namaskaram shivsomashekhar ji
Greetings,
No. While meat is part of their diet, they abstain on holy days, festivals and it is not offered to any form of Vishnu at home or in temples.
So they offer satvic food to the deities , but eat a tamasic diet themselves Why do they do this ?
They do not. The Gita is not the equivalent of the Bible to Vaishnavas, as it is commonly mistaken to be. The rules and regulations for Brahmins (Vaishnava and non-Vaishnava) come from their chosen Grihya sutrasand Dharma shastras (Apastamba, etc). For non-Brahmins, it is just a matter of tradition or what their ancestors followed.
it is not just writen in the Gita this comes from the Ayurveda .
surely if a food is not offerable , we should not eat it , if we do we eat only for our own gratification ?
No such concept exists among most Hindus, including traditional, orthodox Brahmins. In all cases, food to be offered for worship certainly comes with more restrictions than regular food, but the two can be quite different.
then you are saying that only a minority of Hindus follow the recomendations given in the Gita , ...and only a small minority follow Yogic pronciples ?
That is a personal opinion and really has nothing to do with religion. Most people in India who are vegetarians are simply so because they were born into vegetarian families. We will have a few exceptions, of course, but the statement is true for almost every Hindu in India. For Brahmins, of course, there is also the additional guidance in the form of scripture.
no , no , ....not at all , it is not my personal opinion , ...it is very much a part of religion it is Sanatana Dharma , ....it is my Gurus instruction no initiation is given to non vegetarians and no Deity seva , so how could I eat impure foods then come infront of the Deities to perform seva ? ....it is certainly benificial to be born into a Vegetarian fammily but many people choose to become vegetarian of their own free will , I choose long before I came to taking initiation .yes of course there is spscific instructions for Brahmin preists , they must be pure in mind and heart therfore they must follow Satvic diet .
so here we are drawing a line between the committed devotees the aspiring Brahmins , aspiring Preists , aspiring devotees , ...and the lay comunity the cultural Hindus
if you say the majority of Hindus do not follow Shastra this is cultual Hinduism , abstaining from meat only on jayanti's and festival days , ...
so here is the difference those who follow Samskara's and celibrate Holy days we are calling them Vaisnava because this is the tradition which they are born into , ...they worship to recive the Blessings of Visnu , ....then you have comitted Vaisnava , surrendered and devoted , ....who worships out of love , they surrender their lives to Visnu .
her we see that we have cultural Vaisnava'a and Practicing Vaisnava's this is natural , ...
we have this problem here in the UK many Indian families are very strictly observing the principles but the younger generations are not following , they want to be western and eat burgers and drink alcahol so they abstain on days which they will visit the temple because culturaly they still feel Vaisnava , ....but this meet eating is because of the western influence .
where you say that there are areas of Vaisnava who are culturaly meat eaters at home but who will observe a satvic diet when visiting the temple , where did this influence come from , from whom did they aquire this meat eating habit ?
how far in their ancestry does this meat eating go back?
