Barkha Dutt: We live in times when faith and spirituality have become very inflammable
Sadhguru: Don’t put them in the same basket.
Barkha Dutt: Okay, let’s talk about faith first.
Sadhguru: Mhmm Barkha Dutt: We live in times when faith for
certain has become a very inflammable, easily politicized conversation.
If faith should have been personal today, it’s not.
Today you actually have decisions taken in the name of somebody’s faith being injured.
So you mentioned food right now, I read somewhere that you said there’s nothing
religious about the act of food, just eat what you like.
Sadhguru: No, no, no, I didn’t say that.
Barkha Dutt: Eat what’s good for you?
Sadhguru: I said eat what’s good for you.
Barkha Dutt: Okay, eat what’s good for you.
Sadhguru: It’s a very different thing (Laughs).
Barkha Dutt: I correct myself (Sadhguru laughs) – eat what’s good for you.
But today we have a highly politicized conversation around banning beef
in the name of faith.
Sadhguru: It’s definitely not good for you to eat it.
Barkha Dutt: Beef or any meat?
Sadhguru: I’ll come to that.
Finish it, finish the question.
Barkha Dutt: Okay, okay.
So I’m offering that as one example of how I see a politicized conversation taking
place around faith.
How do you reconcile the faith of a large number of people
with questions of individual liberty?
I know I have read that you like books written by Salman Rushdie.
We were the first country to ban him again in the name of faith.
How do we reconcile faith with individual liberty?
Sadhguru: See, it’s always been said “faith moves mountains.”
Yes, but it freezes your mind.
But the greatest crime you can do on this planet is to move a mountain.
You should not move a mountain, it should be where it is,
it has not just dropped from somewhere, it’s grown because of various forces functioning
in a particular way, phenomenal activity has happened to build
a mountain.
You should never move a mountain but (Laughs) people with frozen minds always
want to move a mountain, okay?
Having said that, when we say faith, it’s an import for this
culture.
We have never had faith in this culture.
You must look back little beyond thousand years
since we’ve been under occupation.
Here, we have been told always, “Your life is your karma.”
Karma means action.
Whose action?
Your action.
So what we are saying is your life is entirely your making.
There is no someone sitting up there and managing this for you.
This is entirely yours but for every action that you perform
whether physical, mental, emotional, energy-wise -
whatever kind of action you perform, there is bound to be a consequence.
If you’re ready for the consequence, do whatever.
If you’re going to cry about the consequence, control the action right now.
Based on this Now you came to food,
see the food consumption has been looked at very carefully in this country.
If you just bring this back, the world will be healthy, do you understand?
Here, we have identified different type of people,
what they should eat.
If you’re doing menial jobs, how you should eat.
If you’re doing trading, how you should eat.
If you’re into spiritual process, how you should eat.
If you’re into education, how you should eat.
Why this is is each person needs a different type of building of the body.
You want to run hundred meters next to Mr. Bolt,
what kind of food you should eat.
You just want to work in Delhi, what kind of food you should eat.
You want to think in a certain way, what kind of food you’d… you should eat.
For all these, we have very clear prescriptions.
Now when it comes to food, what it means is,
we are taking another life, whatever that is
it may be plant life, animal life, whatever you’re taking another life, ingesting it
and you have to make it your life – that’s the whole thing.
What is your life, what is that life,
if you look at it, all life on this planet is coming from the
earth.
This body (Gestures) is also the same soil, this (Gestures) is also same soil,
if there is a (an?) earthworm, that is also same soil
but see how it has become, how this (Gestures) has become,
how that (Gestures) has become.
If I give you…
You like a mango or a banana?
Barkha Dutt: Mango.
Sadhguru: Mango.
I know, (Laughs) you’re ruling the state right now (Referring
to the Aam Aadmi party (translates as The Common Man party),
Now, if you eat a mango, this mango becomes a woman in you.
If I eat a mango, the same mango becomes a man in me.
If a cow eats a mango, the same mango becomes a cow in the cow.
Why is this happening?
There is a certain information or software in you
whatever you eat it transforms it into a woman.
If I eat, it transforms into a man.
If a cow eats, that becomes a cow.
So every life is happening the way it is happening because of a certain dimension of information
or in modern terminology, let’s call it software.
There is a certain software, which is an arrangement of information.
Now, the idea is to eat as simple a software as possible.
If you eat that kind of life, which is a very simple software,
your ability to override that software and make it entirely a part of you is very good.
As that software gets complex, more and more complex,
your ability to integrate it goes down.
So, especially if it’s a creature which has some sense of thought and emotion,
if it has emotion, then you should not eat it.
This is the understanding.
An animal, which has any emotion, displays certain emotions
especially if it displays emotion which is near to human emotion,
you should not eat it because it will not integrate itself.
That animal nature will start manifesting itself.
Or in other words, in India, today maybe in cities people do not know,
you see in the villages, people have very intimate relationship with
a cow.
They have drunk the milk of that cow, their children are drinking the milk of that
cow, there is a very deep relationship.
If you do not know this, cow is one creature,
if something happens to you and you are in some kind of grief or misery,
you don’t have to be near the cow, wherever the cow is in your house, it will
it’ll start shedding tears for you.
You know, I’ve seen this with my eyes, I couldn’t believe –
when somebody is dead in the house it… what does a cow know, it is somewhere,
simply tears flowing.
So when it’s… has such deep emotions, if you kill it, it’s like killing a human
being, it’s murder
or it’s cannibalism.
So because of that this is not a faith thing,
this is not a religious thing, we thought this is a fundamental sense.
Why When we are hungry, why can’t I cut you
up and eat you?
What’s wrong (Laughter)?
What’s wrong, I’m asking?
Barkha Dutt: But what you’re saying should be about many more animals than just the cow.
Sadhguru: Yes, yes of course.
Barkha Dutt: And when it becomes about only the cow,
then there is a… there is certainly a perception Sadhguru: I…
It is not Barkha Dutt: …that it is a political decision
or a religious decision.
Sadhguru: No, no, I am not talking about the whatever the laws that are happ
Barkha Dutt: This is not about people getting up and saying,
“It’s cruel to be… to be a meat-eater.”
That would be a different argument.
Sadhguru: Hmm, I am not even talking about cruelty.
Even cutting a plant is cruel, in my experience but you have to do it.
But if you are conscious of it, you will do it to the minimum possible extent,
not do it wantonly, that’s the whole thing.
Now, about this political ban about cow slaughter or whatever,
this has many things.
One thing is there is a sensitivity, once you drink milk from the cow,
she is like your mother.
Killing your mother and eating her up is something people cannot digest in this country.
Still eighty percent of the people belong to that category
and they’re… they’re hugely there’s a huge emotion,
such a (an?) emotion, which because they’ve always been made to be docile in
a certain way, they have not violently … reacted to it
but in some places it has happened, in villages and other places.
There is already a beef ban in many villages just by norm,
not by any law, that you don’t bring these kind of thin…
things into the village.
I am not saying you must ban it or not ban it.
I am saying the sensitivities of your population, you… without considering, you can’t go
do this blatantly.
Because it is growing, it’s becoming a growing business;
India is becoming a major exporter of beef, that’s not right.
Even if somebody ate something, it is up to them,
it’s their personal taste, whatever but now you’re promoting it and you’re
making it grow.
There is serious concern but our people don’t express it,
our people don’t go out on the street and not going to kill anybody because they
killed a cow.
So ban is not what is needed, more education was needed rather than banning.