How cow care represents universal ethical principles, The Monk’s Podcast 163 with Krishna Kshetra Maharaj

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This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna Maharaj.
Humble obeisances. Thank you very much for joining. Hare Krishna Chaitanya Charan Prabhu.
Yes Maharaj. Thank you for joining. Nice to be with you again.
So Maharaj, I thought today we could discuss on your book on cow care and how you have used cow care as a starting point for a very serious deliberation on very broad concepts like Dharma, Yoga and Bhakti, culminating in Bhakti. So maybe you could start with how, what inspired you to write this book? Sure. First, let me do a little promotion, if you like.
This is the book. Oh, excellent. Let’s make it full screen.
Okay. Cow care. And you may notice on this top, it says open access.
Open access means that it’s available for anyone and everyone to download digital copy free of charge. So we can provide the link. Yes, Maharaj.
And anyone can legally download the book. This is then counted by the publisher, Palgrave Macmillan. This is part of a series, animal ethics series of the publisher, Palgrave Macmillan.
And they register each download, which means that we keep informed how many people download the book. So up to now, it is over 41,000 downloads. That’s huge.
Since it was published in the beginning of last year. Oh, yeah. The number has slowed in the beginning.
It was the numbers were going up rather quickly, and now it’s slowed. But still, for academic book, 41k is a significant download. Isn’t it? Yeah, it’s pretty good.
Okay. Some books, some academic books, you can be happy if you sell 300 copies. Yes, Maharaj.
Yeah. I think this is a very good strategy. You had mentioned to me that you got some sponsorship for the book, and that’s how they gave the free access.
So in one sense, in today’s world, getting a physical copy is not that easy in different parts of the world. It becomes expensive. So this free access sounds like a very good strategy that can be used in general whenever possible.
Do all publishers allow this, Maharaj? Or it’s only for some publishers? I think gradually more and more publishers are making an option of open access. I haven’t researched it, but they seem to recognise more and more that it’s good for everyone involved. It’s not inexpensive, but I was encouraged by devotees, by friends, to do a fundraising, a crowdfunding sort of thing.
And it was successful, so it was possible to do. Yes, Maharaj. Cool.
So to explain, oh, I wanted to also say that just a few days ago, we have sent 80 hardbound copies we have shipped from Germany to India. And this was sponsored by one devotee of the Chopati Yatra. And we are going to be sending these as complimentary copies to various academic institutions, to particular individuals, professors and various scholars.
Okay. That means physical copies will reach physical libraries. That also has its own reach.
Yes, that’s the idea. So how I came to write the book, I was invited to do so by the editor of this book series, whom I know quite well. He is retired Professor Andrew Lindsay.
He is the head of the director of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics. And that’s something also one can find on the Internet. I became involved with them giving presentations on Hinduism and animal ethics over some years.
And he asked me more than once to write on Hinduism and animal ethics. And I think it was the third time he asked me, he said, I really want you to write this book because you are a practitioner. Okay.
And when he said that, as they say in America, the nickel dropped. Okay. I thought, okay, I should write this book.
And how to approach the subject, I felt what would be of most interest for readers and for myself. Personally, I felt inspired to investigate the subject was to focus on cows. Also, Professor Lindsay immediately agreed.
And so I got to work. Now, I should say that I’m not an expert on cows. I had to kind of start from scratch doing the research.
But again, if you don’t mind, if you just go step back. So it’s interesting that he asked you saying that you are a practitioner was a strength. For you, for many people.
I had heard that in the academia, if you’re a practitioner, then there is some amount of some amount of, I don’t know, suspicion or scepticism that you will be simply trying to tout the party line and that creates a disqualification. Yeah. So is it because of your track record of what your past publications and teachings are your interaction with them? How did being a practitioner become a strength over here? I would say first point is that Professor Lindsay is himself a religious person.
He is a he is not a priest. He’s a vicar of the the Anglican Church. And it’s interesting, I would say, because, you know, we usually think of Christianity as not caring much about animals and vegetarianism and so on.
But precisely because of that, he has been he has written several books on this topic, arguing vigorously the need to understand Christianity in a deeper way with respect to this matter. So he is a religious person. And for him, being religious is not a problem at all.
And he so I would say that was the main point. And he’s he’s associated with he’s. So one thing is to be invited.
It’s so he’s associated the publisher or he’s associated the university, which is doing this project. And then later you found a publisher. No.
He is the editor, the chief editor of a series of books. OK, that is published. Yeah, he’s a series editor.
This publisher publishes several different series. This is one series called the Animal Ethics Series. And he is the editor.
He is one of two editors of that series. And so he he is. This is part of his job is to find new authors to add to his series.
So it works like that. OK. And it was also interesting.
This is an academic press, which means that there’s peer review of the manuscript. Actually, two times. First, there’s a peer review of the book proposal, which I received.
And the response I got from the anonymous peer reviewer was very positive. And at the same time, gave, I don’t know, two, three or four points that they felt I should attend to or which maybe wasn’t in my initial proposal, something. And then when the manuscript is finished, you submit to the publisher and then it goes through a second peer review.
Now they have the full manuscript. But in my case, it actually didn’t go through second peer review. It simply went to the editor in chief of the series, namely Professor Lindsay.
And he looked through it. And then he just gave his green light. He said, this is fine.
Just just publish it. And so the production manager or what, you know, the the other editors, they said, OK, he says it’s good. So we take it.
Oh, so that that also speaks to the calibre of your book, then that it could go that fast forward. Yes, Maharaj. So, well, I think it speaks for Krishna giving his blessings.
Oh, yes. And that’s your humility of looking at it. Also, I read the book and it’s amazingly insightful.
So maybe talk about. Yeah, thank you. So maybe you could.
So one of the many among the many things that I appreciate about the book is that you give a historical and scriptural overview of cow care. You talk right from the Rig Veda about how cows have a significant position in the broad Vedic tradition. And then especially in the modern times, how it has become cow care has become quite, we could say, embroiled in many things other than cow care now.
Yes, you could put it that way. Yeah. So it is, even though, especially although I lived in India, I had no idea about all the complex, you could say, political forces that had shaped the vision of cow care.
So, how would you like to go? I would like to, cow care itself is an important topic, but the way you have analysed it is, it is from a broad ethical, very broad perspective. So maybe we could start with how cow care is perceived. It’s quite a polarising perspective for devotees.
Cow signifies, cows are dear to Krishna and their protection is the highest importance. And many, many Hindus share that, that concern. But even in India, there are, there is the, you could say, the political left, especially, which is aggressively against cow care.
And in India, in fact, especially in South India, there are various places where there are beef-eating festivals, where they specifically just defy, they do that. And they consider that as their inalienable right. And also in the West, sometimes the Hindu religion or the broad Vedic path, one of the ways of dismissing or deriding it is, these people worship cows and drink cow, they don’t even use the word cow urine, they use the cow pee, the pee word.
So, it’s a very, in one sense, volatile subject. So, how did this become so volatile? Maybe you could trace that history a little bit. Okay, briefly, yes.
