Regulative Principles

There are four pillars of religion: mercy, truthfulness, austerity and cleanliness. These four pillars are protected by the four regulative principles that must be observed in order to make progress in the path of devotional service. By breaking the four regulative principles, you destroy these pillars and by destroying these pillars you jeopardize your devotional service. The four regulative principles are:

  1. No eating meat, fish, or eggs. Killing animals destroys the quality of mercy. One turns one's body into a graveyard by consuming dead animals. These foods are saturated with the modes of passion and ignorance and therefore cannot be offered to the Lord. A person who eats these foods participates in a conspiracy of violence against helpless animals and thus stops his spiritual progress dead in its tracks.
  2. No gambling. Truthfulness is destroyed by gambling. This is quite obvious. Gambling turns a person into a liar, a cheat. Gambling invariably puts one into anxiety and fuels greed, envy, and anger.
  3. No intoxicants, including tea or coffee or cola’s. Taking intoxicants is physically, mentally and spiritually bad. It destroys the principle of austerity because the reason people take to intoxicants is that they want to avoid their suffering in the material world- they do not want to face that austerity. Drugs, alcohol, and tobacco, as well as any drink or food containing caffeine, cloud the mind, over-stimulate the senses, are addictive and make it impossible to perform devotional service, which by its very definition requires some degree of austerity.
  4. No illicit sex. Cleanliness is destroyed by illicit sex. The scriptures teach that sex is the most powerful force binding us to the material world. Anyone serious about advancing in Krishna consciousness should minimize sex. Actually sex is a materialistic and selfish substitute for pure love. If we awaken our pure love of God, the taste is so blissful that sex becomes a tasteless, trivial act that leaves one empty and unfulfilled.

International Society for Krishna Consciousness - The Hare Krishna Temple
243 Avenue Rd. (at Dupont) - Toronto, Ontario - M5R 2J6
E-Mail: toronto@iskcon.ca - Phone: 416-922-5415 - Fax: 416- 922-1021