When intoxication doesn’t harm others as does meat-eating why is it considered bad?
Transcript
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question meat eating causes harm to others but gambling intoxication doesn’t if people are enjoying themselves why is intoxication considered so harmful answer it is not that intoxication doesn’t cause harm to others DUI driving under intoxication is a major source of road accidents and in many countries practically all countries all over the world it is a serious crime if a person drives with after having taken too much alcohol so when people are driving a vehicle they can ram into others because they are drunk their own vehicle can go out of control and it can cause death to innocent people so it’s a serious crime that can happen when people are drunk and they drive thereafter so we don’t live in an isolated world we live in a very connected world and that’s why we can’t say that what I do is just my own business what we do inevitably affects others yes driving is just one example quite often when people get drunk then they speak things which they never meant to speak and they hurt others when people get drunk sometimes they may also do other things such as they may gamble and lose a lot of money when they are drunk basically intoxication while giving us some high some sense of pleasure also weakens and numbs our intelligence our discretion faculty and we end up doing harmful things which hurt others and ultimately from the spiritual perspective if you understand that we are gods we are his parts and whatever we have belongs to him so even our body belongs to him and intoxication causes harm to our body so we are harming that which is not our property to harm and from the spiritual perspective going further you understand that actually the soul is longing for spiritual happiness which comes by purification and elevation of consciousness towards the spiritual level in terms of the analysis in terms of three modes sattva guna, rajo guna, tamo guna we want to rise towards higher mode of goodness and beyond to transcendence where we can find lasting happiness but intoxication takes us in the opposite direction towards ignorance and thus while alluring us with a little happiness intoxication actually takes us away from real happiness so thus because of its potential to harm others and because of its innate nature of harming us physically in terms of health and also spiritually in terms of alienating us from our spiritual nature intoxication is considered very detrimental