I think we have to see it all in the context of the development of an identity, a national identity in late 19th century India. Okay. Leading up ultimately to independence from the British, but also continuing because I think Srivatsa Goswami, the very, very nice scholar devotee of the Radharaman community, when I interviewed him, we were talking about this and he said, actually the colonial period did not end in 1947.
Rather, it started in 1947. Really? I have heard that colonial mentality has continued to some extent, but started in 1947. That’s a strong statement.
What did he mean by that? Yeah, well, he likes to say things shocking statements. I think his point is that the influence of the West really got moving after 1947. The cultural influence, maybe the political presence of the British ended, but the cultural influence really got into motion, not just in India, but globally.
Okay, that’s another topic, but the cow protection movement, as it came to be officially known, begins in the late 19th century, in the 1880s. It begins somewhat ironically, I would say particularly, and I discussed this in the book, with Dayanand Saraswati writing a pamphlet on this subject. What I mean by ironic is that he gets it printed.
We have mass production of a message, and this mass production gets produced and distributed through technology, which came from the West. Okay. And then he also, in that pamphlet, discusses about cow protection organisations, institutions, and how will these be organised? It turns out they’ll be organised very much in a Western style of organisation.
This seems to be a broad characteristic of the emergence of modern Hinduism, that almost all Hindu leaders did, to some extent, adopt Western styles of organisation. Then even Bhakti Sadhguru Thakur did that to some extent. Yes.
Okay, so even cow protection happened. So Maharaj, just to, in 1880s, was it that, I don’t think by 1880s, there were organised slaughterhouses at that time. I don’t know when they came about.
So why did 1880s this concern rise? Was it that, and we know in the Chaitanya Charitamrta, for example, that the British would eat, the Muslims would, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, in one sense, in the modern world, he roasts Chand Kazi for the killing of cows who are considered to be mothers, who are like mothers. So the Muslim invaders did have the habit of eating cow flesh. So why did this concern rise at this particular time? I would say it’s a combination of causes.
Excuse me. But it could be argued, and I’m not a historian who delved into the details here, but I suspect that the real moving force is not so much the Muslim eating of cow flesh, but much more the British. And one reason for that is simply that the British were slaughtering vastly larger numbers of cows than Muslims at the time, because they were feeding their soldiers with beef.
And I think there was some increasing awareness of this, but as it happens, and I think this is also at least partly to blame on the British, the British were benefiting from dividing the Hindus and the Muslims in various ways. And so to pitch the Hindus against the Muslims was in the interest of the British, as I understand. Yeah, dividing rules.
Divide and rule. Yeah. Yeah.
And so, in any case, whatever the details of conflict came, it did come to open conflict over the issue of cow killing on the surface, at least between Hindus and Muslims in one town, as I remember it was in Punjab. And by this time also, I think we have to be aware that the distribution of information, the media was becoming more accessible, so that what happens in Punjab soon becomes also known in other parts of India. At the same time, in what was the year, 1888, the Indian National Congress is established.
1885, I don’t remember. Sometime in the 80s, the Indian National Congress is established. And there’s a lot of manoeuvring going on amongst Indians, Hindu, Muslim, and so on for presence, political presence.
Okay. And one thing that the Hindus are looking for is something to unite them under the banner of what, since rather recently, is being called Hinduism. Hmm.
The term Hindu, we see already in Chaitanya Charitamrita, and it’s always in contrast to Yavana, and so on. They don’t use the word Muslim. However, Hinduism, this idea starts manifesting first in the 19th century.
Okay. So then this becomes, so then the cow, protection of the cow, the cow becomes a symbol of Hinduism, which seems, it seems like cow becomes like a ready-made symbol, which points to an ancient past of what is understood by these people as cow protection. And it kind of opens up because of the potential for articulating a unity for India, not just Hindu, but India.
And this was Gandhi’s perspective. He wanted to say, you know, the cow is for everyone and protection of the cow is for everyone. It has nothing to do with Hindu and Muslim.
He saw also in cow protection, a kind of ideal that could be pursued by everyone, bring everyone together. So from early on, politics early on, meaning in the independence movement of India, cow protection is taking, yeah, a rather front row seat, we can say. Okay, front row seat.
So was it at that time also opposed by say Muslims or British or at that time it was not such a, you said started as a unifying issue. So did it become a polarising issue at that time or how did it become polarising? Well, the polarisation, yeah, polarisation was there from the 1880s. There were riots happening, as I said, in Punjab was one of the earliest.
It’s been a while now since I’ve been reading all this material. So it’s hard for me to give details. You know, I’m just directing some questions and you could take it whichever way, you know, you could answer some questions in brief and you could answer some questions in detail based on how you would like to take this podcast.
Because I want to make sure that we do justice to the book and justice to the broad subjects which are discussed in the book. So from what and what I see it now is that, you know, even if we talk about say the financial benefits of cow care, still it’s there. I’ll leave alone the ethical aspects and there’s a blinkered view by which it’s all seen as a just a prop for foisting one’s religious values on others.
So this antipathy, which in one sense in your book you avoid that. So you go and maybe we could track a little bit backward that from what I read is that you see cow and cow care is like the representation of the harmony between the human, divine and natural worlds. Is that how you put it? Yeah.
Could you explain that a little bit? It’s a very universalist and appealing way of saying otherwise cow care seems to be like a typical maybe like a Hindu idiosyncrasy for some people. Yeah, this is the broad approach we can say. And this is explained by champions of, I like to call it cow care more than cow protection because the idea of cow protection is right from the start.
But from the get-go, it’s adversarial, you know, we have to protect the cow against these persons and whatever. That’s a good difference. But in the Sanskrit word in the Bhagavad Gita is go raksha.
So raksha, does it mean protection or raksha can itself mean care also? No, it generally means protection. So I’m not deriving this from the Gita specifically. Rather, I’m leading into Western, broadly speaking, Western, contemporary Western ethics.
There’s one particular stream of ethics which has developed quite recently from the 1980s called the ethics of care. So that’s one connection that I’m trying to make. And maybe we can talk about that a bit later.
But let’s see, now I lost the thread. You were asking about how cow care is the harmony of the divine, human and natural. Yeah.
So we can think of this sort of graphically as a triangle. Where we put divinity on a point on the top, and then we have two positions on the bottom, the human, and we can say broadly speaking, the natural world, not just animals, certainly not just cows. And we might want to then imagine a circle in the centre of this triangle, in which we locate yajna, the practise of ritual, what is usually translated as sacrifice, but the word sacrifice has a lot of negative connotations for a lot of people.
Really? I’m sorry to interrupt. How does sacrifice have a negative connotation? Is it like killing animals? Or in what sense? Or is it like you have to give up something dear? So many ways. I think that’s another topic.
Okay, fine. I didn’t know the negative connotation of the word. Okay, fine.
Yeah. Please go ahead. So if we put yajna, let’s just use the word yajna.
Yes. And say, if we put that in the centre, then that takes us to much of what Lord Sri Krishna is speaking about in Bhagavad Gita, especially in the third chapter of the Gita, about the cycle of sacrifice. In which all that is beneficial for human beings is achieved through sacrifice.
