00:00Namaste. Acharyaji, before we even jump into the connection of Vedanta with animal rights
00:10or veganism, before that I wanted to understand is that, personally, what is the connection
00:18between Vedanta and India, Bharat? Well, you see, Vedanta is the culmination of the philosophy
00:38of the Vedas. So, the Vedas are encyclopedic in nature, they talk about a lot of things.
00:49Their topmost philosophical content is known as Vedanta. So, the Vedas originated in India,
01:02so Vedanta is a very much home-grown philosophy of the soil, that's relationship between Vedanta
01:13and territorial India, and if we talk of India, the living conscious entity, then Vedanta
01:25is the root from which all the philosophical systems, in some way or the other, take their nutrition.
01:38So we have had so many streams of thought in India, we have had religions, sects and
01:47their branches and so much else, but the undeniable fact is that all of that finds
01:58its inspiration in Vedanta. In fact, it would not be an exaggeration to say that there can
02:06be no spirituality without Vedanta. Vedanta talks of and addresses such a simple and fundamental
02:17issue that you cannot avoid it, if you want to live in truth, if you are someone who wants
02:26to understand life. So, that's Vedanta for beginners. Superb! Acharya ji, that's what
02:38I was asking. That is beautiful, that's almost like Sanatana Dharma, right? Eternal principles
02:45of life, where that is the foundation. And how old is this belief system in India? Are
02:52there any traces? Can we trace it? First of all, it is not a belief system. Religions
03:01are belief systems. Vedanta is extremely exploratory in nature. It does not really ask you to believe
03:11in anything. It carries no dogmas. It carries no fables, no stories. You really don't need
03:22to posit anything, assume anything or take anything for granted. That's the fundamental
03:31beauty of Vedanta. Experiential in nature? Not even experiential, because even experience
03:38depends on the experiencer. Therefore, all experience is in some way subjective and therefore
03:47flawed and open to questioning. What you experience might be very different from someone else
03:54does or what I do. The three of us might have the same object in front of us, yet our experience
04:03with respect to the object might be entirely different. So, therefore, experience too cannot
04:09be taken as the truth. This is the level of rigor at which Vedanta operates. It goes right
04:19to the experiencer, to the entity that says, I, I live, I feel, I sense, I say, I think
04:29and questions it. Who is that entity? From where does it come? How much trustworthiness
04:36does it have? That's Vedanta. Beautiful. Yes, there is a saying, Aham Brahmasmi. So, I am
04:47that I am. And does that also mean that it is us who reincarnate again and again and
04:53that is in different form. Before we move ahead, I just forgot to answer the second
05:01part of your question. How old is Vedanta? You see, if I talk of the Upanishads specifically,
05:12which are the cornerstone of Vedanta. Vedanta consists of Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita
05:18and Brahma Sutra and out of these three, the Upanishads are the fundamental. Then the
05:25oldest Upanishads, you could say were written, composed around 4000 years back and from that
05:42time onwards, it has been a continuous stream. So, there are Upanishads then that were composed
05:53before the Buddha. Then there are Upanishads that were composed in the Buddha stage. Then
06:00there are Upanishads that have been composed in the Christ era and the most recent of the
06:09Upanishads are well no more than a 1000 years old. So, that's the chronology. It's not one
06:18particular book, the Upanishads. These are parts, these are excerpts from the bodies of the Vedas.
