Śrī Narottama dāsa Ṭhākura has sung that persons who do not take to the devotional service of the Lord but are attracted to the process of philosophical speculation and fruitive activities drink the poisonous results of such actions. Such persons eat all kinds of obnoxious things, such as meat, and take pleasure in alcohol and other intoxicants, and after death they are forced to take birth in lower species of life. Materialistic persons generally worship the transient material body and forget the welfare of the spirit soul within the body.
Alcohol
Srimad-Bhagavatam
SB Canto 4
SB 4.19.22, Purport:
The sinful activities forbidden by the śāstras are illicit sex, intoxication, meat-eating and gambling. These so-called sannyāsīs indulge in all these activities. They eat meat and flesh, fish, eggs and just about everything. They sometimes drink with the excuse that without alcohol, fish and meat, it is impossible to remain in the cold countries near the Arctic zone. These sannyāsīs introduce all these sinful activities in the name of serving the poor, and consequently poor animals are cut to pieces and go into the bellies of these sannyāsīs. As described in the following verses, such sannyāsīs are pākhaṇḍīs. Vedic literature states that a person who puts Lord Nārāyaṇa on the level with Lord Śiva or Lord Brahmā immediately becomes a pākhaṇḍī.
SB 4.27.11, Purport:
According to Vedic civilization, the animal-eaters are recommended to sacrifice a goat in the temple of Kālī under certain restrictive rules and regulations and eat the flesh. Similarly, they are recommended to drink wine by worshiping the goddess Caṇḍikā. The purpose is restriction. People have given up all this restriction. Now they are regularly opening wine distilleries and slaughterhouses and indulging in drinking alcohol and eating flesh. A Vaiṣṇava ācārya like Nārada Muni knows very well that persons engaged in such animal-killing in the name of religion are certainly becoming involved in the cycle of birth and death, forgetting the real aim of life: to go home, back to Godhead.
Other Books by Srila Prabhupada
Krsna, The Supreme Personality of Godhead
Lectures
Srimad-Bhagavatam Lectures
Lecture on SB 1.8.52 -- Los Angeles, May 14, 1973:
Prabhupāda: So the Vedic conception is completely different. The... According to modern science, they put things into alcohol to sterilize. Is it not?
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Put alcohol in things.
Prabhupāda: Yes. But it becomes more impure. Anything you put into alcohol, that becomes more impure, according to this. So there are so many things. Our position jīva, is living entity, is pure by nature because it is part and parcel of God, Kṛṣṇa. So we have accumulated so much, so many material things by which we have become impure. And yajñaiḥ. This bhūta-hatyā. Bhūta-hatyā is also recognized here as sinful activities. As wine is sinful or impure—if not sinful, it is impure—bhūta-hatyā, killing of animal, is also sinful activities. So you cannot counteract by performing yajña, because in the yajña there is also another bhūta-hatyā.
Lecture on SB 1.16.10 -- Los Angeles, January 7, 1974:
If one wanted to eat meat, then he would do it hundred miles away secretly. Nobody will know. Or he will go to some rascal hotel. That was the system. Now they are keeping chickens, everyone's roof. This is the advancement, Kali's advancement. And government is giving license, "Yes, you manufacture liquor." Because it is a great profit for government. I know. I had also license to keep in my medical business, this rectified spirit. Rectified spirit means pure alcohol, from which whiskey is made. Absolute alcohol. So I know that the cost of rectified spirit, distilled by the government, was one rupee per gallon. One rupee per gallon. But the same rectified spirit, when turned into liquor by some process, not any very difficult process, just making it coloring or flavoring... The real thing is the rectified spirit.
Lecture on SB 5.5.2 -- London, September 17, 1969:
Prabhupāda: Thursday? Yes. You can arrange with them if they go. Yes. So you make arrangement.
