Kenneth R. Valpey, "Yoga and Animal Ethics" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025)

Summary

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Podcast Summary

Podcast: New Books Network
Episode: Kenneth R. Valpey, "Yoga and Animal Ethics" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025)
Host: Dr. Raj Balkaran
Guest: Dr. Kenneth R. Valpey
Date: September 25, 2025

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Main Theme

This episode dives into Kenneth R. Valpey’s new book Yoga and Animal Ethics, exploring the intersection between the yogic tradition and contemporary animal ethics. The discussion covers the book's genesis, major arguments, historic and philosophical groundings, as well as its practical implications for both scholars and practitioners of yoga. Dr. Valpey and Dr. Balkaran also reflect on the living traditions and the real-world relevance of this topic amidst today’s global yoga movement.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Genesis of the Book & Series Context

• Backstory:

  • The book grew out of Dr. Valpey’s earlier "Cow Care in Hindu Animal Ethics" (2020), which received significant engagement as an open access publication. (02:07)
  • The new installment shifts focus from the specifically "Hindu" frame to broaden the dialogue, integrating wider yoga traditions and reaching diverse audiences.
  • Editorial encouragement from Andrew Lindsay (Palgrave’s Animal Ethics series) spurred this project.
    • Quote: “The editor of that series…contacted me and said, hey, why don’t you write another book for the series? And I thought, okay. And so this is what, what came out.” — Dr. Kenneth Valpey [02:30]

• Intentions for Impact:

  • Hopes to inspire both scholastic writing and personal, practical transformation towards animal ethics within yoga practice.
  • Emphasizes a gap between textual (scholarly) focus and lived/ethnographic reality, pointing to a need for further study.
    • “I would hope that people would read the book and say, oh yeah, actually I need to do this. …to change my life in a yogic sort of way…recognition…to go from …disregard to the discourse of recognition.” — Dr. Kenneth Valpey [06:29]

The Contemporary Yoga World

• Yogic Culture & Food Ethics:
  • Acknowledges the diversity and complexity in contemporary yoga communities regarding vegetarianism and animal care (09:43)
  • Textual sources such as the Puranas, Mahabharata, and Upanishads deeply inform both the collective imagination and practical ethics of Indian religions, influencing dietary ideals and practices.

Overarching Arguments of the Book

• Four Contributions of Yoga to Animal Ethics:

  1. Attention:
     • The yogic practice of sustained attention, and its implications for caring about non-human animals.
     • “One is the notion of attention, just giving attention, which implies giving care to animals. This is …integral to yoga practice.” — Dr. Kenneth Valpey [14:12]
  2. Discipline:
     • Yoga’s emphasis on self-discipline (Yama, Niyama) as a key to changing behaviors toward animals.
     • “Self discipline is not overly popular in the world today, but…all or a great deal of the tools for self help that you might ever want are already there in these quite early texts.” — Dr. Kenneth Valpey [14:12]
  3. Ontology:
     • The unique ontological views in yoga (especially Patanjali, Bhakti, Buddhist and Jain perspectives) can help redefine “who we are” and “what is an animal.”
     • “Ethical discourse in general and specifically about animals kind of totally sidesteps the issue of who are we and what or who is an animal…yoga ontology can help.” — Dr. Kenneth Valpey [15:19]
  4. Self-transformation:
     • Yoga is fundamentally about transforming oneself, which in turn transforms our ethical relationship to animals.
     • “Self transformation, yoga is very much about really fundamental change of oneself such that one's sense of the world changes…one's experience of other beings in particular nonhuman beings becomes transformed.” — Dr. Kenneth Valpey [16:15]
  • Host Recap:
    • “They were attention … pertain[ing] to concepts such as Dharana, they were discipline such as Yama and Niyama, ontology … thought of Purusha, Atman... orientation towards self transformation of Moksha.” — Dr. Raj Balkaran [17:45]

Historical Antecedents

• From Vedic Sacrifice to Ethical Discomfort:
  • Traces the unease with animal sacrifice in late Vedic India as ritual complexity grew, and the emergence of ascetic challenges.
    • “I try to sketch the history of…the sort of growing discomfort with animal sacrifice…At the same time, more and more questioning is coming of whether this is…bringing what is wanted…It’s a rather complicated story.” — Dr. Kenneth Valpey [18:21]
  • The “double helix” of householder (pravritti) and renouncer (nivritti) traditions as ongoing tension in Indian thought.
    • “At this point, Brahmanical Hinduism and ascetic Hinduism…they’re so integrated. But there is this tacit kind of tension there…” — Dr. Raj Balkaran [23:05]

