Corn

Expressions researched:
"corn" |"corns"

BG Chapters 13 - 18

BG 17.10, Purport:

The purpose of food is to increase the duration of life, purify the mind and aid bodily strength. This is its only purpose. In the past, great authorities selected those foods that best aid health and increase life's duration, such as milk products, sugar, rice, wheat, fruits and vegetables. These foods are very dear to those in the mode of goodness. Some other foods, such as baked corn and molasses, while not very palatable in themselves, can be made pleasant when mixed with milk or other foods. They are then in the mode of goodness. All these foods are pure by nature. They are quite distinct from untouchable things like meat and liquor. Fatty foods, as mentioned in the eighth verse, have no connection with animal fat obtained by slaughter. Animal fat is available in the form of milk, which is the most wonderful of all foods. Milk, butter, cheese and similar products give animal fat in a form which rules out any need for the killing of innocent creatures. It is only through brute mentality that this killing goes on. The civilized method of obtaining needed fat is by milk. Slaughter is the way of subhumans.

Bhagavad-gita As It Is Lectures

Lecture on BG 3.13-16 -- New York, May 23, 1966:

How, from dry grass, vitamins coming out? Nowadays the physician prescribes some artificial vitamins for maintaining your body. Now, what is the vitamin there in the dry grass so that the cow is eating dry grass and giving you nice milk full of vitamins A and D, essential for your life? So these are all wrong theories, that "This contains this vitamin. This contains this." Let them go on. But natural foodstuff which is meant for human being, they are full of vitamins already there by nature's law, by God's wish. So annād bhavanti bhūtāni (BG 3.14).

You will be surprised. When I was family man, I had a servant who was only twenty-two years old. Oh, he was too stout and strong. You see? So one day I asked him that... His name was Buddhu. So I asked him, "Buddhu, what do you take that you are very stout and strong?" He said, "My dear sir, I take only these corns." Corns. You know corns? A corns and it is powdered. The powdered portions used to make bread, and the grain portion he used to cook as rice, and he was taking that. That's all.

Lecture on BG 3.13-16 -- New York, May 23, 1966:

Prabhupāda: Corn.

Devotees: Meal. Cornmeal.

Prabhupāda: Cornmeal, yes. And he was very stout and strong. He was deriving all the vitamins. Because he was poor man, he could not eat any butter or milk or any other things, meat also no, nothing of the sort. He was simply eating... He was drawing, at that time, only twenty-two rupees from me. Twenty-two rupees means... According to your American exchange, it comes to five dollars, five dollars a month, his income. And what he could spend? So he was taking the cheap food. But he was very strong and stout. So whole idea is that these grains, these grains are meant for human being. Coarse grain or fine grain, there are so many varieties of grain, varieties of rice, varieties of dāl, according... Now, the fine rice, the basmati rice... The laborer class... In India, of course, we have got this distinction. They are not satisfied for, with this white rice. They want coarse grain for satisfaction. While gentleman class, they cannot eat coarse grain. They want finer grain. So all these varieties of grains and vegetables and everything is there by nature's arrangement, by God's arrangement.

Philosophy Discussions

Philosophy Discussion on B. F. Skinner:

Prabhupāda: How you can change the social environment?

Śyāmasundara: Those rewards are quantitative. Just like the pigeon gets a certain number of kernels of corn.

Atreya Ṛṣi: (indistinct)

Śyāmasundara: But how do you know? You don't know what he said. Listen to what he said. He said that each time that a criminal avoids doing bad, he is given some advantage, some material advantage.

Devotee: So we understand that material advantage isn't satisfying.

Śyāmasundara: That is the difference between the pigeons and the man. The pigeons are satisfied with a few kernels of corn. They don't want more than they can eat. But a man wants more and more and more.

1974 Conversations and Morning Walks

Morning Walk -- April 14, 1974, Bombay:

Girirāja: "Generally it is seen that one who has risen from a poverty-stricken life and becomes wealthy creates some charitable institution at the end of his life..." (break)

Prabhupāda: ...goes to market and gets some of this... What is called, bhūta bhūta?

Yaśomatīnandana: Corns.

Prabhupāda: Corns. (break)

Dr. Patel: That is why I say that rasanā (tongue) is not so strong as śiṣṇa (genital).

Prabhupāda: No, if you do not allow rasanā to enjoy much, śiṣṇa will be subdued.

Dr. Patel: But still, I mean personally, for myself, I don't have any taste for any food. In fact I have been taking all the food together just like the sannyāsīs and I don't have any taste. But still I have from within me I don't find that form of sex carrying out even though I am a scientist.

Morning Walk -- June 3, 1974, Geneva:

Prabhupāda: That means they have not gone thoroughly. One portion of it.

Karandhara: Well, they have scanners on these satellites which pick up vegetation or life. From hundreds miles away, it will show up on a screen. And they sent it all around the moon, and it hasn't shown any indication of any organic matter or life. They can send this satellite up around the earth planet and they can locate fields of corn, fields of wheat, from hundreds of miles away, just by the way it shows up on these different electronic devices. (break)

Prabhupāda: Take one of these... (break)

Yogeśvara: The vegetables, made of different elements. (break) ...and they say they found indications of elements that were existing at the time of creation that went into the making of the living entities... (end)

1975 Conversations and Morning Walks

Morning Walk -- July 17, 1975, San Francisco:

Prabhupāda: Where is that nature, generating everything? Where is that nature? Show me.

