Flesh Eating

Episodes of physical sickness are occasions when you can truly test how much spiritual mettle you have.

You do not want to deliberately have a sick body; as far as possible, avoid sickness. But then, sickness is inevitable, just as old age is inevitable. Sickness will come.

You need to…

What is it that is keeping beef affordable? It is milk consumption, because it is in circulation.

You see, you have an asset; if the only thing that you can have from it is its flesh, then you will be required to firstly raise it to its maximum weight, and…

It is final that meat eating is stupid for all kinds of reasons, and they will not that final conclusion arrive soon. It will arrive, just as it arrived in the case of cigarette smoking, just as it finally had to be accepted by the tobacco industry that cigarette smoking…

Man is the only one who wants to drink cow milk, buffalo milk, goat milk, yak milk, camel milk. Camel milk is for the camel offspring. Buffalo’s milk is for the calf. So, what kind of ingredients is the buffalo milk likely to have? The ones that are suitable only…

The argument that man has always been a meat eater needs to be studied and refuted. The current splurge in meat eating is not more than two hundred years old. It came along with industrialization and the popularization of thought that it is meat alone that can provide for protein,…

If you can smilingly tolerate an animal being slaughtered for your diet, then you will equally well tolerate you being psychologically slaughtered for the sake of your profit-minded organization. If you are slaughtering the chicken so that you may eat it and fatten yourself, then you will equally well tolerate…

If there is one field from where the most overwhelming evidence in support of veganism comes, it is the medical field itself. Listen to medical science, and it is the medical science that tells you that veganism is the way. Every passing day, more and more, and stronger and stronger…

It is very common that you go to a doctor and if you are a vegetarian, he kind of scoffs at you. It’s a very disdainful glance he throws at you: “Vegetarian?!” And that too, you see, is a relic of the fifties, sixties, seventies. It has gotten into the…

A meat eater must not be able to hold a place of pride in popular culture. You need to have celebrities coming out and endorsing veganism, at least vegetarianism. You need to show the good guy in popular media, in the movies, as a vegan guy. It is very important.…

You might be an MBBS, or an MD, or a DM, but you could still be quite illiterate; you might still not have the basic knowledge regarding the nutritional value of various food products. You could have a quack graduating even from the best medical college. So many doctors just…

Find out from where in the world you can get all the nutrients that are not animal-sourced. Let industries come up. If it is required that artificial meat be made in order to satisfy people who necessarily want to have meat, I am all in favor of more technological research…

Young people like to have some mass on their body, or they might just want to keep basic fitness. The moment they show up at a gym, and if they go to a trainer and seek advice, first thing the trainer would ask is, “What is it that you eat?…

Questioner (Q): When I see how meat is produced, how vaccines are produced, how wool is produced, how silk is produced, it seems so obvious that I am contributing to that cruelty by consuming those things. But it seems that the rest of the world does not see that; it…

Questioner (Q): Why in nature all living beings are not vegetarians? Why does life eat life? If killing is evil, then why do carnivores, lions, and wolves exist at all?

Acharya Prashant (AP): Please understand, it is not killing that is bad. Killing does not operate in a vacuum. The…

Questioner (Q): Dear Acharya Ji, for the sake of not sounding hypocritical, I have to admit that I have killed more than one mosquito in my life and many other insects too, but never intended to cause pain and suffering to them. Now hearing, let alone seeing the relatively conscious…

Acharya Prashant (AP): (reading the question) Swami Vivekananda has said, "First of all, our young men must be strong. Religion will come afterwards. Be strong, my young friends; that is my advice to you. You will be nearer to heaven through football than through the study of the Gita. These…

Questioner (Q): Sir, everything was going alright back in November 2019; the world was operating as it does. And within three months, everything has just turned upside-down. We’re talking about the Corona outbreak.

It has always been enlightening sitting with you and talking about life. Most of us today are

When consciousness is your only hope, your only liberator,

How can you kill consciousness wherever it is?

If you are the body, then your real benefit lies in appeasing the body.

Questioner (Q): Acharya Ji, do you think that bringing the focus to our diet is going to change anything?

Acharya Prashant (AP): In what sense?

Q: Do you see us heading in the direction of this perfection, completion, along with our diet?

Question: Pranaam Acharya Ji! I have watched many of your videos related to Veganism, and I would like to know your take on teaching Veganism to children. I know that Veganism has to be a thing of the heart and just forcing dry ideology is not good for anyone.

As…

The world is your playground. So don’t be so particular about moving only within your pre-existing circle. If your cause is worth it, show some courage and move out.

If you have a tender and precious sapling in your palm, would you plant it in a desert? No. You will…

One can become an entrepreneur, for example, in the field of killing animals, cutting animal flesh, and supplying freshly cut flesh to people at their doorsteps. And this might be a successful business model.

This kind of an entrepreneurship is idiocy, perversion, profanity. The evil was present right in the…

Swami Vivekananda has said, “First of all, our young men must be strong; religion will come afterwards. Be strong, my young friends; that is my advice to you. You will be nearer to heaven through football than through the study of the Gita.”