Confronting Pragmatism, Violence, and Idealism

• Meat-Eating & Modern Industrialization:
  • Questions the current scale of animal consumption compared to ancient patterns and argues for awareness of environmental impact.
    • “Do we have to eat so many animals?...technology made it that…what we may want to agree, we might want to say, yeah, it was natural to now and then have the meat of some animal…All of that disappears by the late 19th century…the meat industrial complex.” — Dr. Kenneth Valpey [24:52]
  • Calls for awareness:
    • “Wherever people are, they could bring more awareness into their diet, whatever that looks like to you…call to awareness of just awareness in general of what you're doing, whether it’s habitual, whether it’s cultural, what is the cost of what you’re doing…” — Dr. Raj Balkaran [29:29]

The Relative Novelty of Indic Animal Ethics in Scholarship

• Endorsements & Gaps:
  • Noted scholars (e.g., Gavin Flood, Rita Sherma) have recognized the importance and novelty of Valpey’s book.
    • “People don’t generally think of Indic thought when they think of the ethics of violence and the ethics of slaughter…but…I’m just so in it in this echo chamber, that it’s…scarcely believable that this isn’t better known…” — Dr. Raj Balkaran [31:37]

Future Directions

• Expanding to Bhakti, Community & Beyond:

  • Exploring the “Hindu Philosophy of Animal Ethics” for a new Oxford volume (ed. Rita Sherma).
  • Interest in “multi-species intentional communities” guided by Bhakti principles.
    • “Bhakti yoga is more of a together, more of a practice in community. So…what about multi species intentional communities with bhakti as a sort of guiding…light?” — Dr. Kenneth Valpey [34:25]

• Personal Synthesis of Bhakti & Jnana:

  • Integrates both intellectual (Jnana) and devotional (Bhakti) strands.
    • “Some might label me a Jnana Mishra bhakta…it's about bringing theism into the discourse…what if we started with animal ethics?” — Dr. Kenneth Valpey [36:33–39:28]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Practical Change:

  • “What would be interesting, I think, is…explore kind of real yogis and what they do…how they act in relation to…non-human animals.” — Dr. Kenneth Valpey [06:29]

• On Yoga’s Relevance to Animal Ethics:

  • "Yoga is very much about really fundamental change of oneself such that one's. Sense of the world changes... as a result one is freed from all sorts of bondage of limited self perceptions. And this is integral to freeing other beings and non human animals." — Dr. Kenneth Valpey [16:15]

• On Past and Present Animal Consumption:

  • “Does it have to be, do you have to eat so much, considering the environmental costs? I don’t think so…if you could do it properly, in such a way that, ritually speaking, you’re following all the rules, then good…as you’re going through that process of sacrifice, it confronts you with what you’re actually doing.” — Dr. Kenneth Valpey [24:52–28:11]

• Personal Reflection:

  • “If I were to consume meat and be completely squeamish at the sight of an animal, it'd be like…not condoning murder, but hiring a hitman…I'm okay to have someone else to do the work for me. I'd be saying, I'm a little more relaxed. That’ll be probably the phase…” — Dr. Raj Balkaran [29:29]

• On Scholarship:

  • "Somebody has to write it and spell it out." — Dr. Kenneth Valpey [32:20]

