We worship everything, the sun, stars, moon, day, night, life, stones, earth, sky, rivers, mountains, trees, plants, bird, monkey, snake and of course the cow because we are courageous enough to recognise God in everything. We see some divine quality or manifestation in things and hence treat them with the sense of sacredness and the respect they deserve. Especially cow, which, if you go to root of the word go (go-mati, go-pal, go-dhuli, go-raksha etc) it means light. The cow has several attributes of the light. It nourishes and nurtures is from childhood through its milk while at the same time, even its so-called waste lights the fire and heals illnesses. We being from the Sanatana Dharma feel gratitude towards a creature that played the role of a mother to us by substituting her milk for the biological mother. Hence to protect our foster mother comes naturally to us. This sentiment is difficult to understand by people whose hearts are asleep and religions that promote cruelty or treat non-humans as objects of pleasure and food.
Affectionately,
Alok Da
A follow up question–
The vegan activists claim that the process of taking milk from the cow is exploitative, I asked my Sir who is a devotee says “knhaai bhi doodh makkhan khate the, jamkar khao, koi dikkat nahi hai”.
What’s the truth, as mother somewhere said himsa is indispensable for the current world, and some life has to be taken, and how minimal it is, more good it is.
To drink cow milk would be exploitative if the cow were to sell her milk or if one was depriving the calf its need and share. It is rather a providential arrangement of Nature that a cow produces much more milk, sometimes way too much more than its calf can consume. In fact taking out this excess milk is relief to the cow.
Where is hinsa (violence) in all this? Hinsa is a psychological state of wilful injury. Eating beef would be hinsa but how is milking a cow hinsa? What has happened to these people who are creating issues out of nowhere. Or perhaps this is the usual marketing spell of befooling gullible citizens in the name of a mumbo-jumbo science served with the sauce of religion and morality with the ulterior motive of creating heavy price market for normal vegetables. I suspect the latter. Most yogis who are extremely sensitive to these things take milk freely, many almost as a main diet as we see in the Ashram itself. But i guess how then the pharma industries selling Calcium and protein substitutes will flourish and many other things besides….
Affectionately,
Alok Da