Indian lady: (indistinct)
Prabhupāda: So you are staying this night here? No. You are going? All right. So actually, Caitanya Mahāprabhu delivered such persons. Pāpī-tāpī jata chilo hari-nāme uddhārilo. So why they are called pāpī-tāpī? The pāpīs, the sinful men, they never enjoy. Just like in New York you have seen in Bowery Street, the drunkard... what is called? Alcoholic bumpers? What do they call? What is the name?
Devotee: Bums.
Lecture on SB 6.1.1 -- Melbourne, May 21, 1975:
If one understands the philosophy, what is the meaning of pravṛtti-mārga and what is the meaning of nivṛtti-mārga, and if he is sane man, then he will accept, "Yes." Just like if you go to a physician and you are suffering from a disease, being... Say, just like nowadays there is prominent alcoholic treatment. People are too much addicted to alcohol, and there are so many departmental treatment, even for the priest also. I have seen one ad in a paper that in America there is a hospital where especially the priestly class drunkard, they are treated. (laughter) And five thousand patients are there. (laughter) So if the physician says, "No, no, you give up your drinking habit," then he will be angry. Then how he will be treated?
Lecture on SB 6.1.1 -- Melbourne, May 21, 1975:
Nivṛtti-mārga means stop this way of sense gratification and take to Kṛṣṇa consciousness. That is the way. If you continue your misbehavior, at the same time you want to cure your disease, that is not possible. Just like this alcoholic treatment. They go to the psychiatrist and so experienced... After all, if you do not give up this bad habit, then where is the question of treatment? Where is the question of treatment? That is called... That is explained in the śāstra, hasti-snāna.
Lecture on SB 6.1.1 -- Melbourne, May 21, 1975:
We have created so many anarthas, unwanted things, not required for me as spirit soul, but artificially, for this designation body. So when one is engaged in actual devotional service, then the result will be anartha-nivṛttiḥ. Same nivṛtti. Nivṛtti means finished. It is not that all our students were free from this alcoholic habit or meat-eating or illicit sex, no. They were habituated. But because they have taken to the devotional service, this is all finished. Anartha-nivṛttiḥ syāt. Then spiritual life begins.
Philosophy Discussions
Philosophy Discussion on Jeremy Bentham:
Prabhupāda: But if there is some happiness, why there is no prevention. That is real happiness. There is no prevention, simply go on increasing.
Śyāmasundara: Indulging.
Prabhupāda: Yes. Just like Kṛṣṇa's happiness, there was no prevention. So that is real happiness. Prevention means material, limited. Just like drinking liquor. There is prevention also. There are no-alcoholic beer. You have seen the signboard? That is prevention.
Philosophy Discussion on Jeremy Bentham:
Prabhupāda: No some signboard, you cannot drink even, sitting on their bench. I have seen in New York so many places. So alcohol is very nice happiness, but there is prevention. In your country, the prevention is not so strong. In our country it is very... If one is caught in drunken state, immediately he is taken to the police. Immediately. He is punished. You cannot come on the road in a drunken state. No. You are found in drunken state on the road, you are liable to be arrested. You do everything in your home. Well, in most cities drinking is private.
Conversations and Morning Walks
1968 Conversations and Morning Walks
Radio Interview -- March 12, 1968, San Francisco:
Girl caller: ...Gargamuni Prabhu. All glories to Gargamuni Prabhu! (break)
Interviewer: You believe that sex is only for having children. You do not believe in alcohol or the use of any stimulants.
Prabhupāda: No, that is prohibited.
Interviewer: What do you believe in?
Prabhupāda: We believe in Kṛṣṇa consciousness. We have to purify. Just like this is also a belief, that you will be happy by drinking alcohol. That is your consciousness. I don't believe in that.
1971 Conversations and Morning Walks
Room Conversation -- December 12, 1971, Delhi:
Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: I know, Prabhupāda, that in Seattle you had me lecture on a newspaper clipping that in New Jersey they had opened up one home for alcoholic priests. (laughter)
Prabhupāda: Five thousand, five thousand priests, they are suffering from alcoholism. (indistinct)
Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: Plus here in India we see that the sādhus are taking gañjā.