Story Highlight: The Tale of Jajali

• The Hermit and the Birds (Mahabharata):
  • Jajali, an ascetic, allows birds to build a nest on his head without moving, believing he’s perfected his asceticism; he’s then sent to learn humility and dharma from Tuladhar, an honest merchant. At the end, the birds return and teach him about faith, closing a circle of non-human agency and ethical transformation. (40:13–42:44)
    • “The fun part, at the very end, they call back the birds…they come back and they speak to Jajali and they give him lessons about faith…in this way, Jajali becomes perfect, actually perfected by learning from the birds whom he had sheltered.” — Dr. Kenneth Valpey [41:21–42:44]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Genesis and Motivation for Book: [02:07–06:29]
• Yoga World & Real-life Practices: [09:43–12:09]
• Main Arguments: Yoga’s Four Contributions to Animal Ethics: [12:20–17:45]
• Historical Antecedents: Vedic Sacrifice to Ethical Discomfort: [18:21–24:52]
• Debate: Animals Eating Animals / Meat Industry: [24:52–31:36]
• Indic Ethics—Novelty and Reception: [31:36–32:29]
• Future Scholarship and Directions: [32:44–35:55]
• Bhakti and Intellectual Synthesis: [35:55–39:34]
• Mahabharata Narrative (Jajali and the Birds): [40:13–42:44]

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Tone & Language

The tone is collegial, thoughtful, and reflective, balancing scholarly rigor with personal engagement and occasional humor. Both host and guest show deep familiarity with Indian religious texts and traditions while remaining accessible and self-aware. The language stays true to academic discourse but is peppered with anecdotes, asides, and personal reflections.

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Takeaway

Kenneth Valpey’s Yoga and Animal Ethics is a compelling and innovative exploration of how yogic philosophy and praxis can meaningfully contribute to animal ethics. The conversation highlights yoga’s capacity for fostering attention, self-discipline, ontological reflection, and transformation—qualities urgently needed for reconsidering our relationship with non-human animals. The book stands as a scholarly bridge, but its challenge and invitation are practical, urging both individual and collective re-examination of our roles within the living world.

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Transcript

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[Dr. Kenneth Falfy]

Hello.

[Dr. Raj Balkaran]

And welcome back to the New Books and Indian Religions Podcast, a podcast channel here on the New Books Network. I'm your host, Dr. Raj Balkara and more importantly, I have the pleasure of welcoming back to the podcast today Dr. Kenneth Falfy, to speak on his brand new publication, Yoga and Animal Ethics. Really fascinating reading. Welcome back to the podcast.

[Dr. Kenneth Falfy]

Thank you so much Raj. Nice to be here, I guess.

[Dr. Raj Balkaran]

Yeah, yeah. So you've got to tell us the backstory and sort of the interest in this topic. How did this book emerge? What's the genesis?

[Dr. Kenneth Falfy]

The book emerged in a sense out of the previous book which we talked about I think in BC before COVID Cow Care in Hindu Animal Ethics, which was published in early 2020 with the Palgrave Animal Ethics book series. And you may or may not remember, but that book is open access and it's had, I would say a good number of accesses or downloads. The website says 76,000 as of yesterday, I think. So the editor of that series, the Animal Ethics series, Andrew Lindsey, who invited me to write that book, he contacted me and said, hey, why don't you write another book for the series. And I thought, okay. And so this is what. What came out I wanted to get away from in that first book. It was cowcare and Hindu animal ethics. The word Hindu, you know, it doesn't have so much the popular ring, I would say, as Buddhist. I don't know, maybe that's debatable, but I wanted to get away from that. And in any case, in this book, it's not only Hindu yoga, but I did want to bring these two topics together.

[Dr. Raj Balkaran]

Yeah, I mean, there's so much just in the intro. First of all, I mean, it's. It's always great. Love teaching Hinduism, whether in the university sort of credit courses for undergrads or for adult learners. And, you know, teaching like an ecosystem in a sort of diverse, moving target of religious traditions. It's. It's fascinating. It's as fascinating as it is evasive to teach as a cohesive system, because it's not cohesive. It's profoundly diverse. And also owing to both, I think, the fallacious Western perspective on Indian religions as well as other interested groups. You know, I, too, I think three years ago, perhaps I can't remember when I rebranded this podcast, which was Hindu Studies initially, to Indian religions, which I think alleviates either misperceptions or confusions about what Hindu means, but also creates room for sort of All Things Index. So I can relate to that piece. Um, and as you were chatting, I just looked it up. I. In my magical spreadsheet here, just a basic Excel spreadsheet. They used to process all the podcasts before I send them off to the network. And you were actually, we. We spoke at the very beginning of 2020, so. Right in your very late BC, before the. Before the COVID era BCE. And I think I had done about 20 or so a year. And I just inherited. Recently, you were literally, I think, 20. My personal. My personal 28th. Number. 28th interview at that point. Okay, the. And. And. Which is. Which is interesting. I remember you in India at the time, we were talking about cows, and you're eating like, this is an interesting. This is a great. This is a four. Two. This is an auspicious omen for the start of my 20. 20 year. And. And now I don't even know. I shattered to think of how many I've done. Oh, you are now number 417.

