Q’s Social Issues         

Abortion
Meera: Is abortion justified in the Hindu ethical code?
Swamiji: If abortion means taking the life of a fetus, it is not allowed. No religion allows it. but the Hindu masters have been observing more exhaustively and they came to the conclusion that it is only after many weeks of conception that the fetus becomes charged with individuality. Before that it has no independent life of its own. The individual life comes into it only after some time. In the Hindu Code, if the woman is pregnant for three months, then the child in the womb is considered as a member of the family. In the joint-family system, the mother gets two shares, one for the fetus and one for herself.
Anjli: At twelve weeks it is a distinguishably formed fetus.
Swamiji: But it is not conscious. The subtle body consisting of the mind, intellect, and past impressions enters only after twelve weeks or so. Until then it is only existent, sat. The consciousness, cit, comes afterwards.
Anjli: Medical photography has shown life-reaction in fetuses. Even plants display life and sensitivity and they are not as highly evolved.
Swamiji: Not only plants, even your dead body has life; that is why worms come out of it! But the mind and intellect is not conscious in that body. Similarly the mind-intellect enters a body only after twelve weeks or so. Until then it is a physical shape, which is growing with no conscious reaction. The reactions they display are instinctive ones. Till about ninety days we consider it only as a tumor-like growth with no individuality.

Sati
Anjli: What is your opinion about sati?
Swamiji: Never ask a swami his opinion! A swami has no opinion. It is like asking a scientist his opinion about the sub-nuclear theory. He can only tell you the theory. So then, sati was practiced ages ago, especially be the Rajputs. It was a tribute paid to the vulgar conquerors, who used to rape the Hindu widows. So these women thought it better to protect their honor and die, rather than to be subjected to dishonor. In the olden days, when a woman became a widow, it was not like nowadays, to remarry-his fourth and her third. Our Hindu dharma is so designed that it meant that it was time for her to turn inward. She would dress simply in white as she used to dress not for the public, but for her husband. And then she concentrated on looking after the household duties, as there was the joint family and not just husband, wife, and children. She had no social responsibilities; she did not have to attend any death ceremonies or marriage functions. Even if she was young, she understood that it was time for her to give up her extroverted ness and turn inward: as the Lord had taken away her sensuous vasanas by taking her husband away, because He gives the field that you need for exhausting your vasanas. So she would understand this and devote her time to prayer and worship. She turned more and more inward. Only after her household duties were over would she bathe, do puja, worship, and eat, but not for taste. And thus she lived. Sati was practiced only when the women had to protect their honor. Now, it is not necessary any longer, and there was an outcry, and a bill against sati was passed and so it was stopped. Now it is not needed or necessary.

Indecision
Anjli: What if the intellect could not decide and come to a judgment about the course of action. In the grey areas of choice it is difficult to distinguish black from white. What should one do at such a juncture?
Swamiji: Why are you afraid? With whatever data is before you, go ahead and choose an action and carry it through. Even if the action chosen turns out to be a mistake, what does it matter? What do a few mistakes matter in one’s long span of life? From the experience of the mistakes learn to discriminate more keenly Don’t be afraid to act While doing the action if you realize it is a mistake, don’t become indecisive again and leave the action. Continue with the action and tell the mind: “Now you suffer! You chose it, you suffer.” And thereby learn to evaluate actions correctly and develop discrimination.

Ethical Lapes during the Mahabharata War
Anjli: Lord Krishna has been criticized for advising Arjuna to kill Karna against the war rules, for advising Yudhistara to tell a lie, and other such actions during the Mahabharata war. One justification often given is that the enemy had been unfair and cruel on many more occasions before. For instance, they cheated at dice, ill-treated Draupadi and killed the defenseless Abhimanyu. Do two wrongs make a right? If you say that it is to show that war breeds such ill after effects, still one does not expect srestha purusas, ideal persons, to set such examples, especially in a great moral epic.
Swamiji: If a sanitary inspector entered a sewage canal to clean it, he would become soiled, and on coming out he would have to take a bath to become clean. Similarly, war is dirty. It brings out the worst in everybody. At the war front, you cannot go and say that you are a brahmin and will speak only truth. If you want to do that then get out of the war. Go to the caves of the Himalayas. Don’t come anywhere near the battlefield. Likewise in politics, all activities conducive to a goal are justified; the means are justified because of the goal in war.

