How often do you do things that are different than animals?
You might think it is a lot – but on closer examination you will find it is not much
- Sleep – animals sleep
- Eat – no
- Sex or mating – nope
- Building homes etc – birds have nests, tigers mark their territory etc
- Study – baby animals Learn from their parents etc. humans do higher studying like study history, maths physics. Much higher than animals but they study too
- Care for loved ones/ animals do it too. Sometimes better than humans
- Earn money – we have to. Can’t survive otherwise. Animals are given food, shelter they just have to hunt it
- Compete with each other – animals do that too . Apes may compete for alpha position etc
- Pray – we don’t know if they privy not. Do they pray to ?
So if you observe, not much different. The quality as humans, which we pursue is significantly higher. The concept remains the same. So evolution has taken us an a significant path of intellectual achievement.
On face value there is no comparison between humans and animals, yet we marvel animals, and are shocked by their communication skills ( dolphins) etc. Dolphins or pet animals learn it language but we struggle to learn theirs
So what can we do differently to show ourselves as different? In our daily activities?
Bharthruhari – one immortal being wrote about this in vairagya shatakam It is worth reading the translation from Sanskrit
So all our pursuits as humans have been towards external world. Animals do that too. But as humans it is not the external accidents that can show our true potential. It is the ability to discover our pure consciousness!
So humans have the golden opportunity to discover their pure consciousness. Doing that we can put our individual mark of achieving something Rest of the stuff- well a little higher than animals.
Bhavin