Land and Cows

#0: where an individual stops supporting the dairy industry (which is based on cow slaughter) by taking only milk from protected cows (Madhava Ghosh has calculated that the cost of a gallon of milk from a protected cow is $17 [from memory], taking into account the cost of maintaining the cow over its natural life span)

#1: where an individual actively supports both the dairy industry and cow protection, for example through something like Madhava Ghosh’s GEETA program:

In this modern world, it isn’t practical for everyone to personally keep cows, but by donating to GEETA, you will in fact be caring for cows by proxy. Even if you use milk products from a store, it will be offset by contributing to protecting cows

#2 where an individual chooses to stop actively supporting the dairy industry and actively works to create a cow protection situation to produce milk.

#3: where an individual supports the dairy industry and does nothing to actively support cow protection (active = putting your money where your mouth is)

Please also see:

• Milk - to drink or not to drink?
• Time to Live in the Here and Now, Milk Drinkers

[I left this comment on Pandu's blog. Pandu das is not simply a theoretical advocate of cow protection, but is actively involved in protecting cows at his home.]

Pandu prabhu, I'm sorry for coming across so hard and heavy.

It's not meant to be an attack on you, any more than your discussion of the idea of veganism is meant to be an attack on the devotees in New Zealand. I'm sorry for coming across that way.

Kurma das has written his article in a particular style to support his particular agenda. By referencing the content of it and spring boarding from it to your discussion of the idea of veganism your post reinforces his presentation. It implicitly accepts what he says as a fact, although he lacks first hand knowledge, and much of what he says is his interpretation.

My theme of "Get your facts straight and then have an opinion" is not solely directed at you, but rather at everyone who has commented further on what he has to say, but without taking the trouble to verify it, or to state: "Kurma das said... (but I don't know personally what the facts of the matter are)".

Lots of people just pick up the ball and run with it - not simply on this issue, but every post on Sampradaya Sun that talks about what other people are doing, but without verification. I read things on there all the time and say: "Well, who knows what the actual situation is..." and reserve judgment. I watch as people pile on and talk it up, accepting unquestioning whatever was said before, with no evidence or discussion, including interpretations of people's motives.

It's a wider issue of an ongoing failure of epistemology and intellectual honesty.

In this case I do happen to know more about the situation, and I think it's intellectually dishonest to publish like that, or to propagate it further.

As far as milk and cow protection goes, I think that H.H. Hrdayananda das Goswami described it best when he laid out the valid arguments on both sides (Milk - to drink or not to drink?) and stated that Vedic culture has room for both, and that's it's ultimately a question of individual conscience.

The factual error that you're either picked up or introduced in the opening sentence of your post is that devotees in NZ no longer offer milk to Krishna. That's not correct. They have not subscribed to a vegan ideology, but rather have taken the stance that they will only offer guests milk from protected cows.

As far as the post you cited from theloft.org.nz that says "we embrace veganism", it's written for the general public, and it means that vegan people can comfortably come and take prasadam there. At our house we frequently prepare dishes that are dairy-free, sugar-free, salt-free, or wheat-free for people who do not have these things for either health or ethical reasons. There are no barriers to Krishna prasadam, and we should prepare and offer things that are acceptable to Krishna so that everyone can partake.

The various perspectives on how to approach the situation of lack of cow protection is a good topic for discussion.

Personally we use commercial milk at home to prepare prasadam and also regularly serve it to guests. There is no milk available from cow protection here, nor do we have the resources or commitment to make it happen in the near future, unlike the NZ devotees.

Please accept my apologies for being overbearing.

Rising acidity in oceans and accelerating wind patterns may lead to unexpected changes.

Global warming of the sea is affecting the atmosphere and ocean in subtle ways, adding a new dimension to the concept of global change.

As carbon dioxide accumulates in the air, more of it dissolves into the sea. This gradually increases sea-water acidity. Biologists have been concerned about what this could do to corals and other animals that have adapted to live in fairly constant marine conditions. Now scientists also have to take account of changes to seawater chemistry....

