00:00It is truly widely accepted as a concept of meditation, but what about, so I have a question
00:15actually.
00:16I am sitting in awareness and being equanimous, right?
00:19You can be in a meditative state even when you are not acting, like right now we are
00:25performing actions and also but in awareness.
00:28The thing is, the intention is perfectly alright.
00:32The problem with that is you are constantly acting.
00:35Even if you are sitting, you think you are not acting, but you are always in action.
00:39We are creatures of creativity and she is the mother of time and time never stops.
00:45Which means action will not stop.
00:46Time means change.
00:47Change means action.
00:48So even when you think you are sitting still, you are still acting.
00:52Which means meditation has to be in the middle of action.
00:55Not in the middle of relaxation or certain pose or asana or mudra or silence.
01:02If you have to be continuously silent to meditate, how can I meditate from the podium?
01:08I have to speak there.
01:10Therefore, this thing that one has to sit and be silent and then be meditative is alright
01:16to begin with, but cannot take you very far.
01:19So is this a practice that one does not necessarily need to include?
01:23Because you are not on the podium all the time and you are also not sitting.
01:28I ask, if you have to close your eyes to meditate, how will you meditate while driving?
01:33How will a cab driver, a professional Uber driver meditate?
01:36If you have to close your eyes to meditate, he has to drive all the day.
01:40Action is continuous.
01:43In the moment of your death, you are acting.
01:45Even if you are sitting silently, it is still action.
01:48Which means one has to learn to be meditative right in the thick of action.
01:52Creating an artificial environment of silence, tranquility and sitting in a cultivated pose
02:00are good to begin with.
02:03Good to begin with, but that's what they are.
02:07Stuff for the beginners.
02:09And because they are meditation 101, therefore they must not be carried forward too much.
02:16Begin with them and then drop them.
02:18You cannot practice that kind of meditation for 20 years.
02:21That's something for 6 months.
02:23Now you can graduate to the higher levels of meditativeness.
02:27Where you say, I do not need to sit down anywhere.
02:29I am anyway meditative all the time.
02:31And if I am not meditative all the time, then what's the point of meditation?
02:34Suppose I am a very meditative being in my home.
02:37And when I come down here to talk to you, I am out of meditation.
02:41Does that help me?
02:43So you are in a meditative state throughout your life and what you do.
02:47And because the enemies of meditation will occur only when you are in the thick of action.
02:52Therefore it is in the thick of action that you must practice meditation.
02:56Meditation is like catching a thief.
02:59Who is the thief? The enemy of meditation.
03:01What is the enemy of meditation? All the egoic tendencies.
03:03Now do you catch a thief by warning it in advance?
03:07If you tell the thief between 7 am and 8 am I am going to sit in meditation.
03:12What will the thief do?
03:14The thief will hide.
03:16Whereas you need to be meditative the most when the thief is out in the open and dominating your life.
03:22Let's say when you are in the shop and the thief called greed is overpowering you.
03:28That's when you need to be meditative.
03:30But you say, no I have done all my meditation.
03:32The kota has been exhausted in the morning.
03:34Now I don't need to be meditative.
03:36And now the thief on a rampage.
03:39So it can be the groundwork. It can give you the tools to be meditative.
03:43It can give you a glimpse to fall in love with.
03:46So is the theme of yoga the same?
03:50How is it aligned with yoga?
03:52It is the same. That which we call as yoga.
03:54So yoga.
03:56Yoga is wonderful.
03:58But even to know yoga one has to first go to Virat.
04:04Even yoga declares its allegiance to Vedantic philosophy.
04:10Yoga is an Aasthak Darshan.
04:14Which means it is devoted to the Vedas.
04:16So if you do not know the fundamental Vedic philosophy which is Vedanta.
04:21You cannot even be a good yogi.
04:23Patanjali's Yogasutras do not take precedence over Upanishads.
04:31The Upanishads come first.
04:33The Yogasutras come later.
04:35So even in the tradition of the Yogasutras we limit ourselves to the first two steps.
04:44Ashram Yoga.
04:46Hardly anybody goes beyond that.
04:48So even that we do not fully complete.
04:51What to talk of going to the fundamentals of the yogic wisdom which is Vedanta.
04:59It is all very commercialized, very incomplete and very harmful.
05:11So is the concept of Ahimsa too harmful?
05:13Obviously. You cannot be Ahimsa without being a Vedanti.
05:18Full stop.
05:20Ahimsa is not about saying I will not harm the dog or the cow.
05:24That is not Ahimsa. That is a symptom of Ahimsa.
05:28When you are Ahimsa then obviously you do not want to harm anybody.
05:32And then you also realize the meaning of harm.
05:36Otherwise harm to us because we are body identified.
05:39Harm to us remains just about not harming somebody's body.
05:43So I will not say bad things to you. I will not harm your mental states.
05:47And I will not do bad things to your body. So I will not harm your body.
05:50And we say that is Ahimsa.
05:51Now that is only a very small part of, a very superficial part of Ahimsa.
05:56A small symptom of Ahimsa. Ahimsa is something much deeper.
05:59If you do not have that then you cannot be a good human being.
06:02And to be Ahimsa you will have to go to the Vedanta philosophy.
06:09You will have to realize from where does all the violence really come.
06:13Without going to the root of violence you cannot be non-violent.
06:17Now just a minute. You can't be good at anything.
06:23That's all. When you are good then you are good in everything.
06:28Only then you can be a good father, good mother, good friend, good whatever, good employee, good business owner, good soldier, good lawyer or a good legal.
06:37If you are not good you cannot be good in anything. That's it.
06:40But we say I am not a good father but I want to be good to animals.
06:44That's not going to happen. That's not going to happen.
06:48So now we are going to, sorry, we are going to Gujarat.
06:52Especially Rajkot where I am from.
06:55And they are very pure vegetarian, don't even have eggs.
06:59Like you said approach it with love.
07:02What's your advice when we go there?
07:05How do we approach this with love that they feel okay now maybe even dairy is the next step.
07:12We don't need to talk about veganism to begin with.
07:16We just need to talk about the life of an animal.
07:19What all does it go through and what are the bad things that happen to it.
07:22And do you think all this should happen?
07:25Let them come up and say no I don't want these things to happen to the animal because to me the animal is like my family.
07:32First of all they have to confess that.
07:35Otherwise even if I bring them to admit that bad things are happening to the animal.
07:40But along with that the feeling remains that the animal is very separated from me.
07:46The two of us are disjoint entities.
07:48Then I will say that whatever is happening happens.
07:51How am I bothered?
07:53So the feeling that that conscious being and this conscious being are somewhere very related.
08:00First of all the feeling has to be aroused.
08:02If you can arouse that feeling then he will automatically think am I doing bad things to that thing.
08:08Or are bad things happening to that thing because of my ignorance, in my ignorance.
08:15And then he will say oh my god that thing is not just a thing.
08:19That thing is me.
08:21And when that comes that is ahimsa.
08:24That thing is not just a thing.
08:26That thing is the conscious entity that I am.
08:29And only then can there be care and love and compassion.
08:34Otherwise you can bring graphic details of all the violence to someone.
08:41And he will still continue to say yeah I can see lot of bloodshed.
08:45And once you are gone he will order his butterscotch.
08:51Not that displaying graphic violence doesn't help.
08:53It does help.
08:54Because it arouses a certain disgust.
08:57But it does not suffice.
08:59We have tried that.
09:01We have shown all those things.
09:03The fellow has seen those things.
09:05Has been moved for a moment.
09:07And once you are off he is on.
09:15I have many more questions but I am going to request that.
09:18Sure.
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