Kamaduk is, you can say, wish fulfilling cow. Yeah. And how is sacrifice performed? It’s generally considered from the ritual texts that an essential item is ghee or gharta in Sanskrit.
And what is ghee? It is purified, clarified, sorry, clarified butter. And what is butter? It is churned from milk, from cow’s milk. And so cows are very much linked to the sacrifice and also to those who perform the sacrifice, the Brahmins.
And with the higher powers who are overseeing nature. And I’m using that term higher powers to keep it slightly on the side that may make some people less nervous than if we just say God. Yes.
The divine world reciprocates. And how does it reciprocate? By bestowing all things necessary from nature to human beings. And therefore there is well-being for nature and for human beings.
So like that. And that’s all described in Chapter 3 of Bhagavad Gita. So that triangle I was speaking of, I think this can be one way of understanding how in particular cows are taken as valuable.
And there’s another way to understand which I appreciate jumping ahead in historical terms. I mentioned Gandhi before, Mahatma Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. I discuss him also in the book as part of this movement to popularise cow protection in the modern time.
And one point he makes, which I appreciate, is that he says, it is through the practise of cow protection. It is through caring for cows that human beings establish a right understanding of their relation to all other beings, all other animals. Because naturally we ask, why cows? Why not goats? Why not any, you know, why not tigers or pigeons or whatever? And he’s saying that through the practise of caring for, protecting and caring for cows, through that process, which means it’s a way of life when you have cows and you’re committing yourself to caring for them for their entire natural life, that’s going to determine a lot about your own life.
Your own lifestyle, as we say nowadays. And also by your interaction with the cows, you’ll develop a certain understanding, which is opening you to appreciate the rest of nature. One thing that I learned from interviewing persons who take care of cows, something I heard repeatedly, was that you come to appreciate the individuality of the cows.
Each cow has a personality. Each cow has different ways of interacting with the other cows, of interacting with their carers and so on. They are persons.
So through that activity, that not just activity, but way of life, I would say, I think it’s a valuable insight that Gandhi gave, that through cow care in particular, we open ourselves to a proper way of relating with the rest of the world. The rest of nature, the rest of God’s creation, one might like to say like that. Okay, so in one sense, cow care is not just cow care, it creates some foundational values in the heart, by which we start appreciating the rest of nature.
You’ve put it much better than I could. I was just trying to understand, because you actually anticipated the question that I was going to raise. Because in one sense, some people, when they come to India, even go to the Nico village, we don’t just have cow care, we also have other animals.
So that in one sense demonstrates that while we care, it’s almost like in today’s world, if you care for something because your religion tells you to do, then that is a disqualification almost. That means that doesn’t prove that you are a good person, that only proves that you are sold out to your religious beliefs. So you’ll do whatever your religion tells you to do.
So in that sense, what is actually good sometimes is seen as negative if it is done because of a religious motive. Right. And unfortunately, I would say, in the more neophyte levels of any religious tradition where one becomes preoccupied with the rules, I follow the rules, one is prone to ignoring the purpose behind the rules.
And therefore, one is prone to not understanding how to more deeply apply the rules. You are saying that there is validity to the criticism also, that people may care for the cows because of some religious beliefs. And it is true that sometimes other animals can get completely neglected, anyone starved and other things like that.
And specifically in India, we see lots of concern about cows and practically no concern whatsoever about buffaloes, water buffaloes. And in fact, farmers will take water buffaloes for their milk, which they sell specifically because there is no negative consequences for them, as they understand, to letting the buffalo be killed, be slaughtered when it’s no longer giving milk. So instead of having cows, they’ll prefer buffaloes because it’s, you know, there’s no, what’s the word? It’s okay to let buffaloes be.
I can sell my buffaloes and nobody’s going to criticise me. In one sense, the injunction for cow care may actually end up people not wanting to do anything with cows at all. So in one’s, yeah, from utilitarian perspective, investment in water buffaloes might seem a more, we could say, viable investment.
It’s quite complicated. It is. And, you know, speaking of that, maybe it’s jumping a bit, but the situation in India, and we discuss this also in the book, has become so paradoxical in this regard.
There’s high respect for cows on the one side, and on the other side, India has the largest dairy industry in the world since the 1970s, since it was organised in such a way that all the small cow owners could sort of channel all of their milk into these huge processing plants like Amul and so on. Each of the parts of India have their own company names. When they’re giving less milk or no longer giving milk, they will be sent to the slaughter for slaughter.
And then the leather industry in India and the cow and buffalo meat industry are very substantial. All of this meat gets exported, not all of it, but a lot of it gets exported. And so there’s a whole economy going on in that respect.
And there’s a government institute in Chennai, which promotes the leather industry. It’s a government institute and they’re promoting leather products. They’re encouraging, they’re producing, they’re creating different leather products and getting people to buy them and so on and so forth.
So from the government’s perspective, if it’s getting revenue, why bother about any other considerations? Well, yes, but it’s complicated. Speaking of the government, I met about two years ago, I was able to meet Srimati Maneka Gandhi in her office in Delhi. She is a central government minister and she has been working for animal protection for many years.
And in our meeting, which went longer than was scheduled for, she was very kind to give me more time than she had initially given. Practically the whole time, she was just complaining about the government that she works for. Oh, really? Saying that on the one side, so many things are being said in favour of animal protection.
But on the other side, there’s the ministry, this ministry and that ministry, which is promoting the leather industry and the milk industry and the beef. And so she was complaining a lot about that. Oh, so even on political circles, there is division about how this is doing.
Oh, yeah. And specifically, I mentioned this is all the leather and most of the meat is being exported. And that means it’s bringing in foreign exchange.
Hmm. And, you know, who can say no to foreign exchange in India today? Yeah. So this perspective of what you, I mean, going back to a little broader philosophical perspective.
Yes, I like to get back to the broader perspective. So you talk about this, how cow care is the beginning of harmony with the natural world. And then this perspective, it is very appealing to current Western concerns about animal ethics.
So has this been presented? I mean, how has the response been to this? How did you in your book address the challenge of this? This is not just a religious concern, this broader perspective you presented. And then what has been the response overall to it? Truth be told, I haven’t gotten a whole lot of explicit response. So far I have to the book, there have been two academic book reviews that I know of.
They’ve both been positive. One of the reviews was written by the chief editor of an academic journal called Animals, which is not pitched, this journal is for, I don’t know, it’s multidisciplinary apparently. And it’s pitched for all kinds of people who are dealing with, especially the animal industries.
And he gave a review of the book, which was, how to say, it was positive. And at the same time he said, it was like, this is a very interesting perspective to consider. Maybe we can consider to change our economic models in such a way that this could be actually followed.
It was kind of like that. He was very generous and at the same time saying, well, that’s one perspective. The other review was by a Vaishnava practitioner scholar, so it was quite positive.
But beyond that, I have to say, I haven’t received direct response from people. Sometimes these things take time. And of course, just writing one book is not in itself necessarily going to change very much.
But there’s what we call the trickle down effect. One hopes that some minds will be inspired, persons who will give such ideas further to a wider audience, perhaps in popular writing and so on. So I’m putting in my two cents worth in the form of this book and hoping that it will get some positive response.