[Dr. Kenneth Falfy]

Well, that's some distinction, I must say. I'll remember that.

[Dr. Raj Balkaran]

That's hilarious. But, yeah, what would you say if you could wave a wand? We'll toggle over the key takeaways. In a moment. But I'd like to do something a little more subtle than the key takeaways. I'd like to talk a little bit about the impact. Clearly this is a topic you care about and I think many who will resonate with the title will care about this topic. What Transformation, change? Would you like to see the book's kind of part? Like, what, what is, what is the. What's the dream? What's the goal with this?

[Dr. Kenneth Falfy]

Yeah, well, I would say on the, on the modest end of the spectrum, I would just like this bringing together as an academic, quote unquote topic, yoga and animal ethics. I'd like it to be sort of a springboard for others to write, to do better. One thing which, you know, this book is holding quite closely to textual sources and I always feel a little bit embarrassed about that because you know what's happening in the real world. So what would be interesting, I think, is for someone to take the next steps and go for some sort of ethnographic work that would explore kind of real yogis and what they do or what they think and how they feel or how they act in relation to various, as I say many times in the book, non human animals. So that would be on the sort of low end or the minimalists side. Naturally, I would hope that people would read the book and say, oh yeah, actually I need to do this. I need to. I need to change my life in a yogic sort of way and in such a way that I get a different. I have a different approach to the world of non human animals, which I have been pretty much keeping away from or ignoring the discourse of recognition, as one scholar, Jacob Quick, calls it, to go from the discourse of disregard to the discourse of recognition. And I was thinking also yoga, you know, it's become kind of household word. It's. There are yoga studios on every street corner. Well, not quite, but they're all over. Lots of people practice some sort of yoga. And for a lot of people who practice yoga, they kind of go, yeah, makes kind of sense to be nice to animals. Maybe I don't need to eat animals, and so on. So I thought, well, let's dig into this and see where the convergence is and see if that'll help to generate more talk in this direction.

[Dr. Raj Balkaran]

Well, there certainly is. The yoga world is now vast. And so because there's so many people doing quote unquote yoga, they're grooming people for whom yoga is fitness or best relaxation. But the top of the pyramid has also grown in that there, there are a great many people who, for whom yoga is a spiritual path of awakening about more of a lifestyle. And I had the good fortune of teaching it up. I wouldn't call it a yoga retreat. It's more maybe if an Indian was in retreat or, uh, we're talking a great deal on the Goddess, which is a topic. And I was doing a bunch of teaching at a place that typically hosts yoga studios. And so their resident chef, who is one of, one of the owners, he's brilliant and what he does and it's all, it's all entirely vegetarian fare. And other people are vegetarians or pescatarians or whatever they are. They're, they're, they're more than happy to enjoy delicious, nourishing vegetarian foods. So there's a great deal of, I think, a growing awareness in, certainly in the, in the yoga culture about some of this. And also one of the comments you made at the outset of your. Of this response surrounding textual work versus real life, real live, lived religion type thing, certainly there is resonance with the distinction between the two. And, and yet with texts that your texts and themes that you're drawing on, like the Puranas, like the Mahabharata, there's so much a part of the Zeitgeist of the imaginary. There's so, I mean, the ways in which the Upanishads react to and the epics sort of integrate. This tension is so much at the heart of, I think, live Hinduism, where you'll have many vegetarian homes, many people who are happy to have a bit of chicken, where they will never win at home. You just have this as sort of in the air type thing.

[Dr. Kenneth Falfy]

Yeah. It's also true that more and more people who see themselves as practicing yoga, as you said, quote unquote, they're starting to read the cortex they're studying. They're taking courses in Patanjali, yoga sutras and so on, Bhagavad Gita and as you mentioned, Mahabharata more broadly and so on. So I'm hoping this book can also address those people.

[Dr. Raj Balkaran]

Absolutely. Let's maybe dive a little bit into the nuts and bolts by keeping it high level. What is the overarching argument or sort of takeaway from book?

