00:00The attitude that we have towards animals is just a reflection of our inner ignorance
00:12towards ourselves.
00:16We do not know who we are, so we take ourselves as this.
00:20We do not know who we are, we take ourselves as this and therefore we are violent towards
00:24everybody else because this is limited and anything outside of this is the other.
00:31Anything outside of this skin sack is the other.
00:36Now if the other is the other and this is who I am, then to what extent can I be related
00:41to the other?
00:42I am fundamentally related, permanently wedded to the stuff inside this skin sack and that
00:51is where it all comes from.
00:54What alarms me, it was very interesting, your vegan story, when you said that you are initially
00:59vegetarian because you came from a Gujarati traditional background and there people are
01:05generally vegetarian.
01:06Most people who are vegetarian today, especially in India, are vegetarian not because they
01:13understand.
01:14They are vegetarian because of cultural or traditional reasons and that's the reason
01:22why when let's say a boy from traditionally vegetarian family, typically a Brahmin or
01:32a Jain family goes out to the campus, let's say he gets admission in an engineering college
01:39and he is now staying in a hostel.
01:43It takes him not more than two or four months to take to meet because that's what peer influence
01:50and peer pressure do to him and that kind of thing does not long because it is not coming
01:56from wisdom, tradition, culture, ethics.
02:03If they are not coming from understanding, they cannot last and I would like to think
02:12that is also the fundamental challenge the vegan movement faces today.
02:19Lack of understanding, why must one turn vegan, because the argument is not spontaneous, not
02:26obvious.
02:28When we counsel someone, please turn vegan, please don't be cruel to animals, they'll
02:36have something to say about their choices, not everybody will quickly agree or understand
02:41or and then the argument coming from the vegan side is ethically very strong but then ethics
02:56can be something personal, somebody may not agree with ethics, ethics cannot be absolute.
03:05Ethical codes as we know vary across ages, continents, people, cultures, so the pace
03:13of the whole thing remains slow because we do not see that it's not so much about animals,
03:23it's about us.
03:25I am not right, therefore I am cruel to animals, I am not right within, that's the reason I
03:33am cruel to animals and if I am cruel to animals, there will be so much, my cruelty towards
03:39animals is proof that there will be so much that is wrong in my personal life as well.
03:47Now when that relationship becomes obvious, it becomes important, rather unavoidable for
03:57people to listen, so if we could bring wisdom at the centre of veganism rather than ethics
04:17or even compassion, then probably we might see greater success because the compassion
04:24that we talk of is mostly an ethical moral thing, when we say well you should be compassionate,
04:33it's more of a moral thing, a moral sound it has, please be compassionate, please don't
04:39be cruel, now the why and the where and the whom is not absolutely clear in this but surely
04:51there is a moral authority when we say please be compassionate, that sounds good but does
04:57not necessarily work because people are selfish and that's not an allegation, that's how we
05:03all are, we all care for our self-interest, can we display it to them that it is not a
05:11matter of ethics that you display towards others, it is not a matter of your ethical
05:19disposition towards others, it's a matter of your inner health, it's a matter of your
05:26own life, please be better within and then you find that veganism becomes simply inevitable,
05:39you have to be a vegan. I look at the vegan community and I have been in close touch with
05:55lot of vegans and I really admire the work they are doing in very adverse circumstances,
06:03there is a lot in India especially and that is harsh on vegan activists and they work
06:12against all odds, I know of a few rescue operations that involved personal risk, I've met those
06:24people, I've heard of them, so they are all good people, very nice people, if they could
06:36somehow also develop that core of understanding, who we are and therefore what our relationship
06:48with the entire world including the animal world should be.