It’s not all that I’m doing within our own society, ISKCON. I’m also making some effort. I’ve been asked to oversee the Ministry for Cow Protection and Agriculture for Europe.
And with a group of devotees in Europe, we are working on plans for implementing a standard where we have considerably more cows that we are protecting, so that we can take all of the milk that we offer to Krishna from protected cows. But this is taking us away from what you’re asking, which is, what about a broader reach of this, a non-religious reach? And what I want to say is that those of us who are working on this feel that this will be essential for a wider public to take us seriously, to see that we are in fact working our talk. As it is now, in the West especially, for the most part, we only have really token cow protection.
And it’s not really on the map of a public awareness of what Hare Krishnas do. The public awareness is, oh, they sing on the streets, they are vegetarian, and maybe they have very beautiful worship in their temples. Mainly it’s Indians who are aware of that.
And it’s, I don’t know, what more is there in the public image? So one of our aims, I would say, is to make more of a public awareness that, yes, we have an alternative that we practise. And it’s an alternative to the vegan idea that we should not take any dairy products whatsoever. We should not care for cows and so on.
Okay, so it’s one thing to demonstrate ethical, that we have a sound philosophical worldview for animal protection and for cow protection. But if we don’t demonstrate it, then it will just be two words. I think, you know, David Heberman has written the book of Yamuna.
And he also talks about something similar, that the Yamuna protection movement, which actually many of the followers were people motivated by religious considerations. And the same for Ganga. So action is done on the ground.
That’s when the religious worldview also starts being taken seriously. Right. Yes, Maharaj.
Also, if we can talk from a broader perspective, you also talk about how cow care relates with Dharma, Yoga and Bhakti. So would you like to talk about that? Or are there some other subjects you want to develop in this direction first before we go there? We can go into Dharma, Yoga and Bhakti. And we’ll see.
Maybe we circle around back to something. Sure. So in the, I think it’s chapter five of my book.
Yeah, it’s called Cow Care and the Ethics of Care. Because this book is within the Animal Ethics book series. I wanted to show a connection that I’m interested not only in cows, or we are Hindus are not only interested in cows, but in animal care in general.
And for this, we need to talk about the philosophical side of ethics. And for this, I’m introducing terminology and practises and culture, which are very foreign to Westerners. And I want to try to see how we can bring the two discourses together.
Okay. So I begin, I talk about Dharma. And then I talk about Yoga.
And then I talk about Bhakti. And how these are related. And I conclude with a discussion of what I mentioned before, the ethics of care.
Because what I see is that Bhakti leads quite naturally into and works very easily into discussion about the ethics of care. But if we go back and start with Dharma, what is Dharma? Well, we might start with the Sanskrit word and go to its verbal root, which is Dhri. In Roman transliteration, it would be D-H-R with a dot under the R. Retroflex, Dhri, which is hard to pronounce.
So this verbal root can mean something like to sustain. And of course, the word sustainability is a buzzword today in relation to environmental concerns and ecology. It can mean to sustain, to hold, simply to hold, and related ideas.
So in different dimensions, if we start from the broadest dimension, Dharma is about cosmic order, if you like. And this would bring us back to what we talked about before, this triangle with divinity and humanity and nature. I also speak about bovinity in my book.
Yeah, that’s a beautiful word, bovinity. Slightly, slightly coined word, although it’s actually in the dictionary. Oh, OK.
It’s there already in the dictionary? It’s in the dictionary. It’s used in a very different way than I use it, but it’s there. Oh, OK.
Yeah. So if we think about cosmic order and we think about bovinity, if you like, jumping back to the subject of cows, then Dharma is very much concerned with care for cows, protection of cows, connected with the sacrifice and thereby keeping the cosmic order. OK.
Now, Dharma is also about, we may broadly speak of ethics in the sense of obligation. The question, a common or a major question in any discussion of ethics is what do I owe? What do I owe? OK. And to whom? And the Dharma tradition from the perspective of Dharma Shastra, one scholar has pointed out the really foundational principle in Dharma Shastra is the idea of debt.
The idea that we are born with indebted. We’re indebted to our parents, to the ancestors, to the rishis, to the celestial beings. We are indebted to human beings.
We are indebted to living beings. Buddha. Buddha rena.
OK. And so what what I call in this chapter, that aspect of Dharma settled duty. That which we understand as as soon as I’m born, I have obligations.
That’s one aspect of Dharma. And it connects to this broader sense of order. That I, as a human being, have certain obligations.
And those obligations extend beyond simply relations to other human beings. OK. That there is moral significance to animals.
There is moral. They have a moral position. They belong to another way it’s put in modern ethics discussion is they belong to the moral community.
Moral community. OK. And then.
Well, I don’t know how far to go in this, but with Dharma, we talk about another aspect of Dharma, which is Dharma as deliberation on right action. And this we get, especially in the Mahabharata, because you can say the core question of the Mahabharata is what should be done? What is Dharma? Yes. And you get endless, endless stories of what seem like dilemmas.
What should be done? Well, it’s complicated. That’s true. In fact, in my sense, that is the driving question of the Bhagavad Gita also.
It’s a driving question of the Gita. And what does Krishna say at the end? He says, Sarva Dharma Pratyajya. OK.
Mam ekam sharanam racha. Give up all your so-called Dharma and just surrender unto me. Hmm.
So that’s another aspect of Dharma. So just to repeat, the two aspects are one is the aspect of duty, what we owe to others, and that is settled. Settled duty.
In other words, it’s something that I’m not even going to question. I just I understand it as or I accept it from the get go for whatever reason as my duty. And that may translate into all kinds of things.
We can take it as varna duty, ashrama duty, and swadharma may be included. But there may be other things that we consider. But the sort of cord of that from the tradition is that we have five debts which need to be paid.
OK. That’s kind of where it all goes back to. So that is one aspect of Dharma.
And the other, you said, is about the… When we’re not sure what we’re supposed to do, then we deliberate on Dharma. We deliberate on right action. So I’m suggesting that deliberation is also part of Dharma.
OK, ethical deliberation. I think at the end of the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says, Arjuna talks about it as this is dharmam samvadhamavayo. This conversation of dharma between these two great souls I have heard and I am thrilled by hearing about it.
Yes. And Krishna tells Arjuna, now deliberate, isn’t it? He says, now you decide what to do. OK, so dharma in that sense is nice.
It’s a broad thing where we are clear, doing what is clear to us. And when it is not clear, then contemplating to clarify. Both are within the semantic ambit of dharma.
Right. And this clarification may involve very complex factors. Yes.
And the example that I’m giving is from the Manu Samhita discussion in Chapter 5, about what is edible and what is not edible. Because if you look closely at that chapter, it’s actually rather confusing. It seems like Manu is saying one thing and then it seems like he’s saying the opposite.
Yes. And I discussed that in an earlier chapter in more detail. But I bring it up again here and refer to the commentary of one Mimamsika person, Medhatithi, from the 10th century.
It’s quite a celebrated person with respect to interpretations. Yes. So he gives an interpretation of Manu talking about eating, what to eat and what not to eat.
