Should we use sugar made with bone ash?

From Varun Pr:

does sugar was refined with bone char at the time of srila prabhupada?

so iam confused should i kill my enjoyment of eating every time when any thing made of bone char sugar comes before me?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
both can live in it answer the bhagavad gita describes sarvarambha hi doshena dhume naag nirbhav taha that in this world everything all activities are contaminated by sin just as by fault just as fire is covered by smoke so 1848 in the bhagavad gita describes this and so Arjuna is hesitating to kill the enemy soldiers who include his relatives and Krishna is telling him that in general we cannot be entirely free from activities that have some level of faultiness in it so this of course does not warrant a general license for doing all kinds of faulty activities so based on the scriptures Prabhupada has given us the four regulative principles and we follow them so the relevant one over here is no meat eating so certainly food that is directly meat has to be avoided but beyond that how far can we go that is a matter of individual discretion because in our modern society we will have to be in a perpetually paranoid mode constantly fearful if we want to avoid everything that has any kind of contact with meat for example many medicines especially for those who have some bone weaknesses calcium tablets are recommended and these are almost always made using extracts from animal bones and sometimes it is not even specified whether they are made using non-meat, non-flesh components or they are using flesh and meat basically bone sort of components animal products or non-animal products so even if we come to know the regulatory authorities are not so vigilant and sometimes medicines with animal products may not be labelled that way so as to increase their sales especially in countries like India where a significant percentage of the population prefers non-animal products so if a devotee has some bone problems and calcium medicines are required should that devotee take the medicine or not? even if he or she is unable to verify whether the medicine contains any kind of bone or not we have to be practical in these things and we can take the medicines and certainly this principle is of course an example of something that is essential say medicine is essential for recovery and even for survival so now we may argue that there are other issues like say soaps and shaving creams and other such products which may contain some animal products so if that is the case as much as possible we need to try to avoid it and in general if we do a little enquiry we will find out herbal equivalents and there are many iskcon related goshalas and iskcon related natural products who are producing these in a natural way that does not involve any animal products so we can prefer that but again this is not something to be imposed because even according to some sources even many electronic products they have certain coatings and certain foils which may come from animal products we just can’t find it out for each and everything so where we know and it is possible without much difficulty to avoid we try to avoid now coming specifically to the question about sugar yes actually most varieties of commercially available sugar in the final stage go through a processing unit where they are exposed to a steam that comes from burning burning bones of course the processes may vary in different places but in general some kind of coating of that steam that comes from bone usually is there on sugar without that coating the sugar doesn’t look white and shining and if the sugar is of some other colour and is a little dull then people will not purchase that and that’s why most commercial producers to get that white shiny coating use that bone ash so it may or may not be cow bone ash it can be various bones generally whichever bones are easily available and whichever bones can give that colour are used so what can devotees do about these things regarding the question whether this was the practice during Srila Prabhupada’s time this was a practice that was going on in general it’s a standard industrial practice and that is the way by which white colour is given to sugar so one way is to use rock candy if we use what is called in vernacular language as khadi shakkar if we use sugar cubes instead of that powdered sugar or granule sugar granule sugar properly if we use sugar cubes then they don’t have this coating and that may just require a little bit more time or effort to dissolve or mix into whatever sweets we are preparing but from the health point of view also it is much better than the granule sugar other places, so within ISKCON different devotees adopt different policies, some as I said use rock sugar some places they completely avoid the sugar and they either use jaggery or rock candy or whatever and in some places in some temples I won’t go into names and specifics over here in some temples they use they try to link especially in the temples where a large quantity of sugar is required and where the community of devotees also is ready to use a purer variety of sugar then the local temple management links with a nearby sugar production house and tells them that please give us sugar which does not go through this process and these efforts have not been successful in a wide scale but in a few places they have been tried and they have achieved some limited success so this way devotees can try to avoid this particular problem of bone ash but nonetheless it may not be possible to avoid it all the time and if the food is offered to Krishna and it is prasad then certainly we can take it because as Krishna himself has said that ultimately there are faults in everything so just because something is faulty doesn’t mean that we don’t do anything at all where will we stop it as I said there are medicines, there are food products there are so many associated things even electronic products where everything is contaminated by animal products so as devotees we don’t have to become paranoid about these things if we feel ourselves revolted by the thought that these contain animal products then we can make it a rule to avoid it strictly and then naturally strict observance of any kind needs to requires us to pay a price and we may have to avoid all kinds of sweets everywhere but this should not make us look down upon other devotees who are not following these standards and nor should it make us try to impose these standards on others because the acharyas have not recommended this standard for us therefore therefore in the extremes between black and white, there are pure devotional activities like hearing, chanting and worshipping the deities discussing Krishna Katha and there are purely these devotional activities are purely white apart from that the explicitly forbidden activities meat eating, gambling, intoxication, illicit sex, they are totally black so we certainly want to avoid the completely black activities and we want to do the white or pure activities as much as possible within these two broad points, extreme points we have a spectrum which is filled with grey areas now how far a person can go away from the black and stick towards the white that will depend on that person’s individual inclination as well as the facility provided by the social situation over a period of time as the ISKCON devotees communities grow and as devotees engage more and more in occupational duties that foster the traditional way of life this means not only say devotees live in farm communities but devotees take up research and development in various other allied knowledge systems that support the spiritual way of living that hopefully we should be able to move further and further away from the black and come closer and closer to the white till then, as Prabhupada would say we have to make the best use of a bad bargain and not become paranoid about those activities that are not explicitly or entirely forbidden