Just in the same way that one finds it difficult to give up the eating of The ancient Vedic literature

re of India declares that in this teachers and Vedic literatures, it now becomes prasadam
meat because of habit and conditioning, so, also, the common man finds
it difficult to give up materialistic life due to habit and conditioning.
Heart disease is a concomitant factor to both meat eating and
materialistic life one is a material disease, while the other
is spiritual. In the International Society for Krishna
Consciousness (ISKCON) both forms of heart disease are
wonderfully resolved in one word: prasadam.
Prasadam is a Sanskrit word which literally means the
Lords mercy; prasadam is vegetarian foodstuffs which
are offered to the Supreme Lord with love and devotion.
Bhakti yoga, the process employed by ISKCON, aims at
reawakening our lost sense of God consciousness. The
method and goal are the same: loving devotion toward
the Supreme. Every facet of a Krishna conscious
devotees being, from eating to dressing, becomes a
loving exchange with the Supreme Lord. The rules
governing the preparation of prasadam, therefore, are
very strict: the cook must bathe and put on fresh clothes
before entering the kitchen; the kitchen itself must be
spotless; the cook should never touch his mouth and,
most importantly, he must never taste the preparation
before making the formal offering, with love and
devotion, to Krishna (God). Deep respect and proper
etiquette dictate that God should be the first to relish the
offering. Thus, prasadam, which can be obtained at any
ISKCON Center or offered at home under the direction of
the devotees, is a sumptuous cuisine that is prepared
world we generally find that one living being serves as
food for another. To eat, we will generally kill in some
way. Even a vegetarian must kill to eat his vegetables,
grains and things of that sort. Because animals are less
intelligent, the laws of nature do not hold them
responsible for the killing they natural perform. However,
when a human being kills, he becomes involved in a
complex network of action and reaction. For the suffering
he inflicts, he himself will have to suffer sometime in the
future. For every action there is an equal and opposite
reaction; this is Newtons Third Law of Motion a
physical law.
Still, if one prepares vegetarian food as an offering unto
the Supreme Lord, one becomes exempt from the
reaction imposed by material nature. For example, if one
were to go out and kill somebody on the street, he would
be immediately put in jail as a mad man. However, in one
were to join the army and kill someone on behalf of the
government he is then considered a hero. If ones
activities are sanctioned by the government, then that
same government becomes responsible for that persons
actions. Similarly, Bhagavad-Gita asserts: the devotees
of the Lord are released from all kinds of sins because
they eat food which is offered first in sacrifice. Others,
who prepare food for personal sense enjoyment, verily
eats only sin. (B.G. 3.13) Thus, even a vegetarian (who
doesnt offer to Krishna) is guilty of sin, although his sin
and has great spiritual potency. Such spiritualized food
increases ones duration of life, purifies ones existence,
and give strength, health, happiness, and satisfaction.
Moreover, it nourishes ones transcendental realization.
Therefore you will find that devotees of Krishna distribute
such prasadam to anyone and everyone, as often as
possible.
While vegetarianism affords mankind a greater chance
for survival, Krishna-prasadam guarantees a survival of
greater merit. While vegetarianism may promise us a
future, Krishna-prasadam opens up to us a future of not
only health and happiness but of spiritual awakening.
By taking to the process of Krishna Consciousness, one
can easily overcome the two kinds of heart disease.
For further information:
ISKCON
Amerikalei 184
2000 Antwerpen Phone/fax: 03-216 29 69

under the strictest rules of cleanliness. And because only
fresh vegetarian products are used in such an offering,
one may freely eat to his hearts content without
worrying about material or spiritual heart disease.
Two kinds of
is not as severe as that of a meat-eater.
Neophytes on the path of Bhakti-yoga offer their food to
Krishna according to the instructions of advanced