Maybe I can read that. So this is an explanation. This is a kind of citing, not direct quote, by Donald Davis, who explains this.
Killing and eating meat in specified contexts is legally permissible, according to Manu. But the law does not stop there. Instead, a fully hermeneutic understanding of law demonstrates that the law calls on us to abstain from the actions for the great rewards, quote unquote, that abstention brings.
Both are the law, dharma. But the dharma that produces higher reward is to be preferred over that of mere acceptability. And then I go on to explain that higher reward, you know, this sounds very kind of self-centred, that by giving higher reward, dharma shastra urges us to think more deeply and to understand ultimately that actually it’s a higher moral position to refrain from eating meat.
It’s not just better for me to not eat meat, you know, whether physically or morally, but it’s just better. It’s a higher position moral. So dharma as deliberation.
And then we have a third aspect of dharma, and that is dharma as cultivation of virtue. Maharaj, just one minute. Yeah.
So based on the meditation quote, the point which you are making is that Manu’s passage is illustrating this ethical reflection or ethical deliberation, that where the principle is that, yes, if there’s allowance for meat eating, but the fact that there is a higher reward and also the higher reward is holistic. It’s not just like we will individually get, but the whole nature and whole of creation, existence would be benefited by that. Is that the point you’re trying to make through this? Yeah.
So that’s a specific example of deliberation on dharma as deliberation, where we find what seems to be a confusion, possibly two different messages in shastra. Because someone may say, well, I just follow shastra. It’s very simple.
Dharma is very simple. I just follow shastra. And so dharma is only about settled duty, period.
And what I want to say is, well, it’s not quite that simple. Dharma is more than that, because if you want to understand dharma more deeply to do the right thing for the good. When we speak of ethics, we’re speaking generally of two principles.
What should I do, which is what is right for me to do? And then what should I do to bring about good? Okay. To bring about good. This is the Western terminology.
Yeah. So anyway, deliberation is part of dharma. That’s all I want to say.
And this is a nice example of it in the context of animal ethics. Because what is the whole problem? The problem is that human beings think it’s, I mean, the vast majority of people think it’s completely normal and proper and even religious to eat meat. And so we’re pointing out that just maybe that’s not the case.
Yes, it can be proper if you do it the right way. And that’s what Manu also has suggested here. He talks about that in chapter five of the Manu Sangita.
Okay. But then we go on to dharma as cultivation of virtue, because another major category of ethical discourse in Western discourse on ethics is called virtue ethics. Yes.
And virtue ethics is the idea that if I am virtuous, I will act rightly, using the terms right and good. I will act naturally in a right way if I am virtuous. This is fascinating.
And then, of course, the question comes, so what constitutes virtue? And you have a 2,500 year old discussion in Western philosophy, what is virtue? And I simply want to say here, yes, we also have within the dharma tradition, discussion about what is virtue. Oh, this is amazing. So the way I’d heard about these three broad schools of thought with ethics, virtue ethics is one, I think another is consequentialist ethics, what brings about good utility and consequentialism.
Another is, is it Kantian category, moral imperatives, that these are the things we should do? That’s only one type of, that’s Kantian ethics, which I guess would go under the major third category, which is deontology. Deontology, yes. So basically you have presented dharma as connecting with all three schools of ethics, isn’t it? Because if dharma is settled duty means that will become deontological.
If it’s utilitarian, then it’s like ethical. It’s more consequentialism. And then virtue ethics is, yeah.
They’re all concerned with what is right in order to get what is good. That is common to all the three types of broad categories of ethical discourse. What is right for doing what is good? Is that what you said? No.
What is to be done? Okay. What is to be done is the right. One should do the right in order to bring about the good.
Okay. Makes sense. Yes.
And maybe as a footnote, but I mentioned in the book, I refer to Shyam Ranganathan, a professor in Canada who teaches Indian philosophy. He talks about ethics and he identifies bhakti as a fourth category beyond the three categories of deontology, consequentialism and virtue ethics. Oh, okay.
He says bhakti is a different category. And why is that? He says, because in bhakti, the right is the good. To act in bhakti is itself the good.
So it’s not that unlike in the other categories, you’re doing something hopefully right to bring about something else, which is good. Oh, so this is something like in our tradition, the means and the ends are the same in bhakti. Right.
Okay. Right is the good. Okay.
Anyway, that’s a point which I found useful for this discussion. So we’re talking about dharma, yoga and bhakti and how these relate to animal ethics. Yes.
So you mentioned dharma. I think we mentioned dharma elaborately. So would you like to talk about yoga and bhakti now? Yes.
So then going on to yoga now. Yoga. I focus mainly on classical yoga, as presented in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, where we have the famous Ashtanga yoga system, as it becomes referred to later.
Patanjali doesn’t refer to it that way. But in Ashtanga yoga, as is well known, the first two Angas are Yama and Niyama, each of which he breaks down into five subcategories. And this, by the way, is not original to Patanjali.
It’s found also in the Jain tradition. Okay. And I believe also in Buddhist tradition.
But the point here is that the very first of the five principles of Yama, where Yama means, broadly speaking, restraint, self-restraint. The first principle is Ahimsa, usually translated as non-violence. And the commentators on the Yoga Sutras, they all agree that this Ahimsa principle is essential.
It is foundational. It is the root from which the whole process of yoga can develop. And they emphasise it quite strongly that this is to be practised by everyone.
It is not, in this sense, if we connect again back to Dharma, it’s Samanya Dharma. It’s for everyone. It’s not just for persons of a particular varna or whatever.
Do the Yoga Sutra commentators define what non-violence is? Do they include vegetarianism? Because Kshatriya warfare is also there. Do they define it or they don’t go into that too much? Patanjali doesn’t go into it, except in one sense. And I have this quote also.
This is on page 179. Okay. And this is Yoga Sutra 2, Chapter 2, Sutra 34.
To give a slight introduction to this, in Yoga Sutra 32, I think it is. No, 33. He says, you can read it there at the very top.
Upon being harassed by negative thoughts, one should cultivate counteracting thoughts. Vitarkabhadane pratipakshabhavanam is the sutra. And then immediately after that, he’s giving a, we would say a practical example, how to do that.
And this is one of my, these two are kind of favourites of mine. He says, negative thoughts are violence, himsa, etc. They may be personally performed, performed on one’s behalf by another, or authorised by oneself.
They may be triggered by greed, anger, or delusion. And they may be slight, moderate, or extreme in intensity. One should cultivate counteracting thoughts namely, that the end results of negative thoughts are ongoing suffering and ignorance.
In other words, he’s giving a practical mental exercise because the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali are more than anything else about controlling the mind, restraining the mind, yogas chittavrtti nirodha. So then here he’s giving a very practical advice of how to reflect when you notice you’re having some negative thought. And he gives as an example, himsa.
Himsa means violence. So he says, you have some thought of being violent one way or another. And in the Jain tradition, they categorise violence and non-violence in a radical way.
In one of their texts, they have, I think it’s three, 232 or 236 different types of violence to be avoided. Oh, okay. So he’s saying, oh, you have some thought of violence.
