Jayapataka Swami: I have only heard that if you wear Tulasi beads, you have to be a vegetarian. It would be good if you could also avoid intoxication. Actually by chanting Hare Krsna and engaging in devotional service, that is the highest ecstasy. Why should you depend on something artificial? So, I don’t know which intoxication is capturing you. But it would be good to avoid that. When I was a bhakta in Montreal, there was one new devotee who had joined and he was addicted to smoking. So at that time, Srila Prabhupada was very merciful. He said, alright, you can smoke, reduce the smoking gradually one per day and at the end of the week, it will be zero and then stop. Maybe some habit, you should gradually give it up. And then, you want to be fully absorbed in Krsna consciousness. I look back at those days, I think how I wasted my life and you youth are so fortunate, many of you are born in a family of devotees. Maybe many of you had never had this kind of maya. So that is very fortunate.
26-July-2020 SRIDHAM MAYAPUR, INDIA