Question
Good afternoon Guru Maharaja, receive and accept my humblest obeisances and bless my path.
Appreciated Guru, in a publication in local media of Dominican Republic there is a reference to the fast food chain that will have a menu of vegetarian burgers. So, can we, Krishna devotees now visit this type of stores and buy it because now they have a vegetarian product?
Answer
Spiritual standards have different levels. Everything has a first, second, third, fourth etc. option varying according to time, place, and circumstance.
First of all, you should know what is the highest standard, which is to eat (honor) only prasadam cooked by devotees who have received second initiation (we call them brahmanas, but in Vedic society that name would be incorrect) and that has been offered with Tulasi leaves and with love and devotion by devotees with second initiation.
This is the highest standard.
But sometimes, or I should say, unfortunately often, the highest standard can’t be adopted by those not living in temples due to the circumstances of life. Therefore, we have many different levels of standards.
For instance, we should not eat things cooked by materialistic people because our standards for mental and physical cleanliness are different. Also, the consciousness of the cook enters into the food, and we are pursuing a devotional consciousness.
But sometimes (or often) our lives bring us in situations where this high standard is not applicable.
Therefore, for our spiritual lives it is important to know that eating in public places is not good.
Bottomline, we should never eat meat, fish, or take any intoxicants, from tea to the worse drugs, and we should always offer what we will eat to Krishna, even if it is a very simple offering.
So, I don’t know what those “vegetarian burgers” are made of. Check them out very seriously, and see how they are made.
This is a section of the book “A Sidelong Glance”.
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