[Dr. Kenneth Falfy]

Overarching takeaway. We always want takeaways. Yes. As I say in the introduction to the book, I see in yoga four aspects which I think contribute to the animal ethics discourse. Animal ethics. There's a lot just in this book series of which this book is now a member. There are some 50 titles. And as you probably know, animal studies has become a thing in humanities, but in the area of animal ethics, my sense is, and I've taken this also from some other scholars, there's been lots and lots of talk, a very learned and very good and useful and valuable and appreciable talk about normative ethics, reasoning, logocentric, we might want to say, analysis. And yet, where do we see the big change in the world? I remember years ago it became a concern regarding smoking tobacco and that led to quite some radical changes in people's behavior, at least in the west, in reducing or stopping smoking. I don't know what the statistics are now, but you read about, well, just meat eating. Okay, maybe there are more vegetarians, more vegans. I just heard this morning, I'm presently in Czech Republic. Someone commented to me it's been said there are 88 zero vegetarian or vegan restaurants in Prague, but still that the sum total of the amount of animal flesh that's being consumed as far as I've read, has increased. So I want to say that yoga can contribute four things. One is the notion of attention, just giving attention, which implies giving care to animals. This is very, I would say, integral to yoga practice. And then related to this is the second contribution which is yoga discipline. Now the idea of discipline, self discipline is not overly popular in the world today, but then again, the idea of self help is there. And so in a sense what I want to say is, you know, all the all or a great deal of the tools for self help that you might ever want are already there in these quite early texts. A third element that I think this book is contributing is yoga ontology. Now I'm of course presenting Patanjala yoga ontology, but not exclusively. I'm also, and perhaps for me personally, more interestingly presenting Bhakti ontology, but also Buddhist and Jain ideas are there. But so much of, well, ethical discourse in general and specifically about animals kind of totally sidesteps the issue of who are we and what or who is an animal. It seems to pretty much sidestep. So I think yoga ontology can help. And finally, what I'm calling self transformation, yoga is very much about really fundamental change of oneself such that one's sense of the world changes one's experience of the world and therefore experience of other beings in particular non human beings becomes transformed. And as a result one is, one is freed from all sorts of bondage of limited self perceptions. And this is also integral to freeing other beings and non human animals. So these are the four things I'd like To think this book is offering.

[Dr. Raj Balkaran]

Indeed. And just a brief recap. They were attention pertaining to concepts such as dharananda. They were disciplined, such as Yama and Yama ontology, you know, sort of the thought of Purusha Atman being supreme, and also the orientation towards self transformation of moksha. Okay, so to recap that those listening tell us about the sort of historical antecedents, where do we, you know, what is the backdrop for the emergence of this set of ideas?

[Dr. Kenneth Falfy]

Yes, I talk about this in the first chapter, which is labeled chapter two because the introduction is chapter one for this publisher in which we go back to Vedic, at least late Vedic, times of animal sacrifice. And I trace some of the. I try to sketch the history of, I would call it the sort of growing discomfort with animal sacrifice at the time that animal sacrifice becomes a kind of highly complex technology, sort of roughly, vaguely. At the same time, more and more questioning is coming of whether it's bringing what is wanted, which is elevation and some sort of cosmic participation and cosmic maintenance. And it is a growing interest or a growing sense that what we really want is a permanent solution to the problem of death and rebirth. And it doesn't seem that we're going to get that by sacrificing animals. It's a rather complicated story. So I try to sketch that with all of the different elements in that chapter. And it's something, I don't really use the term, but it's something of a dialogue, I would say, between the Brahmanical orthodox tradition and. And the ascetic tradition. What. What you like to call the. What is it? The double helix of pravriti and nivriti. I don't use your term. I was. I was thinking about this today. Oh. I'm going to be interviewed by Raj Balkaran. And I'm going to have to confess.

[Dr. Raj Balkaran]

Those listening to this podcast realize I play dumb for most of it. I ask these naive questions like, you know, who's Gandhi? And no, no, no. We can hash that out at a conference sometimes.

