Four Regulative Principles

Anyone can chant anywhere and anytime and get spiritual benefit. At the same time, mantras are more potent when received from a teacher and chanted as part of a process of self-purification. All formal training requires discipline. When we chant the Hare Krishna mantra while avoiding things that intensify our material illusion, we can more easily experience our natural spiritual consciousness.
QT Regs
- The Need for a Regulated Life
- how regulating our behavior can actually enhance our freedom rather than restrict it. - Book: The Four Principles of Freedom
- the effects of vegetarianism, continence, sobriety, and honesty in a spiritual context. - You Bet Your Life
- For anyone interested in spiritual progress, gambling is more than just a harmless amusement. - The Four Enemies of Spiritual Life
-the reader may well find that in the course of presenting this information, I have identified his favorite pastimes. - Celibacy—Exquisite Torture, or a “Yes to God”?
- “If I could just take a girl out on Saturday night, instead of having to sit around here, crawling up the walls, I might not have to smoke!”
We like to quote our sources. This page is based on the following:
- Srimad-Bhagavatam, 1.1.6, Purport:
"The four major vices of Kali-yuga are (1) illicit connection with women [or men], (2) animal slaughter, (3) intoxication, (4) speculative gambling of all sorts."
- Bhagavad-gita, 2.44:
"In the minds of those who are too attached to sense enjoyment and material opulence, and who are bewildered by such things, the resolute determination of devotional service to the Supreme Lord does not take place."
- Bhagavad-gita, 2.59:
"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."
- Bhagavad-gita As It Is, 2.59, Purport:
". . . restrictions are there for the less intelligent neophytes in the spiritual advancement of life, but such restrictions are only good until one actually has a taste for Krishna consciousness. When one is actually Krishna conscious, he automatically loses his taste for pale things."
- Bhagavad-gita, 2.66:
"One who is not connected with the Supreme [in Krishna consciousness] can have neither transcendental intelligence nor a steady mind, without which there is no possibility of peace. And how can there be any happiness without peace?"
- Srimad-Bhagavatam, 9.20.24-26, Purport:
". . .in this age of Kali people all over the world should refrain from the four principles of sinful life—illicit sex, meat-eating, intoxication and gambling—and in a pure state of existence should perform the simple yajna of chanting the Hare Krishna maha-mantra. Then the earth will certainly produce all the necessities for life, and people will be happy economically, politically, socially, religiously and culturally. Everything will be in proper order."
- Path of Perfection, Chapter 8:
"This chanting of Hare Krishna is so potent that through it we will immediately be purified. We should have the determination, however, not to become implicated in further impious activities. Therefore, for those who want to be initiated in this Society for Krishna consciousness, there are four principles: no illicit sex, no intoxication, no meat-eating, and no gambling.
We don't say, "No sex." But we do say, "No illicit sex." If you want sex, get married and have Krishna conscious children. "No intoxication" means not even taking tea or coffee—to say nothing of other intoxicants. And there is no gambling and no meat-eating (including fish and eggs). Simply by following these four basic rules and regulations, one becomes immediately uncontaminated. No further endeavor is necessary. As soon as one joins this Krishna consciousness movement and follows these rules and regulations, material contamination is immediately removed, but one must be careful not to be contaminated again. Therefore these rules and regulations should be followed carefully.
Material contamination begins with these four bad habits, and if we manage to check them, there is no question of contamination. Therefore, as soon as we take to Krishna consciousness, we become free."
- Srimad-Bhagavatam, 10.1.4, Purport:
"The instructions of Bhagavad-gita and the descriptions of Srimad-Bhagavatam are so pleasing that almost anyone suffering from the threefold miseries of material existence will desire to hear the glories of the Lord from these books and thus benefit on the path of liberation. Two classes of men, however, will never be interested in hearing the message of Bhagavad-gita and Srimad-Bhagavatam—those who are determined to commit suicide and those determined to kill cows and other animals for the satisfaction of their own tongues."
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