And then he elaborates, whether it’s something that you would do yourself or someone else would do perhaps on your behalf or you would allow someone else to do. Or if it’s something which is triggered by lobha, krodha or moha. Lobha, krodha, moha, purvaka.
Or even if it’s just a slight kind of a violence or it’s a stronger, or it’s a very strong violence. In any case, just think how, what the consequences of that are. Just think of the dukkha, the misery.
Dukkha, ajnana, I forget the term. But just think of the ongoing suffering that will come from that. And thus you can overcome that thought.
Okay. So it’s a very broad explanation by himself. It’s very broad.
In animals, it’s almost like a negative, like violent thoughts or destructive thoughts. It’s huge. So it’s at that level then.
But then also going more specific to animals, the 15th century commentator Vignanabhikshu commenting on the Yoga Sutras says that even scripturally condoned violence, as in the killing of animals in ritual sacrifice, as we see in the Manusmriti, is herewith rejected. Oh, okay. And I go on to give his reasoning, and I quote Edwin Bryant from his very good book on the Yoga Sutras for that.
Should I read this? You decide, Maharaj. How do you want to take it? I want to respect your time also. How much time do you have and if you have some other topics to discuss? Yeah.
Well, I do want to get at some point to my six affirmations for cow protection toward the end of the book. So yeah, we can read since you just took it away. Sorry, sorry.
Please go ahead. Okay. Ultimately, all creatures are parts of Ishvara, God, explains Vignanabhikshu, like suns to the father and sparks to the fire.
Therefore, violence against others is violence against God. Then he quotes the Bhagavad Gita, envious people act hatefully toward me, Krishna, in their own and in others’ bodies. I continually hurl such cruel, hateful people, the lowest of mankind into samsaric existence, into only the impure wombs of demons.
So this is Vignanabhikshu, quote, commenting on the Yoga Sutra, specifically on this topic of Ahimsa. Hmm. So that’s getting more specific.
And also it’s connecting to Ishvara Pranidhan, which the Yoga Sutra refers to, and which has been a subject of a lot of debate. To what extent was Patanjali a theist? Is his yoga, theistic yoga and so on. But he does seem to speak very positively of the practise of Ishvara Pranidhan or meditation, worship of the Lord as a practise foundational to the practise of yoga.
And this then leads into our third topic, which is bhakti. And the transition I make for this connection of yoga to bhakti. So in one sense, you are saying that dharma naturally, I’m just trying to connect this with our topic of cow care.
So you talk about dharma as a settled duty or as a virtue and as a deliberation. So through all these, like by the Manusmriti quote, dharma does enjoin cow care and animal care. And similarly, yoga also enjoins that through its fundamental dictate of Ahimsa as well as the fact that Ishvara Pranidhan, because if we are to surrender to Ishvara, then naturally we take care of parts of Ishvara.
So in that sense, you are saying that these two foundational aspects of the Vedic teachings or Hindu dharma, whatever word you use, they strongly support animal ethics. Is that the point you’re making through this? Yes. Supporting animal ethics in two ways, which we can take as specifically negative as opposed to the positive practise of bhakti.
Okay. And here we can make a distinction. If we go back to these terms, cow protection, cow care.
So we can say cow protection is the negative, you know, stop doing something, prevent something from happening. Whereas cow care is something positive. And that’s going to lead us to get to the punchline, if you like, into go-seva, the idea of serving cows.
And why would we want to serve cows? Because cows are dear to Krishna. How do we know that cows are dear to Krishna? We know from Shastra, specifically from Srimad Bhagavatam, which our Acharyas identify as the decisive scripture for understanding absolute truth. So that’s going the fast route.
And in between, I talk about the story of Bharata, who is practising yoga. And in his practise of yoga, he becomes distracted. And how does he become distracted? By saving a baby deer and becoming so attached to the deer that he, after death, as the yogi, takes birth in his next life as a deer who remembers his previous life as a yogi and thus prepares himself for the next life as Jada Bharata, who ultimately becomes the teacher of a king.
And what is it he teaches him? By his example, by Jada Bharata’s example, he teaches him to care for all living beings, even ants. That’s fascinating, Maharaj. Isn’t it? Although he said, an animal deviated me from my previous life.
He doesn’t hold the animal responsible, but he’s taking care of the smallest of animals. Yes, Maharaj. Well, and I also suggest, and this could be argued against perhaps, but I find it personally meaningful.
Although we generally say Jada Bharata fell down because of his meditation on the deer, and then therefore he had to take birth as a deer. I want to say that this is by higher arrangement for him to experience the life of a deer as part of his education as a yogi. Okay.
And ultimately leading him into a position of bhakti, a mentality which has genuine concern, genuine care for the animal kingdom, as we say. So, in bhakti, the genuine care comes because of the same point, which was mentioned in Ishwar Panidhan, more or less, but at a deeper level that all living beings are parts of the Lord whom we want to love and care for. Yes, and if we go back to Vijnana Bhikshu, he says violence against others is violence against God.
And so we may understand that’s okay, that’s not a good thing, violence against God. But the sort of full growth of that sense is that, why is that so? It is because the Lord is present in all beings. Oh, okay.
And it is bhakti that gives us the vision of that? And it’s bhakti that gives us the vision of that. And that takes us back to my sort of key verse from Bhagavad Gita. Pandita Samadarshanah, 580.
Yes. Pandita Samadarshanah. The Pandit is a Samadarshan, is one who sees equally all living beings.
So, you are saying Pandita Samadarshanah is a bhakti principle, not just because one is seeing them as souls, but one is seeing the presence of the divinity of Krishna within every living being. That’s why. Yes, yes.
And I want to also say that this is essential for a comprehensive animal ethics. Modern Western ethics in general, including animal ethics, is sort of studiously avoiding theism or any theistic invocation of higher order and divine will and so on. It’s trying to reason its way to right action.
And I want to say that the reasoning process requires to understand, to comprehend our own identity as spiritual beings. And that comprehension is only possible by comprehending the existence of the higher self, atma, paramatma. So, the whole package is necessary.
So, in a sense, you could say that animal ethics will be a natural expression of a bhakti worldview, natural dimension of a bhakti worldview. Yes, it naturally grows out of a bhakti worldview. Yes, and so, in one sense, what dharma and yoga enjoin, going back to the earlier point of the right is the, what is that? The right is the good? No, that’s bhakti.
The right is the good. The right leads to the good. That is, you can say, dharma and yoga.
Okay, but in bhakti, right is the good. So, in one sense, the… I’m not sure. I should say, I think Ranganathan would argue that the right is the good.
That’s also the case in proper yoga practise. But for me, he’s not completely clear on that. Okay.
Yeah, so, overall, this is, you know, in a way, the way you have expanded the topic of cow care. So, it’s fascinating. I hope that the book gets read widely and not just read widely, but understood widely also.
Otherwise, everything gets… Every aspect, especially of religion today, gets put in its own corner and viewed through ideological, particular ideological lens, which can be quite sectarian or polarising. Yes. Perhaps, we could end, since we did bring up the subject of how cow care, in India specifically, is so tied into politics.