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[Dr. Raj Balkaran]

But eat it whatever you love it. Yeah, whatever we call it. Clearly I'm by far the first scholar to point out this innate tension. I mean, before I started studying Hinduism formally when I was doing my undergrad, I mean, but this tension is what dragged me into grad school. Then I realized, okay, this is a well noted tension between the householder and the ascetic. But I mean, at this point brahmanical Hinduism and ascetic Hinduism, like where does one end, the other begin? They're so integrated, but there is this tacit kind of tension there. And I think it really flourishes in the Bhagavad Gita where it's masterfully or sophistically in view, integrated therein. But you certainly have the problem of violence in terms of its karmic residue does not ever truly go away unless you're able to do what Krishna spouses in the Bhaviita so it really is, I think, the history of Indian religions has afforded a rich opportunity to confront and discuss and engage a tension that is perennial. When we see everywhere the tension between war and peace and the tension between ideas and pragmatism. And this tension, I can imagine a good faith interlocutor say to you, you know, Mr. Valke, you know, what would you say to the notion that animals have been eating animals for millions of years? And that is. That is innate to the. That is innate to being an animal of which, you know, of which we are a subset. How might you. For those listening who might have that idea in mind.

[Dr. Kenneth Falfy]

Yeah.

[Dr. Raj Balkaran]

What might you see to that?

[Dr. Kenneth Falfy]

First thing I would say is, do we have to. Do we have to eat so many animals? I think, again, statistics would show just the quantity per person in the last, I don't know how many decades has shot up so much more. And what do they say about the meat industry in the 19th century? Refrigeration is what made the slaughter industry suddenly explode in Chicago. The slaughterhouses, because they could refrigerate, and then the railroads, they could transport. So technology made it that. We may want to agree. We might want to say, yeah, it was natural to now and then have the meat of some animal, of course, in much earlier times that we hunted and for which perhaps we had high respect at the same time that we may have hunted them, we may have even asked permission from the animal to kill it for our food and so on. You know, all of that disappears by the late 19th century, and then it continues to accelerate up to the present day, the meat industrial complex. So my first response would be, does it have to be. Do you have to eat so much, considering the environmental costs? I don't think so. Then I would also. There are debates about this, and you can even point to biblical literature and say, well, in the earliest of times, it was expected, everyone was vegetarian. And then Yahweh at one point says, okay, all right, you can't do that. So, you know, he kind of throws up his hands and says, all right, if you have to eat meat, I would also say that it's perhaps an odd way of approaching it, but I think it would kind of align with traditional, perhaps we can say brahmanical Indic tradition that you want to meet. Okay, here's how you do it. First, you have to properly sacrifice the animal. And if you do it properly, which, as you probably know, some texts tell us it's not even possible in the present age, but if you could do it properly in Such a way that, ritually speaking, you're following all the rules, then good, you're good. You can do that. And by that you'll actually get even some pious credit because you're following textual rules, scriptural rules or whatever. And then the logic that goes with that is as you're going through that process of sacrifice, it sort of confronts you with what you're actually doing. The animal is not hidden away in a factory such that all you're getting is some nicely packaged in plastic cellophane. It's no longer your animal. It's only. It's meat. It changes name. It's not like that. You see the animal being slaughtered and you can't help but understand the connection between the living animal and the remains of the animal which you are now consuming. So, yeah, these would be, I think, my initial responses. And then you could talk about health and so many things.

[Dr. Raj Balkaran]

Yeah. That I was raised in a. Mostly, I was born on the coast of the Atlantic, so mostly pescatarian, mild or omnivores, only really red meat. And there came a point when something just clicked in my brain and I went complete veg. I had a pretty decent lifestyle as it was, but then I went total, you know, urban swami for a very long time. Wouldn't even look at an egg. You know, like, I just. And. And part of that for me at the time was I described it to a friend. I said, look, I would be. You know, I could probably do a lot of things in my life being a surgeon or a butcher could not. Would not be among those joyous. I'm squeamish. And I said to this good friend, I said, look, it's like when. If I were to consume meat and be completely squeamish at the sight of an animal, it'd be like, you know, not condoning murder, but hiring a hitman. I'm okay to have someone else to do the work for me at least, as I'm a little more relaxed, that'll be probably a phase, and I'll probably go complete, like a complete veg at some point relatively soon. But it's. It's complicated and interesting and irrespective of what people do, I think call to awareness is really important. Call to awareness of just awareness in general, of what you're doing, whether it's what you want to be doing, whether it's just habitual, whether it's just cultural, you know, what is the cost of what you're doing, whether it's costing the environment, whether it's costing the animal. So I like the more of the dial versus the switch approach. And I think that wherever people are, they could bring more awareness into their diet, whatever that looks like to you. If you want to, you know, be less of a carnivore, more of a pescatarian or, you know, whatever that. Whatever I think works for you in terms of animal ethics. One of the things that I find so intriguing is many of the. What you call them, the folks who provide endorsements for your book. There were a number of endorsements, if I'm not mistaken, from Gavin Flood or from Eddie Bryant and a number of figures. Rita Shermer, actually, I think she wrote the forward, but either way, they note how important.