Anjli: But why two standards, one for war and one for peace?
Swamiji: Because war is a time when everybody is in a different mood, on a different level of consciousness. Ordinarily, one wouldn’t like to die, but in the war-spirit, one doesn’t care for one’s life.
Anjli: You mean it is like having declared a state of emergency when temporarily different rules and regulations come into operation. So the means are not to be considered at that time?
Swamiji: At that time, no.
Anjli: I suppose you mean that moral sensitivity at such a time reaches a low ebb. With this statement of yours, might one infer that nuclear warfare is justified, that germ warfare is justified because the means are not to be considered in war?
Swamiji: They are justified, because it is war.
Anjli: But what will happen to the world?
Swamiji: The world will suffer. But to the warrior at that moment all weapons are justified. Poor world will have to go through the suffering. Is it not suffering because of so many actions of ours? That is the outcome of war.
Anjli: then all responsible decisions should be made prior to the war? But how in the Mahabharata, which is such a special moral epic….
Swamiji: No, it is not. It is an epic, that’s all. It is only giving an honest slice of life as it is. It is not life idealized. It is life as it is: a cross section of life brought to the vivid recognition of the average person, because the average person does not have a total vision of the vulgar things around. In the midst of it all is shown one vibrant character, always in equipoise, whether in the warfront, while telling a lie, while hugging his wife, or while kicking somebody, as always balanced! That fellow alone has the butter, the final goal in hand!!

Bhisma’s Justification
Anjli: Should not the great Bhisma, prior to the call for war, and after negotiations broke down, have made it clear to the Kauravas that he would not take part in the war? It is said that he had partaken of their salt, but actually the Kauravas were beholden to him for the kingdom as well as for the regency. And if he could not convince them to desist from fighting, should he have joined them?
Swamiji: It is not because of this superficial reason that Bhisma joined the Kauravas. Bhisma himself gave the reason in an autobiographical backflash from the bed of arrows. The war was over, he was dying. But he did not die because he had been given a boon by his father that he could choose the time of his death. So he ordered Arjuna to make a bed of arrows for him. But Bhisma didn’t die because he had not yet willed himself to die. it was at this time that Krishna told Yudhisthira not to waste time, but to ask his uncle why he joined the Kauravas the same question.

Anjli: You mean Krishna and I asked the same question?
Swamiji: Yes, the same! Yudhisthira should go and ask Bhisma because he was the only one who could answer this question. For all times it would remain a question-why should such a dharmanista purusa (righteous and noble person) join these tyrannical and unethical people? Why should Bhisma have fought against Krishna especially when he was the only man who knew at the that time that Krishna was divine. So Yudhisthira approached Bhisma and asked him that question. Suddenly Bhisma turned to his right and said, “O Bhagavan!” An ordinary commentary explains it as “Ah!” depicting pain, and it shows Bhisma as answering the question. It is only Madhusudhana Sarasvathi who says in his commentary that even while dying, the brilliant master was sensible enough to judge that this question could not have arisen from his nephew. He knew it must have been put to him by Krishna.

So after uttering “O Bhagavan! O Krishna,” Bhisma goes on with a backflash. He explains how early childhood he had to take a vow and renounce his aspirations for the kingdom to facilitate his father’s marriage to a young fisherwoman. After that event Bhisma wanted to go away. But the father said that how could he be sure he would get another child? And if the child happened to be a female. Bhisma could not go away because a woman could not rule. So Bhisma had to wait until the succession to the throne was ensured. Then came the children. Their mother died in delivery. The two little children and the father were seriously ill. So Bhisma could not leave. He waited; the father never recovered and died. So Bhisma had to become a protector, a regent in the name of his two brothers. The two boys grew up, but they were so weak that they required continual protection from Bhisma. Then he thought he could leave when they begot children. But Bhisma’s two brothers died soon after.

Their children were Dhrtharastra and Pandu. When the elder one came of age, being blind he could not rule the kingdom. So Bhisma had to wait until the younger one grew up. And again he was packing when the younger boy went to the forest for hunting and killed a brahmin by mistake and then came back to his grand uncle and said “I am going for tapas” (penance). Bhisma could not stop him. So he continued to look after the kingdom. The two princes had no children. The blind man was not well. So Krishna advised them to organize a ritual as a result of which one got a hundred children and the other got five children. The blind man could not rule and the other brother had gone to the judge for tapas. The hundred and five children were all with Bhisma, and he had to look after them.

Then only he understood: “Five times I had packed in order to see you in the Himalayas. I took a lifetime vow of celibacy I had nothing to do with the kingdom, but five times something or the other happened. O Lord! I understood that you wanted me to be on their side, and to stay here. Knowing full well that I am such a devotee of yours, you wanted me here. All right, I also decided that I would be with them, whatever may happen, through thick and thin. War started; you promised that you would not lift a weapon, and I vowed publicly that I will make you take up a weapon. Now it is a war, O Lord! How kind you are; In order to make my vow truthful, you ultimately took a weapon and with the Chakra (discus) killed me. What more do I want?”