Paramahaṁsa: They give the example of the corn. Corn doesn't have to have a... They say corn produces the seeds as well as the...

Prabhupāda: Then wherefrom the corn came?

Paramahaṁsa: From itself. You see, they theorize that naturally...

Prabhupāda: Theorize, theorize. But we say corn is produced... When the seeds are thrown on the ground, then corns are produced. Wherefrom... The corn is not dropping from the sky.

Paramahaṁsa: Originally, right.

1976 Conversations and Morning Walks

Garden Discussion on Bhagavad-gita Sixteenth Chapter -- June 26, 1976, New Vrindaban:

Prabhupāda: Yes, God's speaking, Kṛṣṇa is speaking.

Dhṛṣṭadyumna: I was studying this nuclear energy in college, thinking that it would save the world. That by the energy they could make bigger tomatoes, bigger corn, and...

Prabhupāda: Bigger deaths. Conclusion is bigger deaths. Everything big. One man was dying, now many hundreds of thousands will die. Bigger deaths. You did not consider it bigger death? Dhṛṣṭadyumna: It was very frustrating, though, because for everything they were trying to do good, they found so many more things bad were coming.

Prabhupāda: That is... Karma jagat means that if you have to raise this house, then you have to cut the wood somewhere. You have to destroy somewhere, and then you can make house. You have to adjust things like that. You cannot create. This house was constructed, created, by destroying somewhere else. Is it not? So where is your creation? Creation is God's creation. He has created everything, and if you want to create, you have to destroy somewhere. That is karma.

Room Conversation -- August 3, 1976, New Mayapur (French farm):

Prabhupāda: Now.

Bhagavān: It was, in July. Extremely hot. And actually our well was one of the only ones functioning in the whole area, and we were watering the crops and everything. Our corn is very nice, very high, and our tomatoes are very good. The barley harvest was five tons.

Prabhupāda: Five times more.

Bhagavān: Five tons of barley we got, from our harvest. It was very nice.

Prabhupāda: Oh.

Bhagavān: Did you get some barley flour?

Prabhupāda: I don't have any.

1977 Conversations and Morning Walks

Conversation on Roof -- February 14, 1977, Mayapura:

Bhavānanda: You wanted that map of the pukura?

Prabhupāda: Hm hm. (break) Cats also do not disturb. But everyone is fully fed and happy. The first problem is eating. So if you produce like tons, this corn alone can feed everyone. It is so nice food. Corn you can smash, and the powder portion you can use as flour, and the portion which is not powder, the hard portion, you can use as rice. And it is more nutritious than flour, wheat flour, and ordinary rice, and very cheap, cheaper than the ordinary rice and cheaper than the ordinary wheat. But you can utilize it—both dāl, bhāta. Vegetable and fat. From milk you get so much fat. Complete food.

Bhavānanda: I was very impressed with that farm when I visited it. Nicest. I saw one little kitten in the barn, and there was milk coming out of the cow's milkbag and it was falling into the kitten's mouth.

Evening Darsana -- February 15, 1977, Mayapura:

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: "ISKCON farm report: Port Royal, Pennsylvania, report for year 1976. ISKCON Incorporated of New York owns a prime farm in Juanita County of Pennsylvania. The land is nearly four hundred acres in size, valued at around five hundred dollars per acre, or two hundred thousand dollars. In addition the buildings on the property consist of the following: barn worth $40,000; outbuildings worth $10,000; calf barn $25,000; equipment $50,000; residential building $45,000; guesthouse and public kitchen and prasāda pavilion $75,000; and silos $20,000. Total, including land, $465,000. The purpose of this land is to produce foodstuffs to meet all the needs of the farm community as well as the needs of our temples in New York, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and Baltimore. Another purpose is to demonstrate the principle of cow protection, as we are strict vegetarians and do not believe in slaughtering cows. Our herd of cows is Brown Swiss, and they are rated amongst the top one percent of dairy cow herds in the United States. All of the cows are pedigreed. Our farm holds fifty milk cows and fifty young cows, heifers. The milk cows milk an average of 40 kilos of milk per day in their first month of lactation and average 25 kilos per day over the whole year. We have 140 acres of crop land and 30 acres of pasture, the balance being woods, primarily hardwood, which is excellent for fuel. On our land we grow not only all the food for the residents but also for the cows. The following is the yield for 1976: corn-200 tons, soybeans-10 tons, barley-10 tons, oats-10 tons..."

Prabhupāda: What do you do with the soybeans?

Room Conversation -- October 9, 1977, Vrndavana:

Tejiyas: They've got some new cows also. One cow is giving twenty liters of milk.

Prabhupāda: So rice and mung.

Tejiyas: Also corn, Śrīla Prabhupāda.

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: Corn.

Prabhupāda: From corn you can make two things: ruṭi and bhāta.

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: Hm. From corn you can make two things: ruṭi, cāpāṭis, and bhāta, or like rice.

Prabhupāda: The villagers will like it very much. You smash it by that ḍheṅki. You know that machine?

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: The ladies jump on it.