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  • Recorded on: 1 Jul 2002
  • Language: English
  • Length: 0h 04m

Protect life

Life is life, and suffering is universal.

A mother's cry is the same, whether human or animal. Imagine your newborn taken away, knowing it will be killed. Consider the terror of being led to slaughter, your stomach cut open. Animals feel this fear and pain as we do. During wars, people are taken and killed; their children feel this loss. As long as humans do not realize that all life values life, human suffering will continue. Wars, fighting, and crime persist from this lack of understanding. Who are we to judge that humans can kill and eat every other creature? A child is a child, regardless of species. The bond and the loss are identical.

"A mother is a mother; it does not matter if she is a human mother or an animal mother."

"Life is life; it does not matter if it is human life or animal life."

Filming location: Vép, Hungary

Imagine you have just given birth to a child, and immediately, someone takes it away. How would you feel? You know where your child is growing up, and you know that in one month, they will kill it. How would you feel? Or when your grandfather dies, or your mother dies—how do you feel? Do you know how people felt during the Second World War when Jewish people were taken to the concentration camps? How their children felt? How the people themselves felt when they were locked in a room and gas was pumped inside? You know how afraid you are of death. And you know how you would feel if someone took you into a room or under a tree somewhere, put you on a table, took a knife, cut open your stomach, let the blood drain out, and then took out your flesh. Do you know how you would feel? Animals feel the same thing too. A mother is a mother; it does not matter if she is a human mother or an animal mother. Children are children; it does not matter if they are humans or animals. So, as long as humans do not realize this, there will be suffering among humans as well. There will be wars, there will be fighting, there will be criminals, and so on. Life is life; it does not matter if it is human life or animal life. Who are we to judge that humans can kill every other creature and eat them?

This text is transcribed and grammar corrected by AI. If in doubt what was actually said in the recording, use the transcript to double click the desired cue. This will position the recording in most cases just before the sentence is uttered.

The text contains hyperlinks in bold to three authoritative books on yoga, written by humans, to clarify the context of the lecture:

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