Prasadam maybe a sweetball (a cooling, pleasant

confection that explodes with flavour), or prasadam can
be a popper (a light, crisp bean wafer); prasadam can
be kheer (a cold, thick milk sweet), or it can be apple
chutney (a delicately seasoned fruit relish); and in
whatever form prasadam appears, it is always Krishnas
mercy. The food is materially wholesome because it is
offered with love and devotion to God.
Actually, God doesnt need to eat; He doesnt need our
meager offering. By definition God is perfectly complete
in Himself. However, just as a father who has already
eaten will appreciate any offering his son will make with
love, God similarly appreciates the devotion with which
we prepare food for Him. The more we fix our
consciousness on pleasing God, the more successful our
offering is. It is not so much the He wants its our love.
devotes whose only interest is to please Krishna. If one
wishes to be purified by rendering transcendental service
to God, he should find out what the Lord wants of him;
heart disease
this is done by consulting the pure devotes who
dedicated their lives to God, and by studying the
revealed Scriptures.
In Bhagavad-Gita, Lord Krishna makes clear what kind of
offering He will accept: If one offers with love and
devotion a leaf, a flower, a fruit or water, I will accept it.
The Case For
Spiritual
(B.G. 9.26) In Srimad Bhagavatam (the ripened fruit of
the Vedic literature), and in Vedic supplementary text, we
find that the Supreme Lords diet is wonderfully
elucidated upon-there are hundreds of thousands of
things to be offered. However, the Lord never asks for
meat, fish, or eggs, and to offer Him these things is
considered an offense.
Vegetarianism
Once the delicious vegetarian foods have been offered to
God, according to the rules and regulations of the great

