On Veganism: Vedas and milk

The following is an excerpt from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.

Question: Acharya Ji, there are people who quote the Vedas and say “A Hindu is a good Hindu only if he drinks milk from the mother cow.” What is your take on that?

Acharya Prashant (AP): See if you have named the Vedas, what is the central teaching of all the Vedic literature?

If you want to really know what the Vedic teaching is, you will have to go to the Upanishads.

The Upanishads are called the “Vedanta”, which means the summit or the climax of Veda.

And they go into the reality of man.

What is the reality of man?

The Upanishads are very forthright and unequivocal about it. They say, “Man is the Truth itself (Aham Brahmasmi).” Nothing else except the Truth. You are the ultimate finality. You are the Total.

Now, if this is the position that the Vedic literature takes, then one cannot operate from a point of incompleteness, hollowness, or desirousness.

A lot of what we do, we do just in order to gain fulfillment. We say that the purpose of human life is progress, don’t we? And we access a human being according to how much he has been able to progress and contribute to progress.

What is progress for us?

Knowing more; collecting more.

I’m not trying to unnecessarily be simplistic. Please go into it.

When you know more, when you collect more, is it something that happens only on the outside or does it also affect your self-worth? When you know more, your self-worth rises; when you collect more, again your self-worth rises.

The Upanishads say, that your self-worth, that which you are, is any way infinite, you are anyway total.

Now, go out and play. You are anyway perfect and complete. Now, do whatever you want to do.

But do it from a point of perfection. Do it from a point of completion.

Do not do in order to gain something. Do not do in order to rise.

Act as if you are already there, as if you are already complete.

That is what Vedas are…