The Hare Krishna Lifestyle and Philosophy

The devotees seen dancing and chanting in the streets, dressed in traditional Indian robes, are for the most part full-time students of the Hare Krishna movement. The vast majority of followers, however, live and work in the general community, practicing Krishna consciousness in their homes and attending temples on a regular basis.

In order to revive humanity's inherent natural spiritual principles of compassion, truthfulness, cleanliness, and austerity, and to master the mind and the material senses, devotees also follow these four regulations:

• No eating of meat, fish, or eggs
  
• No gambling including lotteries
  
• No illicit sex
  
• No intoxication of any kind, including tobacco, coffee, and tea.

A Philosophy for Everyone

The philosophy of the Hare Krishna movement (a monotheist tradition) is summarised in the following eight points:

1. By sincerely cultivating an authentic spiritual science, we can become free from anxiety and achieve a state of pure, unending, blissful consciousness.

2. Each of us is not the material body but an eternal spirit soul, part and parcel of God (Krishna). As such we are all interrelated through Krishna, our common father.

3. Krishna is eternal, all-knowing, omnipresent, all-powerful, and all-attractive. He is the seed-giving father of all living beings and the sustaining energy of the universe. He is the source all incarnations of God.

4. The Vedas are the oldest scriptures in the world. The essence of the Vedas is found in the Bhagavad-Gita, a literal record of Krishna's word spoken 5,000 years ago. The goal of Vedic knowledge- and of all religions- is to achieve love of God.

5. We can perfectly understand the knowledge of self-realisation through the instructions of a genuine spiritual master- one who is free from selfish motives and whose mind is firmly fixed in meditation on Krishna.

6. All we eat should be first offered to Krishna with a prayer. In this way Krishna accepts the offering and blesses it for our purification.

7. Rather than living in a self-centered way, we should act for the pleasure of Krishna. This is known as bhakti-yoga, the science of devotional service.

8. The most-effective means for achieving God consciousness in this age of Kali, or quarrel and hypocrisy, is to chant the holy names of the Lord:

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