According to the MBARI announcement, its research team estimates “that sound already may travel 10 percent farther in the oceans than it did a few hundred years ago.” The team projects that by midcentury, sound may travel as much as 70 percent farther than it does today.

- Warming seas create a massive chemistry experiment, CS Monitor

New Zealand's main outreach centers have implemented a policy of only using milk from protected cows. In practice this has translated into a vegan menu at Auckland's The Loft, and Wellington's Gaura Yoga.

Since there are no protected cows giving milk within the movement in New Zealand there is no milk to use.

This is an interesting strategic move. A concession made 30 years ago, that of using milk from unprotected cows, has become the baseline in the Hare Krishna movement today. Using milk from unprotected cows is not seen as unusual by many of the members. (It's common that a concession becomes a new baseline over time).

However, persons outside the movement increasingly view this as hypocritical, as environmental awareness grows and movements promoting compassionate treatment of animals, such as veganism, become more prominent among the youth.

By changing the policy to only use milk from protected cows the NZ devotees have done three things simultaneously. They have:

• honored the relationship between humans and cows
• removed a source of accusations of hypocrisy
• created "at the coal face" awareness of the lack of cow protection in New Zealand

New Zealand is a country at the cutting edge. Even Hell Pizza, now branching out into Australia, demonstrates a cutting edge environmental awareness:

Believe it or not we actually give a sh*t about the environment and are taking steps to reduce our carbon cloven hoof prints... While we are not 666% perfect in terms of our own environmental and social performance, we are committed to a process of ongoing review and improvement of our practices.

- "Hell on Earth" section of www.hellpizza.com.au

Leadership means going first.

Implementing this policy to create awareness is not the end of the matter, however. They are also working to implement cow protection to get some milk back on the table! In the meantime, enforced veganism is the austerity that they are accepting while they work on this piece of Srila Prabhupada's strategy.

Great coverage of New Vrndavan from an outside perspective at The Ohio Post

The Hare Krishna-focused life of New Vrindaban aids in followers’ spiritual journeys, Chaitanya told his GLC interviewers.“The philosophy and lifestyle can’t be separated,” he said.

GLC’s Pesek, who said she wasn’t raised religious, agreed that the surroundings at New Vrindaban were conducive to worship.

“You can’t walk into the temple and not have some kind of spiritual feelings,” she said.

During religious services, followers dance among the temple’s stained glass windows and 24 columns, swaying towards the altar adorned with Hindu deities and surging back to the quickening tempo of the drum beat.

Followers also raise and prepare organic vegetarian food, mostly Indian, on the grounds to keep with a self-sustained and environmentally friendly lifestyle. Under the weight of fresh milk, chai tea and homemade cheesecake, GLC participants’ complaints about the food faded as the weekend wore on.

During the Middle Ages Nature became increasingly secularized. Based on a philosophical doctrine of duality - a fully transcendent Supreme Being and a fully mundane world "ruled by the devil" - medieval Christianity embarked on a systematic extermination of all other understandings of divinity in Nature, oftentimes through violent suppression.

The result is a worldview in which responsibility to the environment is not felt. Hated and feared, the world, when not outright rejected as evil (our term: "illusory"), can only be understood as existing to be exploited.

We, as aspiring devotees and regenerators of the Vedic culture, are coming out of this, into an understanding of a divine nature pervaded and sustained by the Transcendent Lord, and existing for the purpose of His service. The divine is present in all aspects of life, from the falling of rain to the eating of grains.

However, we are still afflicted by this dualistic understanding at a deep level. In a lot of cases we have papered over our inner conceptions with a veneer of a philosophy whose conceptual precepts we can repeat, but whose practical implications in many cases elude us. Visitors to our centers are sometimes horrified by the blatant disregard for the environment that we display (styrofoam plates anyone?), which in some cases lags behind that of progressive persons outside the movement.

But my post today is not about nature in the external environment, "out there", it is about our own nature. You see, this disrespect, even contempt for nature, extends to our own nature, and ends up in a subtle or not-so subtle form of self-hate.

The word atma refers to the self, and it refers to the three different aspects of the self - the body, the mind, and the soul.

