What is the Vedic perspective on organ donation?

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That is the Vedic perspective. Thank you. So, question, can devotees donate organs when they are going to leave their bodies? What is the Vedic perspective on organ donation? Answer, the specific mechanisms and occasions in which organ donation is done do not have any exact parallels in the Vedic scriptures.
There are occasions when a person while dying symbolically offers the body to others and as in the case of elephants head being affixed on to the head of Ganapati, where it is more of an organ that is transplanted. Whereas in the case of Dadichi, when his body is used to make a bajra, it is not so much of a same organ continuing on. So, the same organ continuing on is actually more in terms of say Ganesh or we have Daksha getting the head of an animal also.
Now, these we could say more are cases of organ transplant. But in organ transplant, normally, there are different kinds of organ transplant that happen nowadays. For example, people can donate a kidney without while the donor lives on and the receiver also lives on.
But when you talk about organ donation specifically, we are talking about situation when a person voluntarily as an act of choice decides to allow the giving of some organs so that the other person’s deficient organs can be compensated for. So, we have examples of a person willing to give up his entire body so that the body can be processed to make something else, that is Dadichi. And we have examples of somebody like animal being killed to take a bodily organ so that the body organ can be replaced.
So, that bodily organ can be used by somebody else. But we do not have an example specifically of somebody giving up a body and with the permission of the sanction that a particular bodily organ of mine can be used as it is in another body, transposed onto another body. So, first point is there is no clear specific precedent of this in the direct Vedic scriptures.
Now, in Ayurveda as far as we go there are instances of at the very least there are Sushruta Samhita contains a lot of instruments examples of surgery and the most relevant in this case would be nose surgery where if a person’s nose has been cut off in a battle or on because of some other thing then there are techniques mentioned for how the nose can be transposed from even a dead body. So, that is the nearest that we come to but that is from Ayurveda that is not directly from the Vedic scriptures. But it is we could say in the broad ambit of Vedic scriptures and so it could be accepted as a precedent for the transplant of organ transplant again there is no question there’s no specific reference in any of the Niti Shastras because Niti Shastra and Artha Shastra deals with law and inheritance and things like that.
So, generally donating one’s organs to somebody else is a matter of inheritance and in the legal books the there is no such mention that is found again in Ayurveda it is primarily from the point of how to do it how to replace the nose but it is not so much from the perspective of whether the person before dying is making a will to give a nose or not that is not that perspective is not considered at all. So, that’s why I say that exactly we do not have this precedent. So, now with respect to whether so because there is no explicit precedent we can have a wide variety of positions based on Shastra and different and within ISKCON also there are different devotees who have different positions.
One position is that as devotees we do not want to interfere with the natural core with the course of nature. So, let nature take its own course and if the body has been destroyed then let the body be destroyed completely and some devotees also go and say that you know the soul has an attachment to the body and the soul is attached to a particular part of the body say the eyes or the no or the whichever part is to transplanted then that particular organ being held on to the body being preserved may create some further attachment which will prevent the soul from moving onwards in this journey. But this is a little bit of a extreme position because in one sense what how do we really define what comprises interference with nature because in the past before we had cardiopulmonary resuscitation when the heart would stop a person would die.
So, now is are we going to consider CPR to be artificial to be interference with nature. It is a standard process and we do for everyone now and so what comprises interference with nature is something which cannot be very clearly decided and so that need not be considered as a ironclad ironclad ironclad injunction for taking a particular position. But if some devotees based on these considerations of not wanting to interfere with nature decide not to donate organs that is a acceptable position.
At the same time being sensitive to contemporary concerns has always been an integral part of the Vedic tradition. That is why we see Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu himself although he had Haridas Thakur made as Namacharya but still he never asked Haridas Thakur to initiate any disciples nor did he although he was a Sanyasi who took Sanyas from Mayavad Sampradaya still Chaitanya Mahaprabhu did not ever take Prasad from the house of anyone who was not a Brahmana by birth. Chaitanya Mahaprabhu followed his injunction to such an extreme degree that when he was living in Varanasi he had two associates Tapan Mishra and Chandrasekhar Acharya.
