Posted on: 18 Jan 2011
Human life is very important because human being alone can understand the spiritual knowledge and can become a devotee of God. Therefore, you must always save the life of a human being by giving food, clothing and shelter. You must always stop the starvation-death of a human being, be it theist or atheist. You must save the life of even an atheist because even the atheist may be converted into theist if the life is saved. After saving the life of the starving human being, you must concentrate on improving the amenities of poor people so that a peaceful life is very much essential to concentrate on God. The rich is becoming richer and poor is becoming poorer in the present day. This will disturb the social balance and will lead to the human explosion in the society. When the balance of the society is disturbed, nivrutti finds no place. Therefore, resist all the wastages that take place in the rituals. Do not burn the ghee in the name of performing ‘homa’. Ghee is most valuable food material. The actual ‘homa’ is to put ghee in the burning fire of hunger of a poor man. The fire of hunger is called as ‘Vaishvanara’ as said in the Gita. Similarly, don’t burn the oil in the name of ‘Deepaaraadhanam’ before the statue or photo of God. The purpose of the light is only to remove the darkness in the olden days. In the day time, the light is not necessary. Even in the night, when the light is present supplied from the electric bulb, the oil lamp is not necessary. You need not burn the perfumes also, when they are not required for you.
Absolutely there is no necessity of burning anything for God. You are only worshipping a statue or photo, which is an inert representative model of God. Similarly, there is no need of burning ‘dhuni’ in the temples of Sai Baba. He lit ‘dhuni’ in the old mosque to repel the poisonous insects, serpents, etc. Such need is not present today in the temples. Be it a temple or church or mosque, you must control the burning and other wastages of materials leading to the environmental pollution, which will upset the ecological balance resulting in several global problems. You will be considered as a demon and not a devotee by God and you will be punished by God for disturbing the balance of society. In all the temples, churches, mosques and prayer halls of other religions, remember that only the inert representative models of God exist and all your services to such models are not received by God in any way except that they are meant to improve your devotion. Of course, all these places are necessary to develop your devotion to God. You can develop your devotion without wasting money in all these unnecessary ignorant practices. The same money can be spent to save the life of a hungry person and to improve the facilities of poor people so that they can have peaceful life and turn to God. God will be pleased by such activity and not by these foolish practices of blind tradition. As Buddha told, you must analyze every action before implementing it and you should not do it blindly based on tradition.
You must not kill any living being for the sake of your food. God has given enough vegetable food that contains all the ingredients present in the non-vegetarian food. After all, the source of ingredients of any flesh is only vegetable kingdom only. Eating the non-vegetarian food is not a sin because same ingredients exist in both vegetarian and non-vegetarian foods. But, you have to kill a living being for the sake of non-vegetarian food. The killing is the greatest sin. You may argue that you have not killed the living being directly. Such argument cannot stand. Since you are eating the non-vegetarian food, the living being is killed. You are responsible for its killing. Therefore, you are the principle shareholder of the sin. There is nothing wrong if you eat a living being after its natural death. In Hinduism, there is a sect of people called ‘Kapalikas’, who eat the dead living beings. Therefore, they do not acquire sin. The tsunami is always due to anger of God since you are killing the living beings present in water for food. The earthquakes are due to killing of living beings that exist on the earth. God in the form of Buddha and Mahavir preached non-violence and severely opposed the killing of living beings. God in some other human forms might have followed the practice of non-vegetarian food in order to join with non-vegetarian people so that, certain other higher aspects to be preached might have been taken into consideration. That does not mean that God has encouraged the killing of living beings through non-vegetarian food. He might have kept silent on this issue in order to give importance to other serious issues. God follows the ignorance of the students in order to become friendly with them. To control a running bull, you have to run along with it for some distance before controlling it.
All these are the basic concepts of nivrutti, which are the core of pravrutti. By following the ethics of pravrutti, you will avoid God becoming furious with you. Then, through nivrutti, you can please God. On one hand, you are making God furious by not following the ethics of pravrutti and how can you please God through nivrutti simultaneously?