The body and the mind are composed of apara-prakrti, an eternal energy which is characterized by the manifestation of temporary forms. The soul is composed of para-prakrti, an eternal energy which is immutable (def: not subject or susceptible to change).

Our identity, as spiritual beings having a human experience, is a combination of these three things - the body, the mind, and the soul. Each of these has characteristics which arise from and create identity. These characteristics are called dharma in Sanskrit. Dharma can be understood as "identity". So there is naimittika-dharma, identity arising from the body and mind, and sanatana-dharma, identity arising from the soul.

Both of these dharmas constitute our identity.

Accepting both of these we accept ourselves, and open the door to living a fully integrated spiritual existence in this manifested world.

Bhagavad-gita 18.45-46 speaks of this:

By following his qualities of work, every man can become perfect. Now please hear from Me how this can be done. By worship of the Lord, who is the source of all beings and who is all-pervading, a man can attain perfection through performing his own work.

Perfection consists of accepting your naimittika-dharma, the identity of your body and mind (sva-karma-niratah siddhim), and aligning that with your sanatana-dharma, the identity of the soul (sva-karmana tam abhyarcya).

It does not consist of denigrating or denying who you are.

A Counter Argument

"But this is a low level of realization. A second-class understanding. We have to transcend the bodily identification. This understanding is for the less advanced. It's conditional devotional service."

Number 1: Yes it is - keep it real (=be humble) and stop pretending to be a fully liberated being completely immersed in experience of a transcendental reality. You're not, so live with it. You are not the body or the mind, but you have one, so use it properly in Krishna's service and stop mentalling out in the hope that they will disappear in a puff of smoke. They won't.

Number 2: No it is not. It's good enough for Krishna, according to Him:

O son of Pritha, there is no work prescribed for Me within all the three planetary systems. Nor am I in want of anything, nor have I a need to obtain anything -- and yet I am engaged in prescribed duties.

Bg. 3.22

And it's good enough for everyone else, again according to Krishna:

Even a man of knowledge acts according to his own nature, for everyone follows the nature he has acquired from the three modes. What can repression accomplish?

Bg. 3.33

Conclusion:

You are the soul, eternal and immutable, characterized by an eternal relationship with Reality and the embodiment of Reality - Sri Krishna. You have a body and a mind, which are currently part of your experience and your existence. The harmonious interaction of these three constitute your human life.

After seven years of scant rainfall – the worst drought on record – have left vast swathes of the country parched and barren, Australians need all the help they can get. Last month, Australian Prime Minister John Howard said the country faced an "unprecedentedly dangerous" drought.

Without significant rain in the next few weeks, farmers in the nation's breadbasket states of New South Wales and Victoria will be denied water for irrigation, consigning millions of acres of crops to wither and die. Tim Flannery, one of Australia's best-known environmentalists, has warned that Australia confronts "the most dangerous situation arising from climate change facing any country in the world right now."

For a warmer future, Australia employs Aboriginal wisdom

Here in S.E. Queensland the dams are at 19% and we are currently under Level 5 water restrictions.

Australia, already the driest inhabited continent on the planet, is in the grip of its worst-ever drought.

The water crisis is no longer about desperate farmers in the Outback watching their sheep and cattle perish. Over the past six years, it has extended its grip to the cities and is changing the way Australians regard a resource they once took for granted.

Climate scientists agree that Australia's drought is linked to global warming.

"There is very strong consensus," says Blair Nancarrow, director of the Australian Research Centre for Water in Society. "There's a lot of climate-model evidence that says that the drought is, at least in part, human-induced."

'Water police' crack down in an ever-drier Australia

You don't read articles like this in Australia, however. These are from a US-based news source, the Christian Science Monitor. Here there is a real lack of discussion of the wider issues, and a lot of poking of heads into sand, because people have no frame of reference for the issues, and no way of coming to grips with the situation. Why is there no rain? What can be done, beyond trying to conserve the ever shrinking water? Who can say...?

Adi Radhika devi dasi in Hungary, where they are also experiencing drought, recently shared the following:

I dont know how I slept… but as I woke up in morning, I turned to my husband and said, “we have to do something.” Water means life. So, how does this water come? From where it comes and gives life?