[Dr. Kenneth Falfy]

Wrote the forward.

[Dr. Raj Balkaran]

Yes. Yeah. But they all note in different ways, allude to or overwrite state the extent to which this is a novel and important book. There's no question. No, no argument. What I find intriguing, because I'm so in it, is that. Wait a minute. Oh, yeah. People don't generally think of indic thought when they think of the ethics of violence and the ethics of slaughter. But I'm thinking that's where my brain is day in and day out. I'm like, there's. There's so much fodder here for thinking about this. On the one hand, I completely see why they're saying, oh, this is a really important contribution. On the other hand, I think I'm just so in it, I mean, this echo chamber, that it's scarcely believable that this isn't better known. I would say in that.

[Dr. Kenneth Falfy]

Yeah, well, somebody has to do it. Somebody has to write it and spell it out.

[Dr. Raj Balkaran]

So to say you spelled it out. Is this work that you hope to continue in some way, given your previous book in this one?

[Dr. Kenneth Falfy]

Well, you mentioned Rita Sharma. We made a deal. She would write the foreword for this book and I would write a chapter for a book that she's editing.

[Dr. Raj Balkaran]

You Bartered expertise. I love it.

[Dr. Kenneth Falfy]

So she's doing, you know, there's this Oxford History of Hinduism, several volumes Gavin Flood is editing, and she's editing the volume on the history of philosophy. And she asked me to do a chapter on philosophy, Hindu Philosophy of Animal Ethics. That's going to be pretty much just drawing from. Yeah. Mainly from this book. Maybe also something from the previous book. Beyond that, I've been, you know, as I was writing this book, I came across just so much material where I thought, oh, I really need to read this and read that and understand this more and that more. And I realized I need to Take some time to, I would call it, do some mental and intellectual composting to, you know, to, to read. There's just so much I feel is relevant to all of this that I want to get a deeper sense of. But one direction I'm thinking of possibly maybe sort of. How is that for vagueness?

[Dr. Raj Balkaran]

It sounds very decisive.

[Dr. Kenneth Falfy]

Yes. Is developing this direction of. As you know, I'm mainly into bhakti yoga. That's kind of been my, my practice so many years to develop the notion of bhakti yoga, more which I do in this book, but more in relation to animals and more broadly the area of intentional community. Because, you know, yoga we think of as something you do more or less in isolation, although, you know, yoga studios pack them in, line them up. But it's kind of traditionally, it's kind of an isolated thing. Bhakti, on the other hand, Bhakti yoga is more of a together, more of a practice in community. So there's also been a huge amount written about intentional community. And I'm thinking intentional communities. What about multi species intentional communities with bhakti as this sort of guiding, let's say guiding spiritual light. So that's something I'm playing with a little bit and we'll see where that goes.

[Dr. Raj Balkaran]

That sounds quite interesting. So you mentioned just now that you're so ensconced in the bhakti path and means so much to you and yet certainly this enterprise seems quite. Jnana yoga or intellectual, or seeking intellectual understanding knowledge, if you will. How would you say, how would you characterize interplay between the two? I mean, are you by temperament and intellectual and just a sort of gravity towards bhakti? Is it the other way around? I mean, it seems to be. I mean, clearly there's a, there's a. Yeah. Dual citizenship here, if you will.

