A basic point that sounds revolutionary
Nowadays, it’s quite common for devotees to eat anything from stores and restaurants, as long as it is vegetarian. It was not always like that.
Subscribe to receive new articles by e-mail. It’s free, but if you like, you can pledge a donation:
Nowadays, it’s quite common for devotees to eat anything from stores and restaurants, as long as it is vegetarian. Even in Mayapur, we can frequently see devotees going inside stores and coming out snaking on chips and biscuits without a second thought. Many are surprised when they hear that the original standards established by Śrīla Prabhupāda were actually quite different.
Up to the 1990s (or even earlier in some places), it was actually uncommon for devotees to eat anything that would not be cooked by other devotees. Everything else was called “bhoga”. When I joined, this system was still current. Like others, I also learned like this. This was still the same system that was being followed since the time Śrīla Prabhupāda was present, and was something he was insisting upon.
Śrīla Prabhupāda used to emphasize that we are not vegetarians, but “prasadarians”. According to him, to be a vegetarian is not a very amazing thing. Both vegetarians and meat-eaters kill to eat, and both become entangled in the laws of karma because of it. Apart from that, pigeons, elephants, horses, and other animals are vegetarian; therefore, there is nothing special about being one.
The main point is thus not to just be a vegetarian, but to eat only prasāda. As Krsna explains in the Bhagavad-Gita (6.16): “The devotees of the Lord are released from all kinds of sins because they eat food which is offered first for sacrifice. Others, who prepare food for personal sense enjoyment, verily eat only sin.”
The difficulty with prasāda is that prasāda can only be prepared by devotees. Krsna doesn’t accept any offering made by a non-devotee. To have prasāda, one has to buy natural ingredients, such as fruits, grains, pulses, butter, vegetables, etc., cook them oneself, or get other devotees to cook and offer it to Krsna with devotion. If we buy something from a store, we may chant the mantras, but it will not really become prasāda. By eating this food, we will thus be entangled in the karmic reactions for killing the vegetables.
Apart from being unofferable, food cooked by nondevotees has the potency of affecting our consciousness. On CC Madhya 12.195, Śrīla Prabhupāda mentions: “One should carefully avoid eating food offered by nondevotees. Indeed, a devotee should be very strict in not accepting food from a nondevotee, especially food prepared in restaurants or hotels or on airplanes.”
In another passage, Prabhupāda mentions that “Food prepared by an unclean, sinful woman is extremely infectious. Ajāmila ate such food, and therefore he became sinful.”
It happens that when one cooks, their consciousness is projected into the food, and it affects people who eat it. When a pure devotee cooks, the food will help people also become pure devotees. This was Śrīla Prabhupāda’s strategy at the beginning when he was taking care of his first disciples: by personally cooking and feeding them, he was able to completely change their consciousness and habits in a short period of time. Conversely, however, food cooked by a materialist will infect one with the same grade of consciousness. Śrīla Prabhupāda used to say that food cooked by nondevotees is very infectious since it can easily transmit the same material disease they suffer from.
When we are serious in the spiritual path, we tend to become careful about things that can affect our consciousness, since we understand that without a clean consciousness, it is not possible to peacefully chant the holy names and serve Krsna. When we come to this platform, avoiding food cooked by non-devotees becomes a priority, since we start seeing in practice how the pizza from the restaurant affected our japa the next day. It’s not about blindly following rules, but about protecting ourselves from influences that will make our job of controlling our senses harder.
Different types of food may pose varied levels of threat.
1. At the top of the list would be food directly prepared by non-devotees, such as food from restaurants. One note here is that many restaurants run by devotees nowadays employ cooks who are not devotees, sometimes just workers imported from India, and thus they may also fall into this category, despite the “prasāda” board at the entrance.
2. Industrialized food in general is prepared with the use of machines, and thus, the level of contact is smaller. Most breads and biscuits from markets fall into this category. It’s probably less dangerous than the first category, but should also be avoided if possible.
3. A third category is composed of ingredients prepared in factories, such as condensed milk, tomato sauce, milk products like yogurt and cheese, and so on, that we can use to cook other preparations. Most devotees consider them ok to use, but it depends on how strict you want to be. The main problem with such products is that they are often not very clean. Tomato sauce, for example, is famous for containing parts of insects, since the tomatoes are just crushed together. Cheese is often made using rennet (extracted from the stomachs of slaughtered calves), and commercial yogurts often have gelatin (made from bones) or cochineal dye (made from insects) in them. Many products may also be adulterated. In Russia is common for commercial butter to be adulterated with pig fat, for example.
We came then to the point of convenience. If we decide to avoid all these large categories of foods, how will we eat? What to eat at lunch when we are at work? What to eat during long trips? What to do if I need to stay for some time in a hospital or clinic?
The answer to all these questions will be individual. It’s up to each of us to decide what to do according to the different challenges we face in life; that is why Krsna gave us a brain. There are primary and secondary principles, and we need to decide what to do in different situations after carefully considering them.
If one wants to be strict, however, it is actually very easy to prepare meals even without access to any kind of kitchen or stove. One simple recipe that many devotees follow is to just carry a thermos and an immersion heater. These are two magic items that allow us to prepare food at work, when traveling, in the hospital, or even on a plane or train! How does it work?
We just need to carry the thermos and a supply of dry grains and pulses that cook fast, like buckwheat, white rice, and red lentils. The best combinations are the ones that result in complete protein (like rice and red lentils, or buckwheat by itself), but pasta also works. All you need to do is put the grains or pasta in the thermos (as well as salt, oils, and spices you want to add), and add boiling water. Just keep it closed for two hours and see the magic happening. When you open it will be ready to eat. It is as simple as that.
Hot water is available in many places (even some airports have free hot water dispensers). For all the other places, the immersion heater does the trick. Even if you go to the forest or are taking part in a zombie apocalypse, it may be possible to get hot water by making a small fire.
With this, you can cook anywhere where hot water (or an electrical outlet) is available, which includes even planes and trains. You can do it in the morning and bring the thermos to work, and it will still be warm at lunch time.
By combining the food cooked in the thermos with fruits, nuts, and other natural ingredients that may be available, you can live for weeks when traveling or in any unexpected situation.
People in India who were in contact with Prabhupāda when he was a businessman traveling around the country describe that he was very strict about his food, or eating in temples, or restricting himself to nuts and other uncooked foods, sometimes for days on end. His keeping this as such a high priority shows that it is indeed an important point.
You can also donate using Buy Me a Coffee, PayPal, Wise, Revolut, or bank transfers. There is a separate page with all the links. This helps me enormously to have time to write instead of doing other things to make a living. Thanks!