Prabhupāda: Gañjā, yes. Not sādhus, rogues. Sādhu's description is there—bhajate mām ananya-bhāk. Fully surrendered to Kṛṣṇa, he is sādhu. Sādhur eva sa mantavyaḥ (BG 9.30). He is sādhu. Api cet sudurācāro. Even one is found that his habits are not to the standard, but if he has unflinching faith in Kṛṣṇa and engaged in His service, then he is sādhu. These sādhus with long hairs and gañjā smoking, they have no idea what is the ultimate goal.
1973 Conversations and Morning Walks
Room Conversation with Father Tanner and other guests -- July 11, 1973, London:
Father Tanner: Hm. But, you see, knowledge and attainment aren't the same thing. You know, I may know that it is wrong to be an alcoholic, and maybe I am not actually, physically an alcoholic, but it doesn't mean to say that interiorally I have cleansed myself of all addiction. The fact that you are not drinking for a year doesn't mean to say that you have overcome the intoxicant urge if that is in you, although you know it is wrong.
Prabhupāda: No, this argument is not very strong. Just like one foodstuff, freshly made, it is fresh. But if somebody argues that if it remains four days more, it will become bad, that is surmisation. Now it is fresh. We take it fresh. What will happen in future, that is no consideration. In future, everyone may fall and everyone may become elevated. But we have to take his present situation, what he is at present.
1975 Conversations and Morning Walks
Room Conversation with Carol Cameron -- May 9, 1975, Perth:
Paramahaṁsa: He said that in the (inaudible). Yes. The Bible says that and Christ also spoke that, that the grasses of the fields and the fruits of the trees shall be your meat.
Prabhupāda: Then there is contradiction?
Paramahaṁsa: Yes. The Christians always say that Christ was eating fish and drinking wine, so what problem have we got? Drinking a little alcohol, eating a little meat?
Prabhupāda: Then how did he say that "Thou shall not kill"?
Śrutakīrti: That was actually the Ten Commandments. That was given by God.
Room Conversation with Alcohol and Drug Hospital People -- May 16, 1975, Perth:
Paramahaṁsa: ...to solve the problem of drug and alcohol addiction and, of course, they're concerned with the causes of it and things like that.
Prabhupāda: So you can send all these alcohol and drug patients here and they will be cured. These boys, American and European boys, they were all addicted to alcohol, drugs. Now they have given up. Practical.
Morning Walk -- May 17, 1975, Perth:
Prabhupāda: Dancing is not working? And writing book is not working? Selling book is not working? What is working then? Hm? Like monkey jumping? Yes? That is working?
Amogha: But we are helping people practically like in the hospital or the alcoholics...
Prabhupāda: No, what... How you are helping? Do you think if one goes to hospital he will not die? And how you are helping? You are thinking you are helping.
Room Conversation with Journalist -- May 19, 1975, Melbourne:
Journalist: What about sex and drugs, sex and alcohol.
Prabhupāda: Sex, yes, alcohol, we condemn any kind of intoxication, all our students are forbidden illicit sex. We don't say, "No sex," but "illicit sex," we forbid. Similarly we forbid meat-eating. We don't say that "Don't eat," we simply say that "don't eat meat." You can eat other things, just like we are eating so many nice things.
Room Conversation with Director of Research of the Dept. of Social Welfare -- May 21, 1975, Melbourne:
Prabhupāda: Just like we are having. Because they are chanting and dancing, many outsiders are coming and they are also learning, they are also offering obeisances. And gradually they are offering their service: "Please accept me." The example is better than precept. If you have an ideal group of men, then people will automatically learn. That is wanted. But don't mind, I don't find any ideal group of men. Even in the priests they are going to hospital for their drinking habit. I saw in sometimes before in a hospital, five thousand patients, alcoholic patients, priest. Priest should be ideal character. And they are advocating homosex. So where is the ideal character men? If the priestly class they are going to hospital for drinking habit, and they are allowing man-to-man marriage and homosex, then where is ideal character?
Morning Walk -- June 22, 1975, Los Angeles:
Prabhupāda: What is that factory?