I tried to address this, excuse me, in the sixth chapter, in a section called Six Affirmations on the Dharma of Cow Care. And I won’t read all of this, but I need to explain the context, which is a political context. Okay.
I’m drawing from the empirical research of a social psychologist at New York University. I don’t know if he is still there, but John Haidt, H-A-I-D-T, Jonathan Haidt, has written quite extensively on the subject. He identified initially five, and then six, what he calls foundational moral principles of political life.
Oh, he’s the person who’s trying to reconcile conservatives and liberals, the righteous mind, and other books. Exactly. Quite well known, actually.
I don’t know if he’s reconciling, but he’s showing how people tend to one side or the other in terms of their moral presuppositions. Yeah. Okay.
Reconciling is an overstatement. At least he makes the two mindsets intelligible to each other also. Why do people think in this way? Right.
Yeah. So these positions, these six positions, he divides in two categories of three, falling into the liberal and the conservative side. And each of these foundational principles are expressed in a single word.
And so we have, first of all, care. Okay. The opposite of which is harm.
A second moral principle is fairness, the opposite of which is cheating. A third moral principle is loyalty, the opposite of which is betrayal. Then authority, the opposite of which is subversion.
Sanctity, the opposite of which is degradation. And a sixth one he adds later is liberty, the opposite of which is oppression. What I’ve done is taken each of these six principles and suggested with what are called affirmations, ways in which we can think about how cow care could actually be practised and address all six of these principles rather than just one or two or three of them, which makes cow care political.
Okay. That’s fascinating. So the first of these, if I can briefly go through them, I give sort of longer paragraphs for each one.
So that’s a bit much. But the first is cow care and care. This would be page 240.
The first of Hyde’s six moral foundations is care, the opposite of which is harm. We frame our care practises. Now I’ve worded it as it’s in the present tense.
It’s already happening. That’s what an affirmation does. We frame our care practises in the general terms identified by one scholar, Vasudha Dalmia, in relation to bovines.
More specifically, we have instituted a certification system. And I go on to explain this for monitoring to ensure that all institutions and individuals who care for cows and wish to have the monitoring agency’s seal of approval must follow minimum standards summarised in the five basic rules of the care system for lifelong care of animals. And that’s in another section of the book.
That’s a bit earlier. Okay. Now, yeah, I can elaborate on that.
Just generally, I’ll say I encountered cases in India where there’s a goshala, and the people who are taking care of the goshala advertise themselves as champions of cow care. Hmm. And then you go and you look at their cows, and you see these cows are not being taken care of properly.
They’re not being fed enough. Or, you know, or they’re not being given any freedom to move around. Some of them are so tied up, so tightly tied.
I saw one case in our own institution. I was shocked. In one ISKCON institution in India, I won’t mention where, I was shocked to see bulls tied so tightly by their nose, they could hardly move.
That’s not cow care. I don’t know what it is. So I’m saying let there be a system of certification that shows that they’re actually being cared for nicely.
Then the second is cow care and fairness. And here I say that this covers keeping strict conditions of respectful and caring treatment. So this means especially giving sufficient milk to the calves of the cow.
It means preferably milking the cows by hand. I say preferably because it’s not absolutely the case. I think it can be argued that machine milking is not necessarily a bad thing, but that’s another subject.
And then working of oxen, that this be done properly, not that they’re overworked and so on. It also means dealing properly with those who are caring for the cows. Again, it’s about fairness.
Then the third principle is cow care and liberty. And here I say those who champion cow care should recognise the principle of liberty, that everyone is free to determine the diet of their choice. In other words, we cannot make it a law that someone cannot eat meat.
It has to be a matter of choice. If you want to be a member of certain communities within a country where eating meat is forbidden, that’s fine. That would be also a choice.
You choose to live in this particular community. I would argue that we cannot make it a law to forbid eating meat or a particular kind of meat as a national law. First of all, it will become like prohibition was in America in the 1920s.
It’ll just, everyone’s going to break the law. Yes, that’s true. Then the fourth principle is cow care and loyalty.
And here I speak about loyalty of those who care for cows to particular communities in which they live. Dharma-based cow care culture is such that these loyalties are not energised by antagonism against other nations or communities. In other words, it’s not that we care for cows, and therefore Muslims are our enemies.
Okay, so here, I’m just amazed at what you’re doing, Maharaj. Sorry, let me stop the screen share. So you are basically providing a roadmap out of the politicalization of the issue.
Yeah, that’s the idea. That’s beautiful. So I think the liberty principle, if we couple the liberty principle with adequate education and education in a broader philosophical sense, and if people see that cow care is not just some like a religious idiosyncrasy or mere edict, then a lot of people will choose.
And in some ways, I had a friend who is now a devotee, but before being a devotee, he was a part of some beef-eating festivals. Oh. And he told me that he didn’t even like beef.
He said it was just a part of their defiance. You tell me to do this. I’m going to do the opposite of that.
Yeah. And he was never told why to care for cows. It is just like a religious things are religion, we have to do it.
Right. Yes, Maharaj. So I’ll just briefly mention two more, the two final principles which Haidt identifies as foundational to political life.
The fifth one is authority. So cow care and authority. Authority in relation to cow care is specifically located first and foremost in persons with extensive experience in all aspects of cow care, including cow-based organic agriculture.
Now, here I’m indirectly disqualifying myself because I don’t have experience taking care of cows. But we have, you know, within our own society, many wonderful devotees who have lots of experience with cows. They are authorities on the subject of cow care.
We can learn from them. But I also want to say, and I elaborate here, I believe it’s in this section about education, that education on cow care can be disseminated. And I think this is where India as a nation could learn something that if you want to promote cow protection, then why not institute programmes for educating people how to take care of cows? And this is something I have to express appreciation of Menaka Gandhi about.
She compiled a quite large book, a manual on how to take care of cows. She brought together writings from many different sources, very practical matters. Her book is three or four hundred pages long with lots of illustrations.
But she said herself, you know, this is in English, and who in India is going to read this? And I said, well, can’t you get it translated into Indian languages? And she kind of threw up her hands and said, I have no resources to do that. So why isn’t the Indian government? Why aren’t the state governments? And it’s the state governments who can make laws against the slaughter of cows. Why aren’t those same state governments not making, facilitating that her book gets translated and distributed throughout their states? So this is so important because even good hearted people want to take care of cows.
They may see it as economically unviable or they may see it as practically not possible. So the education is provided. Yeah.
And finally, the last one is cow care and sanctity. Those who care for cows. Regard them as bearers of sanctity and that they are unique in their ways of creaturely being in the world such that humans can care for them.
For many Hindus, cows are special because they’re regarded as especially dear to the supreme divinity, Krishna. Therefore, they’re practised to give cows special attention. Such special attention is not at the cost of other creatures.
And I mentioned Krishna has a pet buffalo. Rather, again, and this comes back to Gandhi’s comment. Gandhi says we can realise our duty toward the animal world and discharge it by wisely pursuing our dharma of service to the cow.
Notice he says service to the cow at the root of cow protection is the realisation of our dharma towards the sub human species. Hmm. So a lot of people in India who show a lot of dedication to cow protection base their arguments largely on this last principle of sanctity.
