What is the difference between humans and animals?
Answer Podcast
Transcript
This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
thank you what is the difference between humans and animals the difference is in terms of the quality of questions that we can ask all living beings ask questions related with bodily maintenance how to eat where to rest and sleep how to find a partner for mating and how to protect oneself now we human beings can ask questions beyond these we can ask why do i exist where did i come from where will i go after death so this question of origin value and purpose origin where did i come from value what is it that is important yes eating when i’m hungry eating is important but what more what next what is it that truly counts in life what is really valuable and that leads to the question what is the ultimate purpose of living all living beings struggle for existence darwin postulated the theory of the survival of the fittest the unfortunate reality however is that even the fittest don’t survive so why is it that we long to live and live forever and we are in an environment where we just can’t live forever if we were simply products of material nature which is there around us in material nature we don’t see anything that lasts forever if our longing for life and life lasting was a product of our circumstance then we would never get such a long if i have never ever heard of a pizza in my whole life how can i get a desire for a pizza so when there is nothing that is eternal around me why do i have a desire to live forever that desire comes from my core which does not belong to the world around me and asking about that core is the unique privilege of human beings so the vedanta sutra which is one of the most important books in the canon of books available in the ancient indian wisdom tradition this begins with the question brahman refers to spiritual reality now inquire about life’s spiritual dimension so the capacity to perceive our spiritual essence and then the capacity thereafter to pursue the spiritual realization of our innermost core that capacity can take us to eternal life and the potential to attain the eternal that is what differentiates humans from animals there are many other differences now we may say animals haven’t developed science and technology the way we have animals haven’t built magnificent buildings or device languages yes all these differences are there but they are differences in form they are not differences in purpose we may devise languages we may devise technology we may build big houses but if we don’t direct our inquiry in a spiritual direction then all these things science art architecture we will use it all to come back to the same drives that drive animals eating sleeping meeting defending so we may change the form of what we do and in many ways the forms of what we do are dramatically different from what animals do but without a spiritual orientation to our life we won’t be changing the purpose so human life is meant to have a qualitatively higher purpose and that purpose is to understand our spiritual eternal nature and to realize and relish that spiritual nature thank you