Jayatīrtha: He employs these alcoholics and derelicts in different kinds of work, making things. And he was keeping these people living in this palace, but now he's built another place next door where he keeps them and he has them employed. It's sort of an Alcoholics Anonymous group.
Prabhupāda: Let them chant Hare Kṛṣṇa, and they will be rectified.
Room Conversation with writer, Sandy Nixon -- July 13, 1975, Philadelphia:
Devotee: We're teaching in Kṛṣṇa consciousness how everything can become solved by developing love and devotion for God, Kṛṣṇa. So I...
Prabhupāda: That is the ultimate goal. If you can learn how to love God, then you become perfect, and all other things automatically come.
Devotee: Prabhupāda, because people are not being taught that, in this country there is a great disease of alcoholism.
Prabhupāda: Not in this country, in every country. Why do you say this country or that country?
Devotee: Well, I was saying about alcoholism in particular.
Prabhupāda: No, that is also in India. That is not uncommon. At least, they are learning, by your grace. (laughter) By imitating the western countries, they are learning everything.
Devotee: I was reading. There's a group called A.A., Alcoholic Anonymous, and they have a treatment for curing this disease. And it's the only one that's been successful. And one of the initial steps in achieving success in this method of theirs is that one agrees to the possibility of an ultimate reality or God. And because of that, they've had success in curing alcoholism.
1976 Conversations and Morning Walks
Room Conversation -- June 10, 1976, Los Angeles:
Prabhupāda: The physical life is struggle for existence.
Richard: Is a struggle for existence. Why is...? Why, if a man who is an alcoholic, if that's the best that he can make of life, why is that bad?
Prabhupāda: That is not.... He's wrongly, he's going in the wrong path.
Richard: Well, if that's the best that he can do.
Prabhupāda: He can think.
Morning Walk -- June 15, 1976, Detroit:
Prabhupāda: Who cares for it? (laughter) Wine is highly taxed in India. When I was manager in Dr. Bose's laboratory, he was manufacturing alcohol(?) for medicinal purposes. The cost was one rupee eight annas per gallon. The government was levying duty. For medicinal purpose, five rupees per gallon, whereas purchasing liquor, fifty-eight. The government would take profit out of it, fifty-eight rupees.
Conversation with Clergymen -- June 15, 1976, Detroit:
Kern: Doctor, do you recruit people to come?
Prabhupāda: Yes, we are inviting everyone come. We have no such distinction.
Kern: I have four young alcoholics I'd like to send over.
Prabhupāda: No, these boys and girls are not imported from India, recruited. They are recruited here. I came alone. They are all recruited. I have got so many centers all over the world. They are simply recruited.
Scheverman: Your asceticism, your way of life, your training program, having its Eastern origins, has a great appeal, I think, for many young people.
Prabhupāda: It is not Eastern, Western. It is the life. Just like to become peaceful, is it Eastern or Western? Peaceful is peaceful. Why do you bring Eastern?
Evening Conversation -- August 8, 1976, Tehran:
Jñānagamya: Yes, I was working for USIS, U.S. Information Service and I had a commission to paint a large picture of this Mars landing ship, and they had information coming back that they were finding a long blockhouse with a big crater in the center, like a building that had been bombed. Fourteen kilometer crater. They had a picture like that. It appeared to be a building. So they are all cheaters. I used to live in Florida where they send up these, they are all drunkards. They drink alcohol, very unserious.
Prabhupāda: Oh, then they can manufacture. All drunkards, they are in charge of this fighting.
Atreya Ṛṣi: So Śrīla Prabhupāda, if there are some visitors, can they come up?
Prabhupāda: Yes.
1977 Conversations and Morning Walks
Room Conversation -- February 3, 1977, Bhuvanesvara:
Hari-śauri: Well, it mentions that they distributed foodstuffs to a lot of people, fish and bread, 'cause that's all that was available.
Prabhupāda: Yes, what can be done?
Hari-śauri: And because it wasn't always easy to get good water, there's a very cheap kind of wine. It's not actually very alcoholic. It's very, very cheap. Then they used to drink that because there's no good water.
