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Video Information: 04.04.23, with Ahimsa Fellows (Online-talk), Greater Noida
Context: ~ What is the solution to climate change? ~ How spirituality can stop the climate change? ~ Climate change have no scientific solution ~ How veganism is related to compassion? ~ Why veganism is necessary for today's generation? ~ What is the relation between veganism and climate change? ~ How could veganism change the world?
00:00Consciousness is what makes us alive and equally consciousness is what we live for.
00:08Now extend the argument to animals.
00:17The stuff of their consciousness is definitely different.
00:23We might be thinking of discoveries, inventions, literature, art.
00:29Animals don't think of that.
00:32And if they do, we do not know of that.
00:35At least they don't think of these things in the way that we do, right?
00:39From our point of view.
00:44So the stuff of their consciousness is different, but they are conscious.
00:51And the fundamental cravings that we have are very much alike to theirs.
01:01Is it not so?
01:03In terms of thought and the content of thought, obviously we are very different.
01:08We are different from each other and we are very different when it comes to other species.
01:14But when it comes to the very fundamentals of life, are we not all one?
01:20Think of it, we do so many things.
01:26What is the fundamental tendency driving the various things that we do?
01:31For example, the tendency to secure a future.
01:36The tendency to just live on.
01:43Chopin was the will to live, the will to just continue.
01:48That he said is the basic human existential tendency.
01:53I am asking, don't animals have that tendency?
01:58At the root of all consciousness is the will to survive and continue.
02:03We don't want to die, the animals too don't want to die, right?
02:08We feel pain, we suffer, so do animals.
02:21The reasons might be very different.
02:23Often the reasons are in fact not too different.
02:27Separate a human mother from her baby and you see the suffering.
02:34It's very apparent.
02:36Separate a cow from her calf and the suffering is much the same.
02:41So the fundamentals of consciousness we share with animals.
02:50To some extent, to a lesser extent, we share those things even with plants.
02:58And if you want to go deeper than that, then even with organisms that have just a few tissues, basic,
03:10or just even a single cell like an amoeba or a paramecium,
03:17the will to continue living is found there as well.
03:21If you attack an amoeba, it has ways to survive.
03:26And it wants to prolong its existence into eternity by reproducing.
03:32And it has its own peculiar way of reproduction.
03:36The same things that we do.
03:41Outwardly there is so much that we have created and that looks so spectacular
03:48and so different from the jungle kingdom.
03:54But inwardly at our core, don't we all have the same desires, the same tendencies that animals have?
04:04Is not the very core of consciousness the same?
04:09And it is consciousness, the maximization of consciousness, the liberation of consciousness
04:21that is also the purpose of life.
04:24Which means that a conscious entity has to be looked at with respect, with a certain love.
04:33If you want liberation of consciousness, how can you hurt another conscious being?
04:45Especially when you know that it is the stuff of consciousness that differs, not consciousness itself.
04:53If your own consciousness is worthy of being taken care of, being nurtured and being liberated,
05:06how can the same consciousness when seen in another living being be abominable, negotiable, violable?
05:19The same thing when I see it in my own self, if it is respectable, it will remain respectable even if it is seen in somebody else's self.
05:33If I really want to eliminate suffering, then suffering is what I want to eliminate, not just my own suffering.
05:47Because as long as I keep saying my own suffering, this my own itself remains the cause of suffering.
05:58This localization of consciousness itself is the limitation and the constraint and the bane of consciousness.
06:09I want to be happy, right? We all want to be happy.
06:15Why are we unable to be happy? Because we want to be happy at the cost of others.
06:21So I want to say I want to be happy and I want to have my own happiness.
06:26So this my own is what prevents true happiness from coming to me.
06:31A very localized and limited and individualized happiness is what I want.
06:37I don't want happiness. If I want happiness, it would be an impersonal happiness that I would share with as many beings as possible.
06:48So if consciousness is my goal or happiness is my goal or freedom from suffering is my goal and I'm true to my goal,
07:01then I'll want these same things for others. And if I want these things only for myself, then I cannot have them even for myself.
07:12That's the rule. If you want these things, these best of things that life can offer only for yourself, then you will not have them even for yourself.
