Full lecture transcription [link not active yet]

  • For maintenance of dependents one may accept gifts from anybody, but one should not use them for oneself.
  • From one's servant, cowherd, barber and similar shudras who one personally knows one may accept food.
  • When one offers oneself for service one should describe oneself honestly. One who lies about one's qualifications is like a thief who steals himself.

  • One who is dishonest in speech is dishonest in everything.

RETIREMENT

  • After retirement one may dwell in one's own house, or leave it.
  • Shudras are always grihasthas. Vaishyas are brahmacharis and grihasthas. So one may be retired but not exactly vanaprastha.
  • Ideally, one should not die as a grihastha.

TOPIC 11 LAWFUL AND FORBIDDEN FOOD

  • Bhrigu is either the son of Brahma or Varuna in different scriptures. He was the son of Brahma, but lost his body and was later born as son of Varuna.
  • The story of Bhrigu kicking the chest of Vishnu.
  • Reasons why death shortens the life of brahmanas - neglect of study, deviation from proper conduct and duties and eating forbidden food.
  • Garlic, leeks, onions, mushrooms and plants coming from impure substances. Juices from trees, colostrum of a cow. Tree juices are purified by boiling, like date sugar. Trees accepted 1/4th of the reaction of Indra killing brahmana, so their sap is impure.
  • Whatever is cooked but not offered in sacrifice is forbidden. Only prasada is allowed.
  • Only cow and buffalo milk may be used.
  • Too sour food thins the semen. One should not eat foods that have become too sour.
  • Fish is the worst of meats.
  • Stale offered food may still be eaten.
  • Milk, wheat and barley preparations may be eaten after a long time; they are never considered gone bad.
  • Sacrifice of animals is forbidden in the age of Kali, so only rules for avoiding meat apply, not those where meat is allowed.
  • The law of nature is that the weak creatures are subsistence for the strong. Human beings are only meant to eat foods that are offered to the Lord. We are stronger than cabbage therefore we eat them.
  • Those eating animals will always be living like animals i.e. in a state of fear.
  • According to Chinese medicine, onions, garlics, leeks etc destroy different parts of the brain.
  • Ayurveda has injunctions on eating meat for those people who will eat meat anyway.
  • Mushrooms don't have the bad reactions of eating meat, onion, garlic etc, but they are in the mode of ignorance.
  • One should avoid forbidden food by intelligence, not simply because one is repulsed by it.
  • Animal killed in authorized sacrifice is not violence; there is no sin, but still there is reaction.
  • Nonviolence is that which furthers people's spiritual consciousness. Bhagavad-gita is spoken during war, but there is no violence there.
  • If one is not practicing Krishna consciousness, one is violent towards one's soul.
  • Ahimsa means not to check anybody's progress. Killing animals check their progress. Person committing sinful activities are put into various animal species and have to progress through them.
  • Everyone involved in killing and distributing meat is guilty of the same sin.
  • 100 years of ashvamedha sacrifice and being a vegetarian for a lifetime are equal.
  • Even those the animals killed are themselves killers from last lives, it does not mean that killing them is right.
  • Mamsah - I will be devoured by the one whom I kill.

TOPIC 12 PURIFICATION OF MEN AND THINGS

  • Impurity is counted starting from the day, since night is part of the day. If death, delivery etc happens at night, it's counted at previous day.
  • Sapinda relationship ceases with the 7th generation.
  • Death in the family contaminates everyone, but birth only the parents.
  • If people cry at a funeral rite, the dead person has to eat all those tears.
  • Here we get a sample of how by Prabhupada's mercy we are actually saved from so many rules and regulations.
Comments
All comments.
Comments