Should we take food offered at gurudwara if it contains onion-garlic?

Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Shrila Prabhupada Ki Should we take the Basada offered in Gurudwara if it contains onion, garlic, especially if it is served in public, see there are specific practices, there is no universal principle see there is always a factor of time and place circumstance which has to be taken into consideration whenever we whenever we apply a religious principle in our life Srila Prabhupada was once at the house of a devotee an Indian pious family and then they had put onion garlic onion there and the devotee said Prabhupada there is only onion here Prabhupada there is no onion here Prabhupada there is only onion there is no onion Prabhupada there is no onion and the devotee became sad actually there was onion but then what happened for traditional Indian families to have a sadhu come to your house and to feed a sadhu is considered a very secret act and if a sadhu comes to your house and you don’t offer them and the sadhu refuses to take food they feel insulted they feel insulted but they also feel offended it’s a big thing so Prabhupada told the devotees that it was your problem you should have told them in advance that you don’t take onion garlic and they cook this food with devotion with sincerity they are offering it to sadhu if you didn’t tell it to them that is your problem so Prabhupada took that food but he later strongly told the devotees whenever we go and inform people about what we eat we need to be diligent in our practices at the same time we need to be sensitive to others so how to do that particularly in specific situations this should not be taken as a license that in every situation we can eat onion garlic no, the point is in particular situations we can always say that we are following a particular we are taking some medicine because of which we can’t take onion garlic it’s true Krishna Maharshi is also a medicine ultimately so we don’t have to go to the specifics we shouldn’t our principles should never be presented in a way that is going to hurt others but that doesn’t mean that just to not hurt people we compromise our principles we have to find a balance so we can always speak in a sensitive way by which we can serve our needs at the same time we don’t hurt so if we say for medical business I don’t take onion garlic there is some other prasada about it that’s something which you can adjust