Why waste milk on God’s image when his children are starving? (PK answered 20)
From Manish P
Answer Podcast:
Transcript
This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Thank you. Hare Krishna. Question, isn’t it wasteful to pour milk on an image of God while God’s children are starving outside the temple as beggars? Answer, isn’t it wasteful to spend 250 rupees for one show of PK outside the movie theater, people are starving.
Now, you could just avoid watching the movie and 250 rupees could give a full meal for a family of 4-5 people. Isn’t it? Isn’t it wasteful that we spend over 5 million, Bollywood is over a 5 billion dollar industry. IPL is 20 over cricket matches.
The amount of money that India spends on IPL that can feed all the hungry people of India. So, if we really want to compare, then why do we have to compare the money spent on God with the money that could be used to alleviate poverty. This is simply emotional manipulation meant to take people away from religion.
According to UNESCO statistics, the amount of money that is required to feed all the hungry children all over the world, that is less than the amount of money that the European Union and America spends just on perfumes. Now, on cosmetics, perfume is just one cosmetic and so much money is spent on this. So, why don’t we check, ask questions about that? Now, somebody may say that actually, India is a democratic country, the world is a democracy.
If people want to spend money on IPL, on movies, on perfume, they have a right to do that. Well, then the question comes, then if people, if it’s a democratic country and if some people want to spend money on God, who are we to stop them? Or is it that democracy means that everybody except religious people have the right to money, right to spend the money whichever way they want? This is clearly double standards. This is emotional manipulation.
Emotional manipulation means presenting facts in such a way that people’s emotions get forcibly directed in a particular way so that we can make them do the things which we want them to do. Whether that is the reality or not, that doesn’t matter. So, that is emotional manipulation.
That is what is being done over here. Now, going further, does it really have to be this or that? There are people who pour milk on the Shiva Linga or they pour milk in the abhishek to the deities. But those same people and those same temples, quite often also, many of the temples all over the world have charitable programs where they provide food.
In the Tirupati temple, anybody who comes in the vicinity of the temple, food is provided. Same in Udupi. ISKCON itself runs the world’s largest vegetarian food relief program and millions and millions of people are fed food by that.
So, even if we want to say that religion is not, whether if we want to talk about religion’s contribution to social welfare, then we need to give a balanced picture. Yes, there are rituals in which it may seem like milk is wasted. But what is actually being done? The same temples are providing food also to so many people.
Now, when we talk about milk getting poured on the Shiva Linga, we consider that as a wastage. But when people want to celebrate and celebrate any victory or any success, then they blow champagne. And what happens in champagne? So much of champagne just blows off and it goes and sprinkles all around.
That gets wasted. Champagne is expensive. Now, why do we say, oh, why are you wasting that champagne? First of all, drinking alcohol itself is injurious for health.
And even that which is so expensive and so injurious, even that we are wasting. And when that is getting wasted, that is considered to be a very fashionable thing to do. It’s just a matter of cultural portrayal.
You know, just pouring milk on Shiva Linga or on a deity is considered to be wasteful. And just letting champagne get sprinkled away and just guzzed away, that is considered special, that is considered cool, that is considered fashionable. So, why these double standards again? So, now, what is the purpose of religion ultimately? It is to take people close to God and to help them to become godly.
All over the world, there are so many charitable initiatives which are run by people who have become connected with God. So, it is not that religion is simply, religious rituals are wasting human resources. Actually, they are making people more godly, more compassionate.
And so many charitable initiatives are run by religious people. Those are not highlighted in media, but only such small, isolated, wasteful rituals are highlighted. Further, if we want to, if you’re really concerned about the starving people outside, then let us ask this question, what is causing starvation? Even if we don’t pour the milk on the deity and we go out and give that milk to the hungry beggars, is that going to remove hunger permanently for them? To look at the social system, the socio-economic system that has caused the hunger, and that socio-economic system is fueled by greed.
When people become religious, they give up wasteful indulgences. Many times, when people come closer to God, they give up eating meat and they give up drinking. Now, so much of the land all over the world is being wasted, underused for sugarcane.
And sugarcane is ultimately basically used for fermentation so that alcohol can be made in its various ways. So, if all that land which is being wasted, alcohol is definitely not a necessity. So, it’s a luxury and it’s a harmful luxury for most people.
So, if all that land could be used for making grains, then that would be a much more substantial solution to the problem of hunger and starvation than would be stopping the few liters of milk that is going down in the Shiva Linga or any other temple, Abhishek. Now, further, if you want to see alcohol, that itself takes up so much land which could be used for crops. But further, if you look at meat, now when we see meat, for humans to eat meat is a hugely ecologically inefficient diet.
Why? Because this much amount of grains, there are scientific statistics for this, I am simply explaining in a very simple term, this much amount of grains, when it is eaten by any animal, which is going to be later butchered for food, then most of that, this much amount of grains, that just goes out as the excreta of the animal, goes inside the body and comes out of the body. And from this much amount of grain, only say this much amount of flesh comes out. And then when that flesh is eaten, that gives very little satisfaction.
People are doing much more flesh. So, on an average, statistic after statistics, there’s no doubt about these statistics that it has proven that the amount of land that is required to feed one non-vegetarian, that can feed on an average 10 vegetarians, depending on what kind of non-vegetarian food is being cooked and what kind of vegetarian food is cooked. So, if people just shifted over to vegetarianism, then again, we would have 10 times as much land resources as we have presently.
And again, the starvation problem could be solved. So, that way, again, by going closer to God, by doing rituals which help us to experience God and to experience higher happiness and relationship with God, we can actually purify ourselves of undesirable indulgences and that such as alcoholism or wheat eating and that will release land resources which will solve the hunger problem in a much more substantial way. Now, further if we see that from the point of view of religious rituals, the standard generally is that when the deity’s abhishek is done, then what is offered to the deity in abhishek, that is not wasted away, that is taken as prasad.
So, yes, if a large quantity of milk is going away, the temples can make the arrangements in such a way that instead of wasting the milk, that milk can be taken and can be offered as prasad, as the remnants of mercy and that can be distributed among people. So, the temple can also make that arrangement, especially in situations where there is a lot of poverty, certainly the wastage of the milk can be avoided. And in many temples, whenever there is abhishek that is done, the abhishek is actually after the remnants of the abhishek are distributed reverentially among people as prasad.
So, yes, that can also be a corrective measure that can be taken. But the important point is to highlight just one thing like this is simply emotional manipulation and we shouldn’t be misled by such emotional manipulation. Thank you.