06:52I think you've raised so many interesting points in what you've said and I think we
07:00see evidence of not being right inside because it spills over not only into how you treat
07:10animals but into how you treat other people, how you treat the planet, now there is not
07:20so much of this research that is compiled in India but abroad they are finding that
07:29people who are cruel to animals, who've committed crimes against animals often move on to committing
07:36crimes against human beings, there is so much documentation in those countries where people
07:46who harm their spouses have often harmed the dogs in the house first, serial killers, school
07:56shooters, the majority of them have a history of cruelty to animals, they practiced with
08:04animals first, they didn't learn that that was wrong and they extended that self misery
08:11you could say on to somebody else and that goes on and on and on and we've even sort
08:19of seen that even in a slaughterhouse setting or a laboratory setting where people become
08:27desensitized to the cruelty and in so many of our investigations the kind that you spoke
08:34about we've seen that in addition to the cruelty that's already taking place that's inherent
08:41at the factory farm or at the slaughterhouse a lot of times the workers are being even
08:48more cruel to the animals that they are in a laboratory setting they may start by first
08:59being cruel to a rat and then they escalate that cruelty to then on to other animals even
09:07more severe cruelty even more painful procedures and it's that not being right inside that
09:17making things worse and worse as things go on more victims new species of victims even more
09:27severe cruelty because it's it's not being stopped nobody is addressing it with those people nobody
09:35has perhaps pointed it out to them what the core problem is and it's the same type of thing for
09:43the environment if we see the planet as ours to take from if we see animals as ours to use for
09:54for any type of pleasure I mean you spoke about pleasure but the pleasure really how how long does
10:01it last when we eat an animal the the so-called pleasure it lasts for a few seconds on our tongue
10:11that's it this animal has suffered from birth unto death for a few seconds on our tongue or if we
10:22turn that animal into a wallet how much pleasure is this wallet really bringing to you if you if
10:30you look at it from the perspective of a pleasure seeker he says you are very right I understand the
10:40pleasure that I get from it is momentary doesn't last but what do I do because because we have a
10:47consciousness that seeks freedom from misery beautifully you put it that we are all miserable
10:57within and the same misery spills over to the rest of the world really put we are indeed miserable
11:04within and that misery is there right from the start I have seen kids like like one year old
11:12and that kid there is a procession of aunts going towards the tree you would have seen red
11:20ants going towards the tree and climbing and the huge procession you get it's like like what 20
11:26meters long or something and the kid is actually peeing on the procession and and he is taking
11:35this as good fun so the kid is standing the kid is one or two years old barely able to walk and
11:40and he is moving and peeing on the procession and enjoying the fact that the ants are getting killed
11:46so the seeds of violence are there in us right since birth that misery that we are talking and
11:57because we are miserable so we seek freedom from misery we do not know how that freedom
12:08will be achieved because we are not only miserable we are also ignorant we are
12:14miserable and we are ignorant so we do not know how to get freedom from that misery so we seek
12:20pleasure now I am continuously feeling that misery within continuously I'm a common man I want
12:30freedom from that so I seek pleasure even if I get momentary pleasure from let's say the taste
12:36of meat I go for it the pleasure does not last after a few minutes then I run towards something
12:43else and that's the entire life of the average individual running from pleasure to pleasure
12:52for 80 years continuously being dissatisfied at all points and still not losing hope and probably
13:02that's why hope happens to be such an important word in all cultures if there is no misery there
13:09is no need for hope if misery could be brought to a permanent end again there is no need for
13:16hope we fully will know that any relief from misery is just ephemeral misery returns and
13:24therefore you have to continuously keep hoping and that's why people win elections talking of
13:31on the word hope hope let's hope so you go to a meat-eater or you go to any kind of an average
13:42debauched person and you tell him you're not getting anything from it he will say better
13:47something than nothing either give me complete relief from misery or let me have what I want
13:54to have now what is happening is that it's a consciousness within that's miserable right
14:02since birth the moment we are born we cry aloud the child is wailing all the time and the child
14:13because of ignorance if it I said we are miserable we are ignorant because of ignorance is also tied
14:19to the body the child takes itself as the body you know but I have to point at myself I say come
14:26to me here I am so the body is who I am so I am miserable and I am the body so how do I remove
14:33my misery using the body so then I give myself bodily pleasures to get rid of my inner misery
14:39the misery is inside the body is not miserable you see I might be very sad very tense very depressed
14:46does that make my knees ache no does not my nose is all right my eyes are all right I can hear
14:54properly and yet I am miserable within so the body is not a participant in the misery the body is not
15:00contributing to the misery but because I feel I am the body so to get relief from the misery I use
15:09my body and how do I use my body by rushing after all kinds of bodily pleasures meat-eating being
15:15one exploiting animals being one all kinds of things that we do because we do not know any
15:25other way so one could say and justifiably so that we are not really evil we are just stupid
15:32and all evil is just stupidity we do not know how to get rid of our inner condition of suffering so
15:43we do all the nonsense and wickedness that we do to ourselves and to the to the world could we
15:50somehow could we somehow bring this out to the people that I know you are cruel because you are
16:01miserable but being cruel won't help you out of your misery there are other ways possible if we
16:11could display the other ways to them there would hardly be any need to harm and hurt and destroy
16:20everybody else the way we do we do not see any other option I'm being told killing a rabbit is
16:31bad I'll probably agree everybody would agree there is the rabbit you show the rabbit and say
16:37you know it's bad to kill that rabbit or hurt that rabbit who would not agree the next day you
16:43find that person feasting on the same rabbit what's happening he was not being dishonest when
16:48he agreed he agreed it's bad but by the time it is the next day his own inner incompleteness and
17:00misery have overpowered him he is just feeling that vacuum within and he does not know how to
17:09fill it up so he says okay bring it on serve it on the table the rabbit and that's what is
17:18happening I also see a worrying trend of people retreating from veganism they become vegans because
17:30they understand to an extent what is being said at least intellectually they understand
17:33and then they go back to their usual ways.
Comments