Swami Vivekananda was no soccer evangelist. His…

To love is to see that the other is in trouble. To love is to extend a helping hand. Love is not about admiring somebody’s physicality or using someone for some means. Love has to be an exercise in compassion.

Only two kinds of associations are right in this world.…

If an apple and an animal are the same thing, then an animal and a human being are the same thing. Eat the human being as well. And if you do not eat the human being, then extend the same logic to not eat the animal as well.

The best…

Obviously it is inhumane to kill an animal to consume its flesh, and that’s one of the biggest indicators of our inner depravity. But then, who are the Americans really to point fingers at China? You kill pigs, you kill lambs, you kill cows—what to say of chicken and fish?…

The temperature of this city is already higher than what it should be. It won’t be higher in the next twenty years; it is already higher today. Read how many people are dying and by how many years has the average life expectancy already reduced—already reduced.

What do you mean…

If someone comes to you quoting this kind of a logic that, “You know, if I am eating the goat or the chicken, then you too are eating the rice grain and the wheat grain, and the rice plant and wheat plant have been slaughtered. So, if I am guilty…

The Earth doesn’t have resources to support eight billion or eleven billion vegans. Veganism doesn’t help the cause of climate change beyond a point. We need two things: less people and less consumption, and both of them together.

You need a situation where there are not more than two or…

If the two of you could together shout and scratch and bite and tear and break—if all those things could be done together, why not meditate and be loving and compassionate together? Or is companionship only for biting into each other?

So, having been companions, now it is your responsibility…

The shopkeeper’s business is to sell his goods, and that’s what most gurus of today are: they have to sell their goods. When that is what you want to do, how can you afford to antagonize a big chunk of the population? And you would never, never do that if…

We don’t need to do anything fancy to check climate change. Limit the number of human beings, and the Earth’s health will be restored very quickly. Nothing else is needed.

The biggest contributor to climate change, rather the only contributor to climate change is human beings and their consumption, quantity…

Man’s hunger is not so much in the stomach; it resides in his mind. And no fruit is enough when it comes to the mind.

So, man has been destroying everything he can touch, and climate change is the most recent, the most devastating, and probably the most final symptom…

Love is not about admiring somebody’s physicality, or using someone for some means. Love has to be an exercise in compassion. So, I often say, when you relate to the other, relate either to uplift or to be uplifted.

Only two kinds of associations are right in this world. If…

Instead of proceeding with a packaged product like meat, why don’t you slaughter the thing yourself? And when you slaughter the animal yourself, why don’t you know it fully even as you slaughter it? After all, even from a perspective of self-interest, if something is going into your body, it…

This is the age of mass production. The fellow who is owning and running the machine, the corporation, the empire, out of his greed wants you to consume.

“I am producing so much, but people are not buying it. Why? Because they do not need it. So, what do I…

Every time you walk past a meat shop or come across a menu containing a lot of flesh, let that harden your resolve. No point throwing that menu on the waiter’s face. The waiter is a puny fellow. He didn’t even write the menu; he has nothing to do with…

It is very well known that one tree over the course of forty years would absorb just one ton of carbon dioxide, and that is if that tree lives to get forty years old. How effective is that? Please. One tree over forty years absorbs one ton of carbon dioxide.…

When you eat meat, when you eat chicken, you are actually not paying for the environmental damage that your plate of meat has cost. You are not paying for the climate change. You are not paying for the biodiversity depletion. You are not paying for the loss of tropical jungles,…

Teach the girls that their body is not an instrument to bear kids. Teach them that their self-worth is not at all linked to their motherhood. Teach them where the real fulfillment of life lies, and teach them that it is not in birthing or breastfeeding.

Teach them creativity, teach…

If you can smilingly tolerate an animal being slaughtered for your diet, then you will equally well tolerate you being psychologically slaughtered for the profit of your profit-minded organization. If you are slaughtering a chicken so that you may eat it and fatten yourself, then you will equally well tolerate…

Very, very vulgar demonstration of consumption of thousands of litres of milk… So, they will take the milk and put it in a pond and say, “This pond is all full of milk!” or they will even encourage their followers to bring lakhs of litres of milk on some holy…

If you are alright seeing animals slaughtered for food, for consumption, for anything, you are bound to then be alright seeing yourself slaughtered as well.

The attitude that you have towards others’ suffering is bound to be similar to the attitude that you have towards yourself. If you can smilingly…

If you see an animal being slaughtered for somebody’s diet and something within you cries out, then the animal has been saved; maybe not that particular animal but several other animals. Why was the animal killed in the first place? Because somebody wanted it killed. So, the want led to…

The world is all yours if you are first of the world’s master. Have you gone to people who have dogs? If you are on good terms with the master of the dog, the dog comes and wags its tail in front of you. The dog says, “If you are

If God has given you anything, it is just the freedom, the power, and the responsibility to create yourself. You are your own father. God is just the background. God is just the canvas on which you paint yourself. God is the brush, God is the color, God is the…

Look at your food, how you kill animals and eat them—is that not rape? If rape is just the violation of body, are we not violating the bodies of animals all the time?

A woman’s body is exposed and penetrated, and you say that is rape. And what else are…