There is a verse from Bhagavad-gita in my mind;

annad bhavanti bhutani
parjanyad anna-sambhavaha
yajnad bhavati parjanyo
yajnah karma-samudbhavaha
BG 3.14

“All living bodies subsist on food grains, which are produced from rains. Rains are produced by performance of yajna [sacrifice], and yajna is born of prescribed duties.”

Purport by Srila Prabhupada:

Food grains or vegetables are factually eatables. The human being eats different kinds of food grains, vegetables, fruits, etc., and the animals eat the refuse of the food grains and vegetables, grass, plants, etc. Human beings who are accustomed to eating meat and flesh must also depend on the production of vegetation in order to eat the animals. Therefore, ultimately, we have to depend on the production of the field and not on the production of big factories. The field production is due to sufficient rain from the sky, and such rains are controlled by demigods like Indra, sun, moon, etc., and they are all servants of the Lord. The Lord can be satisfied by sacrifices; therefore, one who cannot perform them will find himself in scarcity—that is the law of nature. Yajna, specifically the sankirtana-yajna prescribed for this age, must therefore be performed to save us at least from scarcity of food supply.

And in Bhagavad-gita 9.19, Krishna says; “O Arjuna, I give heat, and I withhold and send forth the rain.”

I am thoughtful… surely, we deserved this situation and we deserved even much more. We exploited the nature recklessly and we never even questioned, how, why and who is giving us this opulence? Have we ever become grateful to the rain, fruit and the earth? We are eating what we sow.

In such extreme conditions, some of us blame God, telling He is bad, or even He does not exist. However, the first step of spiritual life is humbleness. It continuously fills our hearts with joy however hard the conditions are. In Vaisnava culture this is described as being lower then a blade of grass.

I am happy, Krishna is giving us this big opportunity. Now it is time to really be conscious every moment, to be heartily grateful and to develop our humbleness. Let's do sankirtana; let's remember Him, let's gather together and chant His holy names.

The two most astonishing thing for the British who invaded India were.

1) The Indian gurukula system.

2) The Indian agriculture system.

The then Governor of British India Robert Clive made an extensive research on the agriculture system in India.

The outcome of the research was as follows:-

1) Cows were the basis of Indian agriculture and agriculture in India cannot be executed without the help of cow.

2) To break the Backbone of Indian agriculture cows had to be eliminated.

The first slaughterhouse in India was started in 1760, with a capacity to kill 30,000 (Thirty thousand only) per day, at least one crore cows were eliminated in an years time.

He estimated that the number of cows in Bengal outnumbered the number of men. Similar was the situation in the rest of India.

As a part of the Master plan to destabilize the India, cow slaughter was initiated.

Once the cows were slaughtered, then there was no manure and there is no insecticide like cow urine.

Robert Clive started a number of slaughter houses before he left India.

A hypothesis to understand the position of Indian agriculture without slaughter houses:-

In 1740 in the Arcot District of Tamil Nadu, 54 Quintals of rice was harvested from one acre of land using simple manure and pesticides like cow urine and cow dung.

As a result of the 350 slaughterhouses which worked day and night by 1910. India was practically bereft of cattle. India had to approach England’s doorstep for industrial manure. Thus industrial manure like urea and phosphate made way to India.

After India attained independence in the name of “Green Revolution” there was extensive use of industrial manure.

Before British left India. The daily news paper Guardian interviewed India.

To one of the questions Gandhiji answered, that the day India attains Independence, all the slaughter houses in India would be closed.

In 1929 Nehru in a public meeting stated that if he were to become the prime minister of India, the first thing he would do is to stop all the slaughterhouses.

The tragedy of the situation is since 1947 the number has increased from350 to 36,000(thirty six thousand) slaughter houses.

Today, the highly mechanized slaughterhouses Al-kabir and Devanar of Andhra Pradesh and Maharastra has the capacity to slaughter 10,000(ten thousand) cows at a time.

It’s a warning signal to one and all in India to rise to the occasion!!!

source

If you think that's a little bit conspiratorial, just read a little about the history of British involvement in India. This page gives an informative overview.