By Satyaraja Dasa
Based on the teachings of His Divine Grace
A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada
Founder-Acharya of
The International Society for Krishna Consciousness
In the United States of America one person out of every two will die of
heart or related blood vessel disease. An extraordinary statistic, to be
sure. While this short article is certainly not intended to be morbid, it is
mea nt to present the attentive reader with several facts on the
subject of heart disease and its prevention.
Dr. Harriet P. Dustan, President of the American Heart Association and
director of cardiovascular research at the University of Alabama
Medical Center, has disclosed that weakness, fatigue, shortness of
breath and swelling of legs may be signs of advanced heart disease. She
also explains the type of pain one experiences during a heart attack as a
crushing, oppressive kind of pain. Usually its in the middle of the
chest or maybe in the neck or even the inside or the arm. It can be
associated with sweating, breathlessness and general weakness.
Sometimes its in the pit of the stomach.
Heart disease may develop gradually, but is fatal for those who will not
take preventive measures. While heart disease is a serious subject, it is
truly uncanny that the general mass of people remain in a state of total
unawareness as to the actual causes and means of diagnosis, treatment
and rehabilitation of this No. 1 killer. Says Dr. Dustan, the most
important advances in reducing heart disease will come in the area of
prevention. This requires people to take responsibility for maintaining
their own health. Until recently, people werent used to this concept.
Neither were doctors. The Senate Select Committee on Nutrition
recommended an overall decrease in calories for Americans. This
includes a decrease in saturated or animal fats, since the amount of fat in
the diet is believed to effect blood cholesterol level. This can lead to
heart disease.
It has long been said that the way to a mans heart is through his
stomach This way-worn clich has taken on a double meaning as a
result of the extensive research in the field of heart disease. It has
become a well-known fact that heart disease and general blood vessels
disorders are strongly related to the types of food we eat.
Surprisingly, world health statistics consistently show that the nations
which consume the most animal products (meat, fish, and eggs) have
the highest incidence of disease (heart, cancer, etc.) and groups of
vegetarians in different countries have the lowest incidence of disease.
In fact, vegetarians in England have to pay much less for life insurance
than meat-eaters because they are less likely to get heart disease; they
are considered less of a risk by the insurance companies. Further, The
Journal of the American Medical Association reported in 1961 that a
vegetarian diet can prevent 90-97 % of various kinds of heart disease
(thrombo-embolic disease and coronary occlusions). Such facts are
augmented by the statements of such stalwart authorities on the subject
from the late nutritionist Dr. Paavo Airola, who openly taught that a
lacto-vegetarian diet (a non-meat diet which includes dairy products) is
the most suitable diet for modern man, to E.F. Schumacher, the noted
economist who espoused vegetarianism as a most practical diet for
living in harmony with nature in an extremely pragmatic and simple
way. Thus we find an unbelievably compelling argument for a non-meat
diet: undeniable and well-documented evidence that there is correlation
between meat eating and heart disease.
What is it that makes meat eating so harmful to the circulatory system?
The fats of animal flesh, such as cholesterol, do not break down well in
the human body. These fats begin to line the walls of the meat-eaters
blood vessels. With the process of continual accumulation, the opening
inside the vessel gets progressively smaller as the years go by, allowing
less and less blood to flow through. This dangerous condition is called
arteriosclerosis; it places a tremendous burden on the heart, which has
to pump blood to an unnaturally hard degree through clogged and
constricted vessels. As a result high blood pressure, stroke, and heart
attacks occur. Recently, a group of scientists at Harvard found that the
average blood pressure of vegetarians studied was significantly lower
than that of a comparable group of non-vegetarians.
It is now recognized that the nations number one killer, heart disease,
has reached epidemic proportions. More and more physicians (and the
American Heart Association) are deeply concerned about the amount of
meat that the American people are consuming and are trying to sharply
restrict it. Many scientists now recognize that the roughage and fibre of
the average vegetarian diet lowers the level of cholesterol. Dr. U.D.
Register, Chairman of the department of Nutrition at Loma University
in California, describes experiments in which a diet rich in beans,
grains, etc., actually reduced cholesterol, even while the subjects were
eating large amounts of diary products.
Despite the good reasons for a meatless diet, there are those who will
protest: Vegetarian diets are boring; who can live on big, green
salads? But just compare. There are basically five different kinds of
meat and poultry, but 40-50 different kinds of commonly eaten
vegetables, 24 kinds of beans, peas and lentils, 20 different fruits, 12
different nuts, and 9 grains. There are hundreds of thousands of different
recipes one can make using vegetarian food with spices and dairy
products. Most important, by adopting the vegetarian diet, one will
definitely be lessening ones chances of getting any kind of heart
disease.
If one were to taste the sumptuous vegetarian dishes which can easily be
prepared with healthy ingredients and economical practicality, one
could immediately shrug off the eating of meat, with its risk of heart
disease and corollary disadvantages. There are not only health reasons
for the omitting of meat from the diet, but also ecological, economical,
biological, ethical, and spiritual reasons. Anyone can freely research the
subject and find overwhelming evidences in favour of the vegetarian
way of life.
Despite the well-documented research done in regard to vegetarianism
and proper health, however, relatively few are turning to a vegetarian
diet, and heart disease runs amok. Further, the heart disease that is
primarily caused by the eating of meat seems to be indicative of another
type of heart disease: the lack of God consciousness prevalent in the
world today. Interestingly, the root cause of both forms of heart disease
can be cured by the same thing: experiencing a higher taste.
When someone is very young a child one naturally tends to play
with childish toys. When one gets somewhat older, he just as naturally
forsakes his toys and becomes involved in frivolous sports, the opposite
sex, and perhaps even a good education depending on his foresight.
However his youthful toy has become distasteful to him because he has
experienced something higher. He has experienced both, and has
decided to pursue that which gives him more pleasure. It becomes
entirely natural for a young man to shrug off the very thing he once
thought was unsurpassable in his younger days. Similarly, when one
relishes the nectar which naturally comes from a life of spiritual activity,
the inherent superiority of such life becomes evident. Because
spirituality awards such a natural and pristine happiness, the unnatural
and temporal nature of this material sphere becomes apparent.
Five thousand years ago, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Lord Sri
Krishna, said in His Bhagavad-gita:
viay vinivartante
nirhrasya dehina
rasa-varja raso 'py asya
para dv nivartate
One may artificially repress the desire of the senses, although the tastes
for sensual enjoyment remains; but by ceasing such enjoyment,
experiencing a higher taste, one is fixed in consciousness. (B.G. 2.59)
So it is this higher taste that is needed to change ones diet as well as
ones consciousness.
One may argue that interest in God and spiritual matters is not
necessarily higher than materialistic life only different. However, if
we carefully analyze the nature of man, we can see clearly that spiritual
life and inquiry into the nature of God should be the focal point of
human existence.

For example, why is man given superior intelligence over the vast
numbers of lower species? He is obviously given higher intelligence for
a higher purpose. Since eating, sleeping, mating, and defending make up
the entire gamut of animalistic activities, human life, used for those
same ends, simply qualifies as a sort of polished animal life. Mans
intelligence is thus logically intended for a higher purpose. Why is a
highly posted government officer given better facilities for a
comfortable life than an ordinary office clerk? The reason is because he
has to discharge duties of a more responsible nature. If ma n simply
uses his higher intelligence for a sophisticated form of bestial activity,
where is the real difference between man and animal? A dog may sleep
in the street very comfortably, and a man may have a nightmare on his
luxurious Posturepedic mattress. What is the real difference between
animal life and human life? It is the higher taste for that which is
peculiar to the human form. It is the taste for God.