Anjli: Krishna killed Bhisma?
Swamiji: Chakra refers to Sudarsan Chakra. The Chakra of the Lord is called Sudarsan-the Great Vision. That is what Bhisma saw and exclaimed, “Now I don’t mind. I have been rewarded completely. I am not dying yet because the Uttarayana has not come. Therefore I am just waiting for another three more days. When Uttarayana starts, then if you will me to die, let me die,” Now it is by that portion of the Mahabharata the Bhisma’s entire justification comes up. Superficially looking, one does talk about the “salt” aspect. It is not salt, as you said, no. It is not their salt, rather these people are eating his salt.

Anjli: But why did he side with the wicked hudred? He was equally beholden to stay with the five brothers. I mean, all along he had brought them up too.
Swamiji: He was in the palace. He was not anywhere else. The palace came under the hundred. So he remained in the palace because he knew that to get away from there was against the Lord’s wish. “Five times I tried, five times some obstacle came. Therefore the Lord’s wish is different.” That is how he viewed it.
Anjli: Here is an example of how only the individual himself can determine his own dharma.

Vegetarianism
Anjli: Perhaps you could have been the first person invited to taste the apple!! What about in the Vedic period? Why is sacrificing animals allowed in the Scriptures, especially for rituals? If it is prohibited in daily life, why do it at a time, which was considered sacred?
Swamiji: In the Vedic period, animal worship and animal sacrifice were conducted. There is evidence to prove that upto the Bhagavatam time, we as Indians were nonvegetarians. It is only later on that the idea of vegetarianism developed into a system.
Anjli: Perhaps it was due to geological events that increased the heat in India and because meat decays faster that vegetarianism crept in.
Swamiji: We find that vegetables do not decay so fast, say upto forty-eight hours, they look fresh. But in forty-eight hours, meat looks very dirty, unless it is refrigerated. The deterioration of meat is faster. Furthermore within the human body, during the process of digestion, food remains in the canal for about forty-eight hours. Meat takes a very long time to digest. Fruit and vegetables get digested faster. Whatever stays longer in the intestines starts decaying and rotting with the heat of the body system, and a lot of toxins are created. Also, you must have noticed that generally man eats only those animals that don’t eat other animals. It is very difficult for man to digest and assimilate carnivorous animals. They must be toxic to his system. That means a certain amount of toxity is present in the first round, because twice removed the meat becomes impossible to eat!

Anjli: That means nonvegetarians are safe from cannibals!
Swamiji: Ha! Ha!
Anjli: Seriously, this is as far as the body goes, and what one eats is between the doctor and the person who wants to remain healthy. But in what way does vegetarian food help a person’s mind? Did people discover that it affects the mental temperament?
Swamiji: The food that we take in and the thoughts and actions that spring forth from us have a distinct relationship. Garbage in, garbage out, is the great saying of the computer language, and it seems to be true that if you put garbage within your system, in the long run the texture of your thoughts and actions have a tendency to become more unreconciling, extremely selfish, less concerned for others, lusty, and therefore dangerous to the social order.

Anjli: How come westerners who are mostly nonvegetarian are healthier than us vegetarians?
Swamiji: To say that vegetarians are unhealthy is also not very true because vegetarian like the camel have stamina and elephant have sheer size and strength and horses are sturdy and beautiful. So it is not very right to say this and these are silly arguments that were brought in at a time when everybody thought that eating dead bodies is the best way of living. Nowadays the whole opinion has changed, but I will come to that. Also the world has recognized the economics of it recently. They have made statistics that were published all over; I think UNO did it, about the amount of land necessary for cattle to feed. That it is uneconomical to leaves so much land fallow for cattle to feed on and also much of the grains are given as fodder to animals to fatten on so that the meat may be good. This land, if used for growing more food, can be used to feed more people in the world and the starvation level can be wiped out completely. It is not correct to say that in order to have stamina a lot of meat is necessary. In fact, the latest theory is that this animal protein is very difficult to be digested and assimilated and that vegetable proteins are more easily absorbed in the system.

The climatic condition in the west forced them to eat meat because they could not have vegetarian food all the year round. For three or four months only could they plough the land, the rest of the time it is all snow. As you come more and more towards the tropical climate, there is more greenery, more vegetables are available.

Anjli: Does vegetarian food help meditation?
Swamiji: Even great thinkers and meditators like Jesus took only bread and water while in the desert, similarly our sages and saints. Even kings and others while living in the palace might have been taking meat but when they went for tapas or austerities and meditation into the forests they switched on to lighter food, that is, vegetarian food, especially, for our climate. The reason why it became over-emphasized in the Mahabharata time. I think, because by then India’s climatic condition changed. Earlier the snow line was so near the Ganga at Haridwar or at Gandanani or even at Gangotri. Then it began to recede further with the result that the climatic condition also changed. The Thar dessert asserted itself because the snow line receded or the snow line receded because of the dessert’s onslaught. Population increased, deforestation took place. So many reasons were there. Afforestation had been ignored therefore climatic conditions changed. Therefore, I think that it was in the time of the Bhagawatam that they advertised dairy farming and vegetarianism the maximum. In India whenever a health order or sanitary rule was to be popularized or promulgated they always did it riding on religious concepts.