Tapan Mishra was a Brahmana, Chandrasekhar Acharya was not a Brahmana. Chaitanya Mahaprabhu wanted to give his association to both of them so he says to stay in the association of Chandrasekhar Acharya’s house stay in the house of Chandrasekhar Acharya and every day go for Prasad to the house of Tapan Mishra and that’s how he avoided criticism of his behavior by the Mayavadis who were quite dominant in Varanasi and it was not just in Varanasi this was his usual standard of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu’s behavior that he would not take Prasad which was not cooked by a Brahmana. So in that sense similarly Bhaktasaheb Thakur he gave Brahman Diksha to even those who were not born in Brahmana families but still in Mayapur when he built the temple he had only those born in Brahmana families become Pujaris for the deities not non-Brahmanas.
So there is within the Vedic tradition something called as a deference to public opinion. So even from the point of view of deference to public opinion if there is a non-essential part of scripture or something which is not a central part of scripture which can be contextually presented appropriately that adjustment can be done. So if some devotees feel that that is what is currently seen as a position of humanity and concern and basic human compassion and they would like to go along with that that should not be considered as a compromise because first of all from the point of view of deference to deference to social convention prevailing social convention that consideration itself is good enough beyond that also from the point of view of compassion which can be expressed at multiple levels.
So just as compassion we have examples of Shibi who was ready to give up his bodily parts directly while he was alive and even when it was going to cause him great pain. So for a bird that is for non-human what to speak of a human. So similarly the compassion if somebody wants to express by donating an organ that and that is the intention behind it that we should not discourage that from the perspective of Shastra.
Now certainly charity can be in different modes and if somebody is a devotee and the devotee needs organ to continue to live on and certainly giving that kind of charity is a service to Vaishnava but as an organization’s position is concerned if we try to say that you know organ donation should be done only for devotees and not for others it seems shamelessly self-serving. So that is not a wise position either from the scriptural point of view or from the perspective of social perception and certainly there is charity in the mode of goodness, passion, ignorance. So devotees may want to consider that if I am giving my eyes to someone what is that person going to do with those eyes.
So rather than giving it into a devotee bank into a bank donating the organs to a particular bank where it may be used by anyone generally in this sort of organ banks there is a list of numbers which comes along and different patients who may need are they registered together and based on whoever’s number comes up and that the all other medical factors combined together that person will take that organ. So some devotees may ball chat the idea of giving their organs to someone whom they don’t know at all and if they don’t want to do that and if they want to give it to a particular person in a particular situation and that is their desire that can also be appreciated. In the Bhaktivanta hospital which we have in Mumbai there is an extensive practice which is considered which is a mainstream practice in medicine also of using the skin of dead people for helping in surgeries later on.
So skin preservation is a standard medical practice. I won’t go into technicalities here but there are some ways in which after a person has died the skin can be preserved and that preservation is quite widely practiced in Bhaktivanta hospital. When the devotee doctors here consulted senior Vaishnavas the senior Vaishnavas different Vaishnavas basically gave different positions on it and it was decided that the GBC should form a subcommittee on which would discuss this and which would come up with a position on this but not much has been done about it and Bhaktivanta hospital based on pragmatic considerations decided to move on with this.
So that way there if somebody so this is an example of skin grafting or skin donation whatever you want to call it which is which falls in the category of something being done indiscriminately that means that it is done for whoever is over there and from the bank whoever comes along and his number is there that person will take it. So same applies to blood donation also devotees want to donate their blood they can donate their blood. So broadly speaking because there is no Shastric there is no exact precedent from Shastra a wide variety of positions are possible ranging from non-interference with nature which will lead to not wanting to participate in this at all to participation based either on sensitivity to social deference to social convention or expression of compassion or expression of selective compassion to specific people based on time, place, circumstance.
So this can be left this can be an issue which can be left to the discretion of individual devotees with an awareness of the broad principles just like Shri Prabhupada in general with respect to health issues was not very fuzzy about things. He personally took Ayurvedic medicine but when the situation took a turn for the worse in London he did a allopathic surgery also and he never insisted that his disciples should always take Ayurvedic treatment only. So there are there are within the devotional perspective there are ranges within which things can be judged or things can be decided and this falls in the that zone where just as Ayurveda whether a devotee should use Ayurveda as a form of treatment or not that is up to individual discretion and some devotees may some devotees may not or for that matter if you want to go a little stretch the extreme there are many which fall in this category.
We could have astrochastra we could have astrology these are not at all necessary for a devotee to practice but if a devotee wants to practice there is nothing to stop a devotee from practicing it at all. So rather than mandating a particular position we can give a broad analysis of the scriptural position of the scriptural understanding of the issue and let individual devotees based on their individual discretion in consultation with their specific spiritual guides who know their time and place circumstance take a decision accordingly. Thank you.