Auspiciousness

Someone has asked: Is eating meat auspicious or inauspicious?

The touchstone is within. If meat-eating deepens your meditation, then it is auspicious. If meat-eating hinders your meditation, then it is inauspicious.

Osho, the Gita certainly emphasizes sattvic food for seekers, but nowhere does it explicitly forbid meat. And you have said meat is easy to digest—and that’s what doctors say, too. Then what obstacle does meat-eating create? For spiritual practice you have strongly stressed the usefulness of a vegetarian diet. But books indicate that many saints who attained through Sufi, Zen, and Tantra paths did not remain vegetarian. And in our own country, Paramhansa Ramakrishna always ate non-vegetarian food. What is the reason for this contradiction?

Then my vision is this: Ramakrishna is an exceedingly pure man. Therefore such a small impurity could not obstruct him. You may not be able to conceive this. Exceedingly pure. If you permit me, I would say: purer than Mahavira. Had Mahavira eaten meat or fish, he could not have attained the supreme. But Ramakrishna did. This means only this: the man is so pure that such a small impurity could not hinder him. Despite that impurity he crossed beyond. Understand it like this: you climb a mountain. The rule for mountain-climbing is that the less the load, the better. If you climb with loads of weight on your head, climbing becomes hard. You may abandon the idea or stop at some midway camp. But then a very powerful man, a Hercules, climbs the mountain with a heavy weight—and reaches the top. This man is not the rule. This Hercules…

Mahavira says: first, auspicious character arises. As you go within and become quiet, a goodness blossoms. By auspicious, the inauspicious is restrained—like darkness by light. Then beyond auspicious is the pure—because the auspicious is still tied to the inauspicious, as its opposite. A man is greedy—he gives in charity. Greed is inauspicious; charity is auspicious—but charity is joined to greed. Without hoarding, how would he donate? First he gathered wealth, then he gives. A man becomes angry—then repents, asks forgiveness. Anger was inauspicious; forgiveness is auspicious—but it arose because of anger; it is linked. It is not pure; the impurity is needed for it to be. Auspicious and inauspicious are two sides of one coin: one bright, one dark—but tied. Mahavira says: the supreme state arises when the pure Atman is revealed—where neither auspicious nor inauspicious remains. Neither lust nor brahmacharya; neither anger nor compassion.

Let me do good, not bad; let me do punya, not papa—these are auspicious moods. May I give no pain, may I give joy—these are auspicious moods. May there be no violence from me, may there be ahimsa; may there be no greed, may there be charity; may there be no anger, may there be compassion—these are auspicious moods. But Mahavira says: in the very ‘let me do’ there is bondage. The bad binds, of course—but the good also binds. The greedy is bound—yes; but the generous is bound too. The sinner is bound—yes; but the virtuous is bound too—although the virtuous wears golden chains. Therefore Mahavira says: auspicious and inauspicious states are not the path to Moksha. One has to be free of both. The unholy has to be left, of course; but the holy too has to be transcended. A state is needed that surpasses all states.