KCB: Introduction

You'll notice in Great Vegetarian Dishes' full and inviting Directory of Recipes quite a number of tantalizing Indian recipes South Indian Sweet-and-Sour Tamarind Rice, Gujarati Yogurt Soup, Rajasthani Spicy Dal-Stuffed Bread, North Indian Curried Cauliflower and Potato, and many others.

There's a good reason for that. The inspiration for this superbly conceived and lavishly illustrated international vegetarian cookbook comes from the timeless spiritual philosophy of India, especially as it is represented in the enduring books of Vedic knowledge such as the Bhagavad-gita.

The author of the recipes, in addition to being an expert vegetarian cook, has long practiced the yoga most highly recommended in the Gitabhakti-yoga, the yoga of devotion.

Kurma knows well that in order to experience the optimum spiritual rewards of yoga or even to stay fit and healthy one should eat properly. And with humor, patience, and enthusiasm he has successfully communicated that essential bit of knowledge to a growing and appreciative world-wide audience.

It's a message Kurma learned from his spiritual master (and mine), His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1896-1977), who introduced bhakti-yoga to the world outside India, starting with his arrival in the United States in 1965.

Srila Prabhupada's lucid translations of Sanskrit and Bengali classics on bhakti-yoga gained him a reputation among scholars. But it was Srila Prabhupada's cooking that most endeared him to his original followers in New York City's Lower East Side. In his first storefront temple and ashram, Srila Prabhupada trained his disciples not only in the teachings of Bhagavad-gita, but in the art of India's spiritual vegetarian cooking. Needless to say, everyone thoroughly enjoyed these lessons especially the final test of tasting.

Since those early days, the movement Srila Prabhupada founded has grown impressively to a world-wide network of hundreds of temples, farm communities, and restaurants, which together provide millions of spiritual vegetarian meals each year. The delighted beneficiaries range from patrons of the movement's fine vegetarian restaurants (the newest in Leningrad) to the poor and homeless who receive nutritious free meals from Hare Krishna Food for Life in cities around the world.

As many people are aware, a vegetarian diet is healthy. But it would be a mistake to think that the health benefits of a vegetarian diet have only been recently discovered. I don't want to downplay the many modern medical and scientific reports that show so clearly the links between meat-centered diets and such implacable killers as cancer and heart disease. It's valuable research, and well worth studying. But long, long ago, the Bhagavad-gita identified meat, fish, and eggs as foods harmful to bodily well-being. According to the Gita, such foods "cause distress, misery, and disease."

The Gita recommends food in the mode of goodness vegetarian foods: "Foods dear to those in the mode of goodness increase the duration of life, purify one's existence, and give strength, health, happiness, and satisfaction."

Those are the kinds of food Kurma teaches you to prepare in this book. The Gita says that such foods are "wholesome and pleasing to the heart." What more could one ask?

How about a more livable planet? A vegetarian diet is good for the environment.

The Bhagavad-gita tells us "all living bodies subsist on food grains." Even the consumer of fast-food burgers depends on vegetables for nourishment the vegetables have simply been processed into the flesh of cows.

But getting one's vegetables in that way is harmful for our planet. Rain forests are being destroyed to make way for beef cattle ranches in developing countries.

A meat-centered diet is also wasteful of scarce agricultural resources. These days, most meat is grain-fed, and, just to give one example, it takes 16 pounds of grain to get 1 pound of beef.

A vegetarian diet is a compassionate diet. It involves less pain to our fellow creatures. That humane message is coming to mean more and more to people who love animals. But despite the recent surge of interest in animal rights, concern for animals is not new. For thousands of years the spiritual tradition of India has consistently shown an attitude of ahimsa, or nonviolence toward all things living.

It's nice that so many celebrities have been putting themselves on the line speaking (or singing) out in the many campaigns to convince people to stop wearing fur, to stop eating veal and beef, to stop buying cosmetics tested on animals, and so forth. But there is a more solid and enduring foundation for our concern for God's creatures. That is the remarkable spiritual vision outlined in the Bhagavad-gita. Fashions in causes may change, but genuine commitment founded on real knowledge remains unshakeable in all circumstances.

Lord Krishna says in the Gita: "The humble sages, by virtue of true knowledge, see with equal vision a learned and gentle brahmana, a cow, an elephant, a dog, and a dog-eater [outcaste]." This vision of equality is the key to respect for all life. Animals have souls too.

True knowledge enlightens us to the fact that violence against animals is not simply a matter of abstract ethics. According to the Vedas, the spiritual texts of ancient India, one who kills animals directly or indirectly (by purchasing meat, for example) will experience a definite reaction something more than moral qualms and pangs of conscience.

The destined reaction may not come immediately, but eventually it will, in the form of disease, accident, or violence. What goes around comes around in this case, pain and suffering. This unrelenting cycle of action and reaction is called "the wheel of karma," and eating meat is definitely bad karma.

Now that naturally gives rise to this question what about plants? Aren't vegetarians getting karma for killing them? The answer is yes.

Of course, in many cases, you don't have to kill the plant in order to take the part we use for food. For example, you can pick a tomato without killing the tomato plant. But there is still some karma to be had for that. How would you like some creature taking part of you for food?