Prabhupāda: That is not plea that we shall drink bottle after bottle.
Hari-śauri: Yes. (laughs) Catholic priests, they have a big stock in their cabinets, so much wine.
Prabhupāda: If they want to be reformed, we can reform them. On the basis of Bible, we can reform them. There is no difficulty.
Correspondence
1969 Correspondence
Letter to Syama -- Los Angeles 21 February, 1969:
Regarding the ailments with your finger, I am describing here a treatment for it. Take turmeric powder and add the same quantity of limestone. Then mix with water and boil it to a paste. Then apply that paste while it is hot. I understand that Hayagriva had some backache so for him you take one part of a crushed to a powder red-pepper and add to it five parts of rubbing alcohol. Keep this for twenty four hours, then strain and add one part camphor. When it is mixed, just apply it on the painful part of the back three times daily.
Letter to Official (for Madhudvisa) -- Los Angeles 15 March, 1969:
He is presently studying the Bhagavad-gita and the Srimad-Bhagavatam and other Vedic scriptures under strict discipline and regulation. As such, he is forbidden to indulge in the following activities:
1. Illicit sexual connection (unmarried sex indulgence).
2. Non vegetarian diet (the eating of meat, fish eggs, and all animal foods strictly forbidden).
3. Intoxication of all sorts (including smoking, drinking of alcoholic beverages, drinking tea, coffee, drugs, etc.) are strictly forbidden.
Letter to Selective Service System (for Tosana Krsna) -- Hawaii 20 March, 1969:
MY INITIATED STUDENTS ARE STRICTLY FORBIDDEN TO INDULGE in the following principles of degradation: (1) All forms of intoxication, including coffee, tea, cigarettes, drugs, alcohol, etc. (2) The eating of animal foods, such as meat, fish, and eggs. Rather, their diet consists of Prasadam, especially offered foodstuffs (vegetarian), (3) Unmarried sex indulgence, (4) Gambling, or idle sports of any sort. Their lives are dedicated to serving God, and as such, they have no time to squander on unbeneficial activities or non-Godly activities.
1970 Correspondence
Letter to Umapati -- Los Angeles 30 March, 1970:
I have also received the newspaper cutting in which the picture of George has come out and it appears to be very nice because he has taken to chanting Hare Krsna Mantra along with you. Actually he has done some service to the cause of Krsna Consciousness, therefore he must make progress in his spiritual advancement. The heading "An Anti-Alcoholic Beatle at Maxim's"—does it mean that George has given up alcohol? Anyway, I am pleased with his dealing with us and I pray to Krsna that he shall make more and more advancement in Krsna Consciousness.
Letter to Nevatiaji -- Los Angeles 16 July, 1970:
All the devotees strictly follow our regulative principle of 1) no eating of meat, fish or eggs, 2) no illicit sex-life, 3) no taking of intoxicants including coffee, tea, tobacco and alcohol, and 4) no gambling. In each center we have a president, secretary and treasurer who manage the local affairs.
1976 Correspondence
Letter to Elaine -- Mayapur 1 February, 1976:
Spiritual life means to become pure, and chanting Hare Krishna will automatically make you pure. But just as when a physician prescribes a certain medicine, he also describes the conditions under which the medicine will be most effective. Similarly, the chanting will have the most effect if you can abide by the principles of purified living: First, no eating of meat, fish, or eggs. Second, no gambling. Third, no taking of any kinds of intoxicants such as drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, coffee or tea. And fourth, no illicit sex life, which means sex life only within marriage and then only for the purpose of procreating Krishna Conscious children. If you can follow these principles and chant Hare Krishna, you will make great spiritual advancement.
| Page Title: | Alcohol |
| Compiler: | Mangalavati, Serene, Alakananda |
| Created: | 24 of May, 2011 |
| Totals by Section: | BG=0, SB=2, CC=0, OB=1, Lec=8, Con=16, Let=6 |
| No. of Quotes: | 33 |