaws and weaknesses. He advises that we should grant even the most elevated individuals the right to have some shortcomings. However, these weaknesses are not meant to be learned or emulated. One should acknowledge the flaws in a great person but consciously decide not to adopt them. The focus should be on learning what is truly valuable and worth learning from them. He further clarifies this with analogies. The mouth of a sage that utters the highest truth of "Brahman" also contains bacteria, but one should focus on the profound verse, not the bacteria. Similarly, one should take the moonlight from the moon, not its spots. He criticizes the tendency to seek out flaws in great personalities, either to justify those flaws or to find an excuse for one's own weaknesses. He points out that if one insists on finding a perfect person to learn from, they will never learn from anyone, because no one in a human body is perfect. The correct approach is to understand that even from an imperfect person, rays of perfection can emanate. One's intention should be to learn the highest things, not to get entangled in their human limitations.
