Winter is again upon us, and again the world staggers through its holy days, raging with quarrel and war. And though we know winter will soon leave us, when, we wonder, will war?
To answer, let’s go back some fifty centuries to ancient India, where a white cow and bull are grazing peacefully on the shore of the Sarasvati River. Suddenly, out of the tall grasses, a swarthy, bearded man appears, brandishing a club. He wears the dress of royalty, but when he attacks the innocent cow and bull, he shows himself to be a low-class rogue.
Then the real king appears—Maharaja Parikshit. With sword upraised, Parikshit addresses the man, with a voice like thunder.
“You rogue, how dare you beat an innocent cow just because Lord Krishna is no longer present? You are a culprit and deserve to be killed!”
Fearing for his life, the man, named Kali, gives up his royal dress and begs the king’s mercy. Parikshit spares the mischievous Kali, then banishes him to places of gambling, drinking, prostitution, animal slaughter, and hoarding of gold.
This Kali-Parikshit encounter marked the dawn of what Vedic historians call the Age of Kali, our present age of quarrel and hypocrisy. The Supreme Lord Krishna had just left the earth, and Parikshit was determined to protect the universal religious principles the Lord had revived during His visit. But Kali was just as determined to raise hell; and inexorable time was on his side. As winter follows autumn, so Kali follows Krishna, and the best Parikshit could do was temporarily contain him. Places of gambling, drinking, prostitution, and animal slaughter didn’t exist in pious Parikshit’s day, but when Kali found gold, he was in business. And so was our age.
Our Age of Kali has come a long way since the first attempt to kill a cow and bull. Gambling, drinking, prostitution, and animal slaughter are big business now, often sanctioned and taxed by the government. Kali’s spirit possesses us. Excessive pride has ruined our self-control, and excessive sex our health. Intoxication has destroyed our mercy, lying has obscured the truth, and peace has given way to war.
Kali’s spirit of quarrel and hypocrisy pervades even religion, whose mere lip-servers repulse as many as they attract and give God a bad name. Even before church picnics, hayrides, and bingo parties introduce many of us to drinking, sex, and gambling, Kali confirms us as meat-eaters by serving us the flesh of cows. How often have we drunk the cow’s milk with one hand and eaten her flesh with the other?
“One who, being fully satisfied by milk, is desirous of killing the cow, is in the grossest ignorance,” writes Srila Prabhupada, the founder and spiritual guide of the Hare Krishna movement. “We drink cows’ milk; therefore the cow is our mother. And Lord Krishna has created the bull to produce grains for our maintenance; therefore he is our father. Since the bull and cow are our father and mother, how can we kill and eat them? What kind of civilization is this?”
The simple truth of this challenge is lost to most of us. Recently, the American Dairy Association awarded McDonald’s, the world’s largest restaurant organization, the use of its “REAL” seal, which helps customers distinguish dairy foods from imitations. But Lord Krishna’s instructions in the Bhagavad-gita to protect the cow expose the A.D.A. as an imitation dairy association. Why? Because along with an annual 120 million cartons of real milk, 380 million real milk shakes, and 300 million soft-serve ice cream cones and sundaes, McDonald’s has handled enough real cow’s flesh over the years to sell upwards of 45 billion hamburgers. In other words, instead of protecting the cow, Kali’s dairyman is in cahoots with the slaughterhouse.
It is ignorance that compels us to slaughter from 35 to 40 million cows a year. When we buy the nicely-wrapped meat in the market, we have no idea of the suffering we are bringing ourselves by this act. Srila Prabhupada explains:
In this Age of Kali, the propensity for mercy is almost nil. Consequently, there is always fighting and wars between men and nations. Men do not understand that because they unrestrictedly kill so many animals, they also must be slaughtered like animals in big wars. Sometimes during war, soldiers keep their enemies in concentration camps and kill them in very cruel ways. These are reactions brought about by unrestricted animal-killing in the slaughterhouse. As long as human society continues to allow cows to be regularly killed in slaughterhouses, there cannot be any question of peace and prosperity.
