In the Bhagavad Gita, Shri Krishna calls all that as akarma. He says it is not even action, it is akarma. It is something you didn't do; it just happened. So, how are you to feel guilty over it? You breathe in and certain microorganisms travel into your respiratory tract, get trapped and get killed. You are not responsible. And that is non-violence. So, let nobody say that because somebody eats an apple hence somebody else is entitled to eat an animal. No, eating an apple and eating an animal are not the same thing. And if eating an animal and eating an apple are the same thing, then eating an animal and eating a human being are the same thing by the same logic, extending the same logic.
So, if someone comes to you quoting this kind of a logic that “you know, if I am eating the goat or the chicken then you too are eating the rice grain and the wheat grain, and the rice plant and the wheat plant have been slaughtered. So, if I am guilty of violence then you too are guilty of violence because you have killed rice and wheat. And if you will continue to eat rice and wheat then I will continue to eat goat and chicken.” Then ask the fellow to extend this logic: “If apple and animal are the same thing, then animal and human being are the same thing. Eat the human being as well! And if you do not eat the human being, then extend the same logic to not to eat the animal as well.”
The best thing, the dream, the utopia would be a situation in which man can survive without even killing a single plant—fruits, vegetables and leaves suffice. But given the configuration of our planet now, given our population, that is what I just said—it is a utopia. But still, that is what you must teach your kids, that not only must you not kill animals, you must also try to avoid killing plants. That would be the best. And if you can somehow come up with a way in which even plants are not to be killed for human consumption, that would be heavenly.
