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Our Festivities & Animal's Doom

From: "Will Chaucey" To: am-global@earthlink.net Subject: Our Festivities & Animal's Doom Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2008 23:48:17 Baba "Toma'r madhur ha'si niye eseche..." (P.S. 328) Purport: Baba, Your sweet smile has such a strong attraction that it has attracted everything of this created world close to You. Everyone is rushing towards You. Your sweet smile has incomparable charm. It has filled everything with nectar-- from the throbbing sensation of the heart up to the existence of each and every entity of this created world. Everything and everyone You have filled with Your divine nectar. Baba, by Your sweet grace please come with the rhythm and melody of song and dance. You have filled all the wonderful memories with Your divine nectar. Everything is so beautiful. Baba please come in my Guru cakra in dhyana with Your sweet, attractive, & charming form. Your love saturated eyes have filled my heart with full content. Baba, Your sweet, attractive, & charming form has attracted everything close to You...
== OUR FESTIVITIES ANIMAL'S DOOM ==
Namaskar, Our humanity is no longer that slow, dull, lumbering mass, but rather a sleek, new people full of sentient thoughts and refined ideas. By Baba's grace this sweet transformation is going on. And our holidays and festivals should reflect this. Unfortunately, our global human family is still littered by occasions & festivals that feature harsh and cruel treatment to animals. We have inherited these social functions from days-by-gone and the time has come to rethink such events.
GOTTEN FROM THE AGES: 'PUT TO DEATH'
Nearly all the religious and cultural traditions on this earth engage in the gross mutilation and rampant killing of animals during times of festivals. During the Hindu Durga Puja, animals sacrifices are common. It is the people's way of "pleasing the gods". Plus the Aryans culture has a long history of such type of rampant animal killing in their various yajinas, religious rituals, and ceremonies of worship. Note 1 details how the Chambal river was but a river of blood created by thousands of animals sacrifices. Then the Islamic festival Eid must include the slaughtering of a goat. And Christianity and the west are also involved in this same destructive pattern. In particular, during the American holiday, 'Thanksgiving' which is to be celebrated next week, millions upon millions of turkeys and massacred. Each and every household or family gathering celebrates this day by eating a murdered turkey. If we look further, we can find countless examples wherein our human family indulges in the cruel treatment of animals as a means to honor the gods and show our festive spirit during the holidays. There is a long history of this, often stemming from times when the people did not have the knowledge or capability to observe festivals in other ways. Over the generations, these cruel and senseless traditions have been kept alive. Still today, they are common.
'CREATION IS FOR OUR ENJOYMENT'
In this modern era, wherein popular western values are spinning around the globe at record pace, the archaic psychology, 'this creation is for our enjoyment', needs to be put to rest. The Christian doctrine preaches that God has put all these beings and creatures on this earth for human enjoyment. This is the anthropocentric vision that is grabbing hold of so many people. In the past, religious Christians would preach this gospel and now pseudo-culture popularizes this same approach via its 'me-first', self-indulgent manners. It has become the fashion to 'treat yourself right', irregardless of the cost to others. All of the above contravenes our teachings of neo-humanism. And it is time we lead the way more and more in putting these dogmas to rest. Animal cruelty and torture is a remnant from humanity's barbaric past. However the picture is not all bleak. In pockets of human culture around the globe, there are many raising the slogan of animal welfare and animal rights.
OUR CHANGING HUMANITY
Today, then our humanity is going through so much growth and development in so many respects, now is the time to deviate from past traditions and rethink the way we celebrate during times of festivals. After all, so many new outlooks are being born each and every day: Multi-culturalism, women's rights, minority rights, native rights, rights of the accused etc. In each and every sphere of life we are rethinking our relationships with other human groups. And this has brought must respect and dignity to our human family. Sadly, this trend has failed to come full circle with regards to animals rights. No doubt, there is some progress like the heralded case where one famous American football player was stripped of his multi-million dollar contract, corporate sponsorships, star status, and sent to jail for beating and torturing dogs. So some progress has been made. But there is much work to be done. In the past, humans were offered to the gods via sacrificial fires; that has now stopped. Similarly, we have to put a stop to such things being done to animals. All around the globe during times of festivals, people heartily look forward to "sumptuous meals" born from the ruthless killing and torture of animals. 'Thanksgiving' is but one of many such occasions where people blindly overlook the senseless destruction of animals for their own silly pleasure. We have to ask ourselves, 'Is this the civiliisation we want to perpetuate and pass down to our children?'. Now then is the time to raise consciousness on this critical and dire issue. Often times animals look to us for shelter and support and in response we outrightly breach that trust and dupe them into walking into their own death.
JUST HYPOCRITE'S PSYCHOLOGY
Here Baba points out how the the human psyche wrongly justifies the slaughtering of animals. Deep inside people know it is not right, but they cover it up will all kinds of false logic. Baba says, "When people sacrifice a goat or buffalo in a religious festival while chanting “Divine goddess, divine goddess!” before a deity, they know that the animal is an irreplaceable part of creation, but still they slaughter it. This is hypocrites’ dogma." (PNS-16, 'Religious Dogma- B')
BABA'S BLESSING
By Baba's grace we will rethink our role on this earth and treat all animals with dignity and respect, and not work towards their wanton destruction. Baba says, "Human beings are more cruel than vultures. Their hearts don’t melt even at the sight of tears of innocent birds and animals. Just to gratify their sense of greed, they mercilessly slit the throats of animals with sharp knives and swords and thus deprive them of the right to live, even while preaching the hollow dictates of religion." (NHNS-2) Namaskar, Vinay
Note 1: ANIMAL SACRIFICES & THE CHAMBAL RIVER
Baba says, "When the Aryans were living in the Rajasthan area in the western part of India, they found many animals there, because there were forests and sufficient rainfall. They used to perform sacrificial rites by killing these animals. There is a story that once they performed a sacrificial ritual killing hundreds of thousands of animals; the heaps of those animals’ skins was as high as a mountain, and blood streamed down unceasingly from that pile of skins. It looked as if a river was flowing. After a long distance, this stream of blood flowed into the Ganges River. As the stream of blood flowing from the pile of animal skins took the form of a river, it was named Carman'vatii in Sanskrit. The present name of the river is Chambal." (NSS, Disc 7)
Note 2: DOGMA: PUTTING ANIMALS TO SLEEP
One other misconception these days is that people, especially in the west, brag about how kind they are to their own pets, yet in the end put their pets "to sleep", when they think the animal is too old and frail. People sympathetically boast of their compassion in doing such things. But really is this a practice that can be supported. Under normal circumstances, would we put elderly human beings to sleep as well at a time we deem fit. Or do we honor them up to the last breath. Our way is to respect their dignity and let them live out their days according to nature's design. We do not prematurely put them to death. But this same respect we do not extend to animals. Rather we deceive ourselves into thinking that we are doing proper by intentionally putting an animal to sleep, when in fact we are rudely ending their life.
*************************************** Colourful Future
Baba says, "As life becomes increasingly easy, there will be greater opportunities for intellectual pursuits. A day will come when there will be hardly any need for human beings to work. This may sound strange today and perhaps we might not like to hear such a thing, but that day will surely come. Physicality will be transformed into more and more intellectuality, and intellectuality will be transformed into the culminating point of spirituality." (PNS-17, p.36)
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