They say cows are sacred, cows are our mother and cows are protected in Shastra and so on. That’s fine. But what about the other five principles? If we see sanctity as one principle of moral foundation of political life and ignore the other five, there will continue to be antagonism, there will continue to be this tension, this fighting that goes on in the name of cow protection or against cow protection.
That’s amazing. So this is where I think the philosophical understanding combined with some contemporary insights can make the traditions wisdom relevant for people without polarisation, Maharaj. It’s wonderful.
I’m just trying to open up the discussion with this book on a bit deeper level than it’s usually discussed. And then it’s there for others to take it and develop it. Something which I don’t do in this book is really get into the economics of cow care.
I discuss it in a rather superficial way. But it’s a big challenge. And it will be different in different places.
It’ll be a different kind of challenge in India than it will be in Europe. But there are major challenges on the economic side of it. And what I want to say is let’s start with the basics.
Let’s think deeply on the side of ethics. And if we get our ethics right and understand this is the right thing to do, then we can start thinking about discussing, analysing, researching, experimenting, investigating. How do we do it? Okay.
Yes. It’s in one sense. It’s once we have a Sambandar, then we can have Abhijaya.
Once we have that conviction of something is to be done, then how to go about doing it? Exactly. Exactly. Maharaj, this has been amazing.
I think a lot of devotees will be inspired by the way you are presented. Would you like to speak some concluding words or should I try to summarise and then you can conclude? If you want to. Well, you go ahead and summarise your expert’s summarization talent.
I don’t know about that. I’ll try today. So we discussed today, you could say, the topic of the universal principles of cow care and how they can be applied today.
That was a broad topic which emerged eventually. So you started about how you got the invitation to write this book and your being as a practitioner was in one sense not a disqualification, but a qualification. And then you decide to engage in the broader issues.
How the issue has become politicalised starting from the 1880s with the Hindus and Muslims trying to manoeuvre for political space. At that time cow became both a unifying symbol for Hindus. At the same time, like it became a polarising symbol for others in the broader world.
So then from that political context of how it’s become polarising, we went back to how it could be seen as universal. So we went to the tradition and how cow care will instil values by which we will care for the entire natural world. The triangle with divinity at the top and humanity and nature as below and in between is yajna.
So yajna is meant to satisfy divinity and yajna involves cows, milk made into ghee and yajna also involves the priests who perform it, the Brahmins. So in that sense, sacrifice brings all the three together. And then when sacrifices are performed that yajna is performed, then you prefer the word yajna to sacrifice.
And then nature provides prosperity to us. So this harmony between the natural human and divine worlds, that is what is done through yajna and central to yajna is cows. And then we discussed also about how this applies, this unifying aspect can be seen in terms of dharma, yoga and bhakti also.
So dharma, we went to quite an elaborate discussion of dharma as settled duty, dharma as ethical deliberation, dharma as virtues. And then you brought in dialogue with the contemporary ethics traditions or schools of thought and ethics. So deontology, virtue ethics, utilitarianism.
So the idea is that within the Vedic context, quoting from Manusmriti also about killing animals or not killing animals, that there is a dharmic foundation to the protection of cows and animals in general. And yoga also started the ahimsa, which has a very broad scope, but definitely includes not killing animals. And Eshwar Pandithan also has the idea of not killing animals because everybody is a child of Eshwar.
But bhakti takes it further that all living beings are, that Eshwar is present in all living beings. And that vision, that understanding as well as that realisation can come through bhakti. And bhakti involves that not just the right leads to the good, but the right is the good.
And then I think we came to the how we need to not just talk about it, but also demonstrate it. And you are also doing that through as the minister for cow care and agriculture in Europe to try to establish some systems. And then you have given guidelines, those six values or six affirmations based on the six principles, which Jonathan has talked about.
So, cow care and loyalty, so cow care and care in general. So, you can have standards for authorisation. So, this broadly by the six affirmations, you’re both universalising cow care as well as taking, showing a pathway out of any political bracketing that might happen.
So, if only one or two values are emphasised among the six, then political polarisation may happen. But if the six values are embraced properly, then cow care can actually lead to a more harmonious existence. We can be more conscious of animal ethics and that can be the contribution of the Vedic tradition to this contemporary field of animal ethics.
Any concluding words, Maharaj? I’m always amazed at your summaries. So, right there. Yes, maybe one or two very brief sort of takeaways.
I think our audience is likely to be mainly practitioners of bhakti yoga, Vaishnavas. But also for a wider audience, I want to encourage everyone to think carefully how one might change one’s own diet in such a way that this practise of cow care can be advanced. Now, this kind of goes back into a controversial thing amongst Vaishnavas.
But just briefly, it is argued that it’s all right to offer milk from non-protected cows to Krishna. Because, although it’s unfortunate that those cows will be slaughtered, they will be eternally benefited because their milk has been offered to Krishna. Well, maybe someone wants to argue that.
I don’t want to argue against it, but I want to ask this question. Which would you prefer? Would you prefer to offer milk to Krishna, which has come from protected cows? And therefore, you know that that milk has been produced by cows who are peaceful, because they know that they’re not going to be slaughtered. Or would you say, well, it’s really no difference to me.
Milk is milk. And for Krishna, milk is the same also. I’ll give either milk to my children.
Ultimately, milk is milk. Or would you prefer milk from protected cows? I think most, if not all, practising Vaishnavas would say, well, of course, I would prefer to give milk from protected cows. So if that’s the answer, then I would say, why not do something to make that possible? Which leads to my second point.
And that is, we all suffer in this world. We all have so many problems. And sometimes life is so difficult, we ask ourselves, how can I overcome this trouble? And sometimes we may go to a senior Vaishnava to ask advice.
And sometimes younger devotees, other devotees, come to me as an older devotee with that question. Oh, I have this problem. I have that problem.
Everything is going wrong. What should I do? Can you help me? And I have a simple answer for that, which I found to be very effective. My answer is, serve cows.
Really? Okay. Devotees are taken aback. Serve cows? I don’t have any cows.
How am I supposed to serve cows? That’s a detail. Well, find some way to serve cows. It may be financial service by supporting cow protection.
It may be by promoting cow protection on your social media. It turns out there’s so many ways you can serve cows. And what I found is that those who take my advice come back to me after some time and say, wow, this really works.
I feel so much better. Amazing. Okay.
It’s like a mystical power of cow care, you could say. Yes. So I think if more people would understand that cows, by taking care of cows, we’re actually benefiting ourselves in a very substantial way.
I think we would see some major changes. And then we could start seeing the Christian consciousness movement as one in which it’s known, it becomes one of our trademarks. Oh, those are the people who protect cows.
And from that point, people will start to ask, so what is it about this? Why is it you’re doing? And so on. And then that starts having a wider effect throughout society. Okay.
But it starts with us asking ourselves, what am I doing? This is quite actionable for everyone in one sense. What am I offering to Krishna? Yes, Maharaj. Thank you for sharing this.
I think this is something which we all can apply at our own levels. Thank you. Thank you for this opportunity.
Thank you, Maharaj. Look forward to seeing you again in the future soon. Likewise.
Hare Krishna.