During one of my excursions to North India, I remember in the midst of our sight-seeing expeditions, halfway through the journey our cab driver halted to drink a cup of tea while all the passengers restlessly waited. The worst part was that there was a medical emergency wherein a young girl was feeling breathless and needed to be rushed to the hospital but the driver was derelict, simply due to his addiction to this intoxicant. He could not control his senses and lost his sense of responsibility at that critical moment.
The caffeine in tea and coffee urges a person to consume these intoxicants again and again.
The Vedic scriptures pronounce that intoxication is one of the four pillars of sin. The others are gambling, meat-eating, and illicit sex. We should not have a problem avoiding these sinful activities, but with the influence of Kali-yuga we have become somewhat lax. Most of us know that all of the above are non-religious habits — except when it comes to tea, coffee, or colas.
Practitioners of spirituality do not offer tea to the Lord. Srila Prabhupada - the Founder Acharya of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness wrote in a letter, “Yes, as you have understood, prasadam is offered only from the category of fruits, vegetables, grains, milk products and sugar. This is according to the Bhagavad-gita, wherein Lord Krishna precisely states what He accepts. We have four rules that all my students follow. They do not take any meat, fish, or eggs; no gambling, no intoxicants, including coffee, tea, or cigarettes; and no illicit sex life. Try to follow these four rules, and Krishna will bless you with quick advancement in spiritual life.”
Anything that the Lord does not accept, His devotees reject. Eating food not offered to Him means bondage in the material world. Lord Krishna says in the Bhagavad-gita that the devotees of the Lord are released from all kinds of sins because they eat food which is offered first to Him with love and devotion. Others, who prepare food for personal sense enjoyment, verily eat only sin.
Consuming caffeine degrades our consciousness. A typical family gets up from bed and sips tea, and with tea they either read the newspaper or gossip about mundane affairs. The scriptures recommend that the morning hours are the best time to remember God, perform devotional service, and elevate our consciousness for the day. If we start the day remembering the Lord, the whole day will be spiritual. But if we wake up, drink tea, and fill ourselves with the junk of the material world, we are wasting our valuable morning hours, in which the mode of goodness prevails.
I asked many people why they drink tea or coffee. Most said that it gives them energy to start the day. Research shows, however, that although tea/coffee temporarily increases energy, the body experiences a sudden letdown in activeness after the effect diminishes. The Foods and Nutrition Encyclopedia says, “The reason for the lift is that caffeine stimulates the central nervous system (brain) and promotes the breakdown of glucogen to glucose in the liver, which raises the blood sugar level. However, the elevation of blood glucose may be short lived. Hence they feel a letdown due to a drop in their blood sugar.”
Caffeine makes the body like the hare in the race with the tortoise. The stimulation in caffeine makes the body run. Later the body takes a rest because it cannot function without it. When the body depends on its own strength, it gets much farther.
As with many other drugs, caffeine creates dependency in the body. It also robs the body of nutrients. The stimulation of caffeine has long-term ill-effects and has been implicated in faster ageing, cancer, ulcers, birth defects, heart disease and high blood pressure.
So the question remains how to give up the old habit of drinking tea/ coffee in the morning, at noon, in the evening and at night. The only way to cure the addiction for caffeine is by getting a “higher taste,” a spiritual lift that will counteract the temporary boost one gets with tea.
One gets so much energy serving God that there is no need of a stimulant. Devotees do not consume tea but still they sleep less because they serve the Lord energetically throughout the day. The pleasure of bhakti-yoga, or service to The Lord, is thousands of times greater than the stale material happiness of consuming caffeine.
Chanting is one of the first processes in bhakti-yoga. The holy names of the Lord are nondifferent from Him. Pure chanting of the Lord's names, specifically the maha-mantra: "Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare; Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare", drives out all desires for material sense gratifications. Krishna’s names are like the sun. Any-thing that comes in contact with that sunlight becomes totally pure. So no material desire can stand in front of His holy name.
We need to develop the desire for acquiring a higher taste. The embodied soul may be restricted from sense enjoyment, though the taste for sense objects remains. But, ceasing such engagements by experiencing a higher taste, he is fixed in consciousness.
Unless one is transcendentally situated, it is not possible to cease from sense enjoyment. The process of restriction from sense enjoyment by rules and regulations is something like restricting a diseased person from certain types of eatables. The patient, however, neither likes such restrictions nor loses his taste for eatables. … But one who has tasted the beauty of the Supreme Lord, in the course of his advancement in spirituality, no longer has a taste for dead, material things.
If we artificially restrict ourselves from tea, we will still aspire for that taste. But if someone gives us something better, we will naturally lose our taste for the inferior. If caffeine gives us a lift, devotional service for the Lord gives us unlimited bliss. Let us take a wow to throw away the mundane addiction to caffeine which pulls us down and give way to the higher taste of developing pure love for the Lord
By the way, my aunt has given up drinking tea and coffee after fifty years. So can you!
Now she feels more refreshed, energized and youthful than ever. The secret is that she has now developed 'The Higher Taste'
Article by:
H.G. Mathura Vasi Devi Dasi
(Meghna Choudhury)
E-Counselor
IskconDesireTree
www.iskcondesiretree.com/e-counseling
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