06:28Though some Upanishads have an independent existence also, but their genesis is spread
06:36over a vast stretch of time. So, what is the relationship between this Vedanta itself with
06:51veganism or with just animalism? The relationship is extremely deep, very organic and these two
07:03things, spiritual understanding and veganism are actually inseparable. You see, when the
07:15Upanishads or when Vedanta asks the question, who am I? Then after removing all the fluff and all
07:29the falseness, one comes to see that one is the consciousness that is asking this question. One
07:40is the experiencing entity and if you have heard Acharya Shankar's famous Nirvana Shatkam, then
07:54there he continuously negates what one is not. I am not air, I am not water, I am not the body,
08:05I am not the past, I am not the future, I am not this, I am not that. So, who am I? Then I am
08:12consciousness and I am consciousness that must be purified to the maximum extent possible. I am
08:23asking this question, who am I? Because the consciousness that I am suffers. It suffers
08:30because it is impure, it is impressionable, it is contaminated. So, consciousness has to be
08:37respected, it has to be kept pure. If consciousness has to be respected, then consciousness in all
08:45forms has to be respected. You see, my suffering as an individual is because my consciousness has
08:55not received the kind of attention and respect from me that it deserved. If I really want to
09:07be free from suffering, then I have to respect consciousness and if I have to respect consciousness,
09:13then how can I deny that the consciousness of the animal in front of me is not very different
09:21from my own, that the animal suffers in much the same way as I do. There also has to be then a
09:31level at which a person starts identifying with consciousness itself, you know, that's like the
09:36first step because a lot of people cannot go beyond the physical and understandably so.
09:43Yes, yes, yes. You see, that's the trouble with living in the physical. The more you live in the
09:50physical, the more you destroy the physical. You see, when we say somebody is very body
09:58identified, it appears that that person would be taking care of the body a lot or would be
10:04taking care of the material aspects of the life a lot. Well, that's not really the case. When you
10:11are too attached to the body, when you are too identified to material stuff, you find that you
10:17destroy even the material stuff. For example, you look at the environmental crisis today, you look
10:23at the climate crisis, all that is destruction on a material dimension because man loves material
10:34and therefore he is creating havoc in the dimension of the material, the earthly dimension, the trees,
10:40the rivers, the mountains, everything that is material is being destroyed. So, even to let
10:48material stay in a healthy shape, one has to have a certain detachment from material and that
10:57detachment from material can only come when you first of all identify yourself not as material
11:03primarily, having a material dimension, alright, but not material at the core, but consciousness
11:10at the core and when you are consciousness at the core, you cannot avoid admitting that
11:18the glint in the eye of the chicken or the goat is not very different from the light
11:24in your own eye. How can you then proceed to slaughter the little thing? Very difficult.
11:32I mean, it's also like having non-ownership, right? So, I don't own this material, I don't
11:41own this body, I don't own that life form. Just identifying consciousness as it is or what people
11:49sometimes call the creator. If one has any link to that, whatever name that they call it, is when
11:56they start getting more sensitized to all beings, all living forms around and I think animals are
12:02just one part of it. Is that what you meant? You see, there is me and there is the material world
12:14and there is a relationship between the two. When I do not know who I am, then the relationship
12:20between me and the material world, and the material world consists of animals, inanimate
12:26things, persons, consumable goods, everything. Then the relationship between me and the world
12:37gets totally distorted and obviously I suffer and I make the world suffer, right? So, a person who is
12:46cruel towards animals is actually quite likely to be inconsiderate and insensitive towards his or
13:01her loved ones as well. But they might not even know it, right? They might not even know it, but
13:09then you know, it's like the virus. You may not know that you have the virus, but the effects
13:19will be there for you to experience and for everyone else to see and the suffering might
13:26not be just personal to you. If you have the virus, then you cause suffering all around.
13:33And according to the Vedic philosophy, isn't that we are insensitive to our own self, because like
13:41you said earlier on, it all starts with knowing yourself. So, if you respect yourself, you by
13:45default respect another, by default respect you. Well said. In fact, I have been emphasizing on
13:50this since a long time, that if you are being considerate towards animals, then it is not even
14:00a purely selfless thing. For your own good, please be sensitive to other conscious beings,
14:08other sentient beings, because if you are not good to them, what it means is that you are not
14:15good to life itself and you too are life. If you do not know how to respect the physical integrity,
14:24the very existence of an animal, you really do not know how to have even self-respect.
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