07:28But if you want them for everybody, then you will have it for yourself as well.
07:35So if I want my happiness at the cost of somebody's life, the thing is the poor thing will lose its life and I won't even get what I want to get at the cost of his life.
07:52It's a double whammy. Nobody gains anything. No emotions involved. It is just mathematically a loss making proposition.
08:03It's simply bad existential economics. I wanted happiness by consuming that other person or animal.
08:14That's what we want, right? Otherwise, there is no need to hurt the other. So I hurt the other thinking that happiness is a zero-sum game.
08:25I throw sadness upon you. I inflict suffering upon you and wishfully I think that will give me happiness.
08:38Happiness to my consciousness. There is a problem there. You are trying to violate an inviolable rule.
08:50It's a rule of existence, Prakriti, that these things cannot be had in isolation, that you cannot have these things only for yourself.
09:03These are the most subtle gifts of living that cannot come to an individualized person.
09:13Money you can have for yourself. I understand it's your bank account and if it's deposited in that account, it belongs only to you.
09:19Nobody else can ever say. But when it comes to liberation, it can never be personal.
09:26When it comes to real happiness, that is joy, it can never be personal. Money can be a zero-sum game.
09:35I snatch 100 rupees from you. You lost 100, I gained 100, the sum is zero. The same cannot be applied to happiness.
09:45I cannot take your life and enhance mine. If you have lost your life, in the bargain, I too have lost mine.
09:58Equally, if I can enhance your life, I have enhanced mine. We are inseparably connected and the name of the connecting tissue is consciousness.
10:14That's what we share, we all. And in that there is no zero-sum arithmetic. If you lose, so do I. If you gain, so do I.
10:32So that day, I was in Rishikesh after the camp and there was this little puppy and we posted a pic, me and the pup.
10:49And along with that, we wrote a little caption from my favorite saint poet.
10:59Yeh tan vah tan ek hai, ek praan dui gaat, apne ji se jaaniye mere ji ki baat.
11:11So this body and that body are actually the same. The praan is the same. Praan here refers to consciousness. Gaat means body.
11:21Ek praan dui gaat. The bodies appear different, but the life is the same. Life meaning consciousness.
11:29Ek praan dui gaat. Two bodies, but the consciousness is just the same. So that's what. You hurt the other, you are hurting yourself.
11:42It's not even a matter of emotion. It's not even a matter of sympathy. People won't understand even if you call it empathy.
11:56You have to help them see. You kill the other and you are killing your own possibility of joy, fulfillment, liberation.
12:08Don't you want that? In some sense, the chicken is gone. It won't suffer anymore.
12:18But you have condemned yourself to enhanced future suffering by just doing what you did.
12:28It's bad. You disrespect the consciousness there and you have disrespected your own consciousness.
12:38And if you disrespect your consciousness, how will you ever bring it to fulfillment?
12:44Am I too abstract? What are the friends saying? Are they feeling disconnected? I don't know.
12:55I'm certainly not because I'll tell you something here. When I first went to the parliament for the very first time and I was just like a tourist walking around,
13:09I saw this huge engraving right in front of the parliament hall which said Vasudev Kutumbakam.
13:19And then I studied a little more about it. All the world is one family. Globalization is one interpretation of it.
13:27But I think from our civilization point of view, I think it's more deeper than that.
13:36And it's about all consciousness actually being the same, exactly what you said.
13:41And basically indicating a kind of a singularity from which everybody originated.
13:48Even physics agrees with now. We can't look at species in silos.
13:57Now even the World Health Organization has come up with the One Health Program because all health is one.
14:04Those are little things where it's manifesting itself, but it's just too little, too late.
14:11Are we too late to save the planet, Acharyaji? I mean, is it really too late?
14:17Sometimes I feel like saying, yes, it is already too late. Probably that is the fact as well.
14:30But that does not matter. You see, it might not be too late, it might already be too late. How does it matter?
14:39One has to just keep fighting on, not for those who are gone, not for the future,
14:53but for the present possibility that there is something precious, lovely, worthwhile
15:02that can probably be redeemed. And one will not be able to forgive herself if one doesn't give it all one has.
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