Climate Crisis

The meat eater is a self-deluder. You cannot eat meat without firstly lying to yourself. He will not want to know what the reality of meat consumption is. He will not want to know how animals are kept and how they are slaughtered. He will not know what the conditions…

Veganism cannot succeed if you just keep talking of animals. You keep saying, “Oh, it is bad to look at animals as a commodity. It is bad to exploit animals.” If man is exploiting man, why will man refrain from exploiting animals?

So, veganism has to be holistic, comprehensive. You…

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…

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…

A fellow reproducing blindly is a threat to the entire humanity. How is his family his personal matter? Somebody sets a bomb inside his home, and the bomb is powerful enough to bring down the entire building, not merely his apartment. Will you say, “It is his private matter. How…

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…

You must be wondering why I am speaking about this thing regarding procreation, regarding having kids. It is because this is the single most important issue facing you and me and the planet and the millions of species today. This is the one thing that man immediately, today, this moment,…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Teach the kids that this planet cannot tolerate even one more human being now. We are already eight billion. At the current rate, we are projected to be eleven billion by 2050. We cannot even tolerate eight point one billion.

You do not merely want to have kids; you also…

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…

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…

एक बार आप कहीं के लोगों की आदत डलवा दें, कि तुम्हें माँस-ही-माँस खाना है, बिलकुल सब और तला-भुना भी खाना है। अब क्षेत्र में अगर कोई आकर के सेहतमंद खाना बेचना भी चाहे तो उसका रेस्तराँ बंद हो जाएगा कि नहीं हो जाएगा?

तो यह लोग जो गंदगी फैला…

“माँसाहार गरीबों के लिए वरदान है क्योंकि माँसाहार के माध्यम से गरीबों को सस्ता प्रोटीन मिल जाता है।“ १ ग्राम प्रोटीन अगर आप मटन से लेते हैं तो लगते हैं ३ रुपये। उतना ही प्रोटीन, १ ग्राम, अगर आप अंडे से लेते हैं तो लगते हैं १ रुपय ३० पैसे,…

आज से १ लाख वर्ष पीछे जाओ तो अरबों-खरबों जानवर थे, हज़ारों-लाखों प्रजातियों के; और मनुष्य थे कुछ लाख, अधिक-से-अधिक। अब आदमी हो गए हैं ८ अरब और जानवर बचे हैं (हाथों से कम मात्रा दर्शाते हुए) इतने से!

साहब!

जानवर भी कौन से बचे हैं बताइए? जो मनुष्य के…

प्रश्नकर्ता: अंडा तो वेजिटेरियन (शाकाहारी) ही है, अंडा से तो होता है नॉन- फर्टीलाइज़्ड, चूजा तो निकलेगा नहीं।

आचार्य प्रशांत: बात ये थोड़े ही है कि वह पेड़ पर लटका मिला कि नहीं लटका मिला। यह भी तो देखो वह अंडा आया कहाँ से, मुर्गी स्वेच्छा से आकर के…

प्रश्नकर्ता: अगर दूध का आप बहिष्कार करते हैं तो गाय की बिलकुल ही बेकद्री हो जाएगी।

आचार्य प्रशांत: ये बात पता नहीं क्यों हमारे दूध पीने वाले भाई-बहन सोचते ही नहीं बिलकुल कि जिस दिन गाय ने दूध देना बंद कर दिया उस दिन वो गाय पालने वाले के लिए,…

जहाँ माँस खाना शुरू किया, तहाँ समझ लो कि आप कार्बन डाइऑक्साइड बढ़ाने वालों की कतार में शामिल हो गए। उपभोग के माध्यमों में जो चीज़ ग्लोबल वार्मिंग (वैश्विक उष्मीकरण) के लिए सबसे ज़्यादा घातक है वो है माँस का सेवन। माँस का सेवन समझ रहे हैं सबसे ज़्यादा घातक…

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…

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…

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…

एक बेज़ुबान निरीह को पकड़ कर काट दिया, उसका माँस पका कर खा गए – इससे कौन-सी परम सत्ता आपको आशीर्वाद देने वाली है, बताइए ज़रा? इससे आसमानों से फूल बरसेंगे आप पर? क्या तुक है!

जब बात की जाती है पशु बलि की, तो वास्तव में कहा जाता है…

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.…

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 thing that we must not talk of as something very beautiful, it is the coming of the next generation. It is not beautiful. It is not auspicious. It is not something to be talked of with a smile. It is something to be talked off with…

मैं इंदिरापुरम की ओर से निकल रहा था, तीन-चार साल पहले की बात है। अचानक मेरी गाड़ी के सामने दौड़ता हुआ एक मुर्गा आ गया। वो छूट कर भागा, वो सड़क की तरफ़ आ गया कि, ‘गाड़ी से कुचल कर मर जाऊँगा तो मर जाऊँगा, पर इसके साथ रहना मंज़ूर…

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,…

पृथ्वी पर नहीं है इतने संसाधन कि तुम बच्चे पैदा करे ही जा रहे हो, करे ही जा रहे हो। और मैं जो बोलूँगा वो बात बहुत चुभेगी, बता देता हूँ!

इस समय पृथ्वी पर बच्चा पैदा होने से ज़्यादा अशुभ काम दूसरा नहीं है। मातम का काम है अगर…

“आज ज़रा नॉन-वेज (माँस) खाने का मन था!” अरे! नॉन-वेज क्या होता है? सीधे बोलो, “आज किसी की जान लेने का मन था। आज किसी की गर्दन पर छुरी चलाने का मन था।“ पर ये बात बोलोगे तो तुम्हें ही अच्छा नहीं लगेगा। तो कहते हो, “चलो जी थोड़ा नॉन-वेज…

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 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…

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…

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…

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…

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.…

This entire planet is suffering because of man’s obsession with kids. You produce kids as if the kid would forever remain a kid. You totally forget that the kid would soon, very, very soon be a fully grownup individual.

But for three years of kuchikoo, you burdened the planet with…

To be a lion does not mean that you are violent. To be a rat is not necessarily to be violent. In fact, the word ‘violence’ does not apply to the lion or to the rat; it applies only to the human being. The lion kills all his life but…

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…

We need two things: less people and less consumption, and both of them together. Even if one of them is missing, you are gone.

The US has not too many people, just 32 crores are there, and yet they are the biggest carbon emitters in the world because they consume.…

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…

The less you love yourself, the more likely it is that you will be a flesh eater. And the more you love yourself, the more you know your welfare. The more determined you are to help yourself out of this mess, the more loving and more compassionate you will be…