What about killing plants?

We can understand that we should not kill animals, even for eating, since animals are souls and experience great suffering when killed. What about plants, since they are also souls?

In the Bhagavad-Gita, Krishna explains that the soul is present everywhere. Prabhupada explains that this means that there are souls living everywhere in the universe, even in seemingly improbable places, like the sun. The soul is not sterilized by fire or any other material condition, therefore wherever it goes, the soul just creates a body for himself using the available material material elements. In the sun, the soul will just create a body made out of plasma or other subtle elements, fit to live there.

Souls are also found in all forms of life. This means souls are present even in the bodies of plants, microbes, and so on. Matter by itself can't show symptoms of life or consciousness. Whenever there is life, it means there is a soul there, suffering and enjoying the conditions of that particular body.

Considering that the soul is spiritual and is originally part of Krishna's spiritual energy, it may be dificult to believe a soul can fall so low up to the point of becoming a plant of microbe, but this shows how serious are the choices we make in human life. The material creation exists not just as a playground for the illusioned souls but also as a place where we can have a chance to recover our original spiritual consciousness and return to our original spiritual nature. The difficulty is that the more we become sinful and materialistic, the more we become far from it. The material world is just like a pool of quicksand, and once we fall into it, the tendency is that we just become more and more degraded following insatiable material desires.

That’s not Krishna’s fault. He creates the material world as a place where everyone can live happily and gradually progress in spiritual realization. See for example what he mentions in the third chapter of the Bhagavad-Gita:

"In the beginning of creation, the Lord of all creatures sent forth generations of men and demigods, along with sacrifices for Viṣṇu, and blessed them by saying, “Be thou happy by this yajña [sacrifice] because its performance will bestow upon you everything desirable for living happily and achieving liberation.” The demigods, being pleased by sacrifices, will also please you, and thus, by cooperation between men and demigods, prosperity will reign for all."

The problem is that we may refuse to follow this divine order and instead create pain and misery for other living entities in our pursuit of personal gratification. History is full of tyrants and dictators who created great suffering for others. The more one goes on this path, the harder it is to go back. At a certain point, such a soul becomes incorrigible. There are then only three possible paths for redemption:

a) One can become such a great demon that he may be liberated by being killed by Krishna.

b) One can become a great Mayavadi or impersonalist and achieve impersonal liberation

c) One can become so sinful that he goes to hell.

Krishna killing demons is His ultimate mercy upon them, freeing the soul from his sinful coverings and absorbing him on His personal effulgence, where they can live in peace for some time. Because the impersonal brahmajoti is not the original position of the soul, one may eventually come back, but when these souls fall back into the material world, they start again as demigods or pious people, from where they have the opportunity to become devotees and develop their devotional service.

Mayavadis and other types of impersonalists go on a similar path. Just like the demons, they envy Krishna and thus can't accept the path of devotional service to Him. They can't even accept Him as a person, trying instead to reduce Him to an impersonal mass. Still, if they can follow some kind of spiritual sadhana, they can eventually attain impersonal liberation, where they become purified and can eventually fall back to the material world as a demigod or pious person and find their path.

What about the third path? What happens when a very sinful soul goes to hell? Basically, this material identity is destroyed. The Yamadutas impose such harsh punishments upon such a person that the consciousness is practically destroyed. The soul is, of course, never destroyed, but the material identity with which the soul identifies is. The consciousness thus degrades to the level of a microbe or plant and from there is put low in the evolutive process, starting from such a low body and from there gradually progressing, migrating through the 8,400,000 forms of life and thus gradually evolving back to the human form, in a process that can take trillions of years. In this way, a new consciousness is gradually formed, and when the soul has again the chance to take a new human form, he has the opportunity to make the right choices, becoming a devotee, or at least a pious person. This is a fictional story about a sinful person who goes through this path.

It's important to understand this path so we don't fall into it. Every time we see a plant or lower animal, we can understand that this is a soul who once made this mistake, going down this sinful path, and is now gradually progressing back in the long path back to the human form of life.

What about killing plants? We can understand that we should not kill animals, even for eating, since animals are souls and experience great suffering when killed. What about plants, since they are also souls? Because they have less developed bodies, they don't suffer as much as evolved animals and human beings, but it is also not right to kill them.

In the Srimad Bhagavatam, one of the factors recommended by Lord Kapila for spiritual practice is "nātihiṁsreṇa", without excessive violence. Some violence may be necessary in the course of our ordinary duties, since a Ksatriya may have to fight, a Vaishya has to kill many plants to produce food, and so on, but one should be attentive to minimize such unavoidable violence to a minimum, maintaining the general principle of non-violence. No one can live without killing, since the material world works under the principle that one living entity is the food for another. To continue living we always have to eat someone, therefore, Krishna recommends in the Bhagavad-Gita:

"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 principle of offering our food to Krishna, eating only His prasāda, food offered in sacrifice is essential. Eating anything that is not offered to Krishna implicates us in the reactions of killing and prolongs our stay in the material world. Although much less severe than killing animals, killing vegetables is also sinful. The only solution for eating without getting involved in the reactions of such killing is eating only food offered to Krishna.

Apart from performing one's occupation as an offering to the Lord, temple worship is also essential. Temple worship is recommended to both the neophyte and the advanced devotee. The main difference is not the activity, but the mentality and the quality of worship. A neophyte worships as a matter of duty or routine, and he sees the deity in the temple as a representation of the Lord. An advanced devotee however sees the deity as the Lord Himself, and this opens the doors to establishing a real relationship with the Lord in love. Again, what changes as we advance is our mentality and not so much the external activity.

It's possible to become Krishna-conscious in one second, but for most of us, that's a process that takes some time. We should thus practice our devotional service with great patience. Even if we can't obtain the desired result as fast as we would desire, and even if there are impediments that may appear unsurmountable, we should continue. As Prabhupada mentions, we should have the confidence that Krishna will accept us because we are engaged in devotional service. As long as we continue executing devotional service according to the rules and regulations, our success is assured.