Anjli: So it was Vyasa who started it?
Swamiji: It is in the Mahabharata that we find this emphasized more and more and the pajan of this philosophy is Krishna and especially the emphasis on dairy farms. So Govardhanoddharak is the name. Go –cows, vardhan-development of cattle, uddharak-one who gives a fillip to cattle breeding or maintaining a better cadre.

Anjli: If as you say vegetarian food tames the mind and the character of a person becomes less vicious, how come it had the opposite effect on Hitler? He was a vegetarian.
Swamiji: Your two or three questions are aimed at asking whether vegetarian food will change the character of an individual. No. It is the other way round. The character of the individual personality determines the type of food that he will find a taste for. The eighteenth chapter of the Bhagavad Gita indicates definitely what kind of food the individual will find tasty who is under the awe of sattva, rajas, or tamas. So it is not that Hitler was a vegetarian so how come he killed so many million people.
Anjli: You would not recommend that a person should turn vegetarian unless he has an inner inclination?
Swamiji: No. I don’t want him to become a vegetarian forcefully. But very many people become vegetarians because it happens to be the trend. Just as one tries drugs because it happens to be the trend. Similarly one can introduce vegetarianism as a positive trend among people. For instance, if a person gets chronic headaches, one can recommend vegetarian food for a period of two months. The headache may or may not go but the person feels happy with that food. Having tried it he doesn’t find it so bad. One can recommend but not force anyone or insist upon it. The individual must himself decide after trying it and ask himself “Am I unhappy?"“ If not, try it once or twice a week and then slowly build it up. The sensitivity of the mind also builds up and he feels a cultural call that to satisfy one and a half inches of his tongue he has taken the life of a conscious being.

Anjli: Plants also have life.
Swamiji: But animal life is more evolved, so spare them.
Anjli: But plants have feelings too. They show reactions when you experiment on them.
Swamiji: Yes. But they are as if in a chloroform condition just as when you operate on a human being he feels the pain without anesthesia, but under anesthesia or chloroform he does not feel the pain, though he has life. So we take for our food from the plant kingdom giving minimum sorrow to life around. Even that is a harm. But what do do? There is no other option; stones you can’t eat, dead bodies you can’t then only plants are there. So then we generally pray before eating food, “O Lord. I am becoming indebted again to these in front of me. They have sacrificed so that my life may be protected and may their sacrifice be rewarding. “Just as in the army so many people die for the country so that others may live in improved conditions later. This becomes the government’s responsibility. Similarly, it is our responsibility that the food that has been destroyed for our growth may be justified when we progress to become noble human beings. Just as, if after the war, conditions are worse, then it is a great loss. That is the idea.

Anjli: Some of the world’s great scientists have been nonvegetarians.
Swamiji: Yes. And among the greatest thinkers and scientists also they have discovered for themselves, unfortunately much too late in life, that vegetarian food is better, that the quality of thinking is better. That is why Einstein later on, became a pure vegetarian. Bernard Shaw-a pure vegetarian. We don’t say nonvegetarian will make you dull but it would have been….
Anjli: What I mean is that the West has produced all these people whereas we vegetarians have not produced any scientists as such.
Swamiji: A lot of difference. Their research is on the grosser side, the outer world. here the development is on the subtler side, the within. Our research has been subjective. For knowing the subtle, the mind has to be that much more precisely perfect.

A Summing Up
Anjli: In summing up certain ethical problems that come up in the context of particular social situations, Swamiji, you have explained that in general no moral situation is dogmatic. Its evaluation often depends upon factors outside the obvious ones whether in the case of euthanasia, abortion, political and economic pressures, the sati practice, vegetarianism or in the moral decisions of great men during their fight between good and evil. It is important to analyze these decisions as they tend to have historical repercussions. Such decisions ought to be based on the higher values of life and for the welfare of society in general thereby ennobling man and helping him towards the goal of self-realization.

This becomes necessary because a person’s choice of action or his field of functioning, including the food he eats, the kind of person he loves, reflect the values that he upholds in life. If his values are higher, his actions are better.

We need to train ourselves to be socially sensitive, but this is best achieved by dedicating our activities to a higher goal. A superficial face lifting of society by social workers without trying to improve themselves does not achieve lasting results.

Love of God is the highest moral truth which expresses in the world as giving rather than receiving, in an irresistible dash into the hearts of all, culminating in the sublime fusion of the finite with the Infinite.

Swamiji, in case there are further questions arising from the answers you have so patiently and obligingly given, I hope it will be in order to join you in another journey, preferably one which takes us even further beyond!