And in many cases you do have to kill the plant. The question then remains what about the karma?

To get free from the karma is possible. But you must go beyond ordinary vegetarianism to spiritual vegetarianism, and the Bhagavad-gita tells how to do it. The underlying principle of spiritual vegetarianism is that everything in the universe is part of the energy of God. This means that everything including food should be used in connection with God. This is called sacrifice.

By sacrifice I mean the attitude of doing something for the sake of someone else. For example, a mother sacrifices for her children. She does things for them, to make them happy. One kind of sacrifice is to prepare food for others. It takes time and energy to shop for ingredients, to cook, wash, and so on. It's an act of love. The opposite of selfishness.

So the Bhagavad-gita recommends that we perform the sacrifice of cooking for God, Krishna: "The devotees of the Lord are released from all kinds of sins because they eat food which is offered first for sacrifice. Others, who prepare food for personal sense enjoyment, verily eat only sin."

In other words, if one prepares vegetarian food as a sacrifice to Krishna, one stays free from karma. Since God is all-powerful, He can transform the material energy of karma into spiritual energy.

At this point, I should say a few words about Krishna. According to the Gita, there is one God, who is the creator of all things, material and spiritual. That God is known by many names in different parts of the world. One God, different names. Most of these names refer to God as the creator, the most powerful being, and so forth. These names are somewhat impersonal, in the sense that titles such as "king", "president", and "commander-in-chief" are impersonal. They designate the post but don't name the specific person who holds the post.

Ultimately, however, there is a person who occupies the post of God, and He has intimate, personal names. Krishna is one of these personal names, and it means "all-attractive." Krishna is the person who is God.

According to the Vedas, Krishna periodically descends from the spiritual world to this material world, sometimes in His original personal form and sometimes in other personal forms, such as Buddha. The most recent avatara, or incarnation, of Krishna was Lord Chaitanya, who appeared in India about five centuries ago and taught love of God by His own example.

Can foods other than vegetarian be offered to Krishna? In Bhagavad-gita Krishna says: "If one offers Me with love and devotion a leaf, a flower, fruit, or water, I will accept it. " He does not say He will accept non-vegetarian foods, such as meat, fish, and eggs. He specifies vegetarian items.

But even more important, Krishna asks for love and devotion. These are the most essential ingredients in the vegetarian offerings prepared for His pleasure.

So now that I've explained the philosophy behind preparing vegetarian food as an offering to Krsna, I'll give you specific instructions on how exactly to perform a simple offering.

Let's start with some preliminaries. It's said that cleanliness is next to godliness, so keep a clean kitchen while you're working. Also, don't taste any of your preparations until after you have offered them to Krishna.

Now for the offering itself. First, if you have some hesitation about offering your food specifically to Krishna, then simply offer it to God as you understand Him.

But if you do want to offer your food to Krishna, here is how you can go about it. Somewhere in, your home or kitchen you can make a small altar. On this altar you can place three pictures one of the spiritual master, one of Krishna, and one of Lord Chaitanya. Such pictures are also available from the publisher of this book.

The spiritual master, or guru, serves as Krishna's representative, and it is through the spiritual master that Krishna receives offerings. If you seriously take up the practice of bhakti-yoga, you will eventually want to connect yourself with a living spiritual master through initiation. In that case, you would use a picture of your personal spiritual master for offering food. But until that time one may make offerings using a picture of Srila Prabhupada along with pictures of Lord Krishna and Lord Chaitanya.

For the purposes of offering, it is best to reserve a special plate that is not used for anything else. After you have finished cooking, place a little of each preparation on the plate for offering. Soups and drinks can, of course, go in special cups and bowls reserved for making offerings.

The simplest kind of offering you can make is to place the offering before the pictures of Srila Prabhupada, Krishna, and Lord Chaitanya and simply ask them to please accept it. But the usual procedure is to say some traditional Sanskrit prayers, or mantras. Each of the following four mantras should be softly repeated three times. The English translations do not have to be spoken. I have provided them simply so you will know what the Sanskrit mantras mean.

After chanting these four mantras three times each, you can chant the following mantra, called the maha-mantra, or great mantra, several times:

When the offering is completed, you and your family or guests can enjoy your meal. Be prepared for a nourishing and satisfying taste experience.

When food is offered to Krishna, it becomes transformed. It not only becomes karma-free, it becomes infused with positive spiritual energy. The Sanskrit word for spiritual food offered to Krishna is prasadam, which means "mercy."

Prasadam is especially wonderful, because simply by eating it one can make spiritual advancement. One is freed from karma and experiences spiritual energy and pleasure.

As Lord Chaitanya said five centuries ago: "These ingredients, such as sugar, camphor, black pepper, cardamom, cloves, butter, spices, and licorice, are all material. Everyone has tasted these material substances before. However, in these ingredients there are extraordinary tastes and uncommon fragrances. Just taste them and see the difference in the experience. Apart from the taste, even the fragrance pleases the mind and makes one forget any other sweetness besides its own. Therefore, it is to be understood that the spiritual nectar of Krsna's lips has touched these ordinary ingredients and transferred to them all their spiritual qualities. "