[Dr. Kenneth Falfy]

Yes, some might label me a Gyana Mishra Bhakta. What I see for myself is, yes, I, I have this inclination for analysis and so on, but I think it can be used in good ways to, for myself to sort of clarify what is this bhakti tradition all about? It's not just touchy feely, you know, life. And I do try to explore it in this book, chapters seven and eight in particular, also chapter nine. So the last three chapters of the book are quite explicitly about bhakti. And by that I have to say it's about bringing theism into the discourse where again, many people are not so comfortable. They're happy speaking about shakti, about power, and maybe less, less ready to Talk about shakti, man, the possessor of power. And so I find for myself, it makes sense to bring this discussion. What I would say is it's about, broadly speaking, ethics. And it's an interesting reflection to say, what if ethics discourse, normative ethics discourse, instead of making animal ethics an afterthought. You know, if you read books on ethics, they'll maybe have a chapter near the end on animal ethics. What if we started with animal ethics? What if we started with the question, how do we relate with beings of other species? And for me, bringing the bhakti element into it makes possible the notion of what Barbara Holdrege calls the divine body. And if we explore what is meant by divine body, it makes an interesting connection with rethinking what we understand by body. And that opens up to a rethinking of what we understand by animal bodies. So, yeah, I would put it that way.

[Dr. Raj Balkaran]

Fascinating. I think we're probably close for today. I was so tempted to be the cheeky and go off script. Not off script. I never really have a script. But I'm so interested in your thoughts on the Khandova Forest. But I think that might be a teeny bit off topic. Maybe you can chat afterwards. Feel free to comment if you'd like. But on the Khandava forest episode of the Mahabharata.

[Dr. Kenneth Falfy]

Oh, the Khandava.

[Dr. Raj Balkaran]

I mean, recently. I know. Yeah, I know, I know. That's why I'm not going to put you on the spot. It's a fascinating scene, very evocative of Vedic sacrifice. But you do have some really interesting tales from the Mahabharata supporting your thesis.

[Dr. Kenneth Falfy]

My favorite one is the story of Jajali with the nest of birds on his head. Did you read that one?

[Dr. Raj Balkaran]

Indeed. Why don't you close with that or whatever else you'd like to share about?

[Dr. Kenneth Falfy]

Okay, well, this story. This story is in the Mahabharata. And it's telling about a certain ascetic who was very eager to have to realize Dharma. He wanted to realize Dharma. And so he was practicing austerity, very extreme austerity. And he's in the forest and he's simply standing and meditating. And then a bird lands on his head and decides to build a nest on his head. And so Judge just stays put through the whole period of building a nest and having a bird family until the baby birds fly off. And then finally he kind of, I don't know, dusts himself off and says, ha, now I've done it. I've really perfected myself. I've understood Dharma. But then there's a voice, an invisible voice that says, no, sorry, there's somebody much more advanced than you. And his name is Tuladhara and he's in the town. Where was it? Varanasi, maybe. I don't remember. Now you should go and talk with him. So he goes and he meets Tuladar and Tuladar is. He's a merchant, but he's an extremely honest merchant and he's extremely humble. And long story short, Jiajali learns what is genuine humility. And the fun part, at the very end, they call back the birds who had been growing up on his head. And they come back and they speak to Judgalli and they give him lessons about faith, about the necessity of faith. And so in this way, Jojely becomes actually perfected by learning from the birds whom he had sheltered.

[Dr. Raj Balkaran]

There's so many, many resonant narrative themes there. So the Kandava forest itself is this glorious but maniacal sort of devouring of boiling of all these various animals. Arjun, Krishna, help along to feed Agni. You know, there's that dimension. But of course, even within that you got this eye of the hurricane of this, this family of Shanghai, this family of birds that are spared. They're among the very, very few creatures who are spared and they go off and there's a story about them. We also have this very, very common theme of birds, at least for me. One of my objects of studies is the Marcanee Purana and the Markhanipirana at the outset is narrated by four birds. This sort of, this Dwija, you know, apparently bird brain has a very different connotation in the Brahmanaga context. Perhaps an antithetical connotation. Anyhow, we digress. We better close for today. So thank you very much for appearing on the podcast.

[Dr. Kenneth Falfy]

My pleasure so much indeed.

[Dr. Raj Balkaran]

Pleasure, Sal. Ours. For those listening, we have been speaking with Kenneth Alpey on a. A brand new open access publication. Yes, just click the link in your podcast notes and you too will have access to yoga and animal ethics. Until next time, keep well, keep listening, keep reading and keep contemplating the treatment of animals. Take care.