Transfer Maha prasadam question, please help me out....

[Erik]

Hello there,

 

a few months ago, i was asked to do the transfer of the Maha Prasadam in the morning, but because it was difficult to keep up chanting, i was released from this service.

Now i am doing the transfer again, but this time the lunch and i am preparing the fruit offering, washing plates etc...

 

I am confronted with something i don't like and that is this constantly changing of clothes each and every time, i always have to be on the alert not to eat nor drink with clothes on in which i did the transfer with.

Cause then i would be "contaminated".

 

I asked devotees the reason why, but the answers where every time like this : "it is very subtle".

 

Now, i am still wondering what they mean by this, what is subtle ?

Nobody seems to come up with the answer of what this contamination is, how it affects me or affects the parapharanalia (i am sorry, i don't know how to spell this), what is this subtle something they mean, am i dirty then ? What are the mechanics behind it, i know of cleanliness, to be clean, but i want to know why......always....

 

Can somebody please enlighten me a bit with this ?

 

My gratitude is as heavy as a mountain, thankx:) ,

 

Erik.

[brajeshwara das]

I don't know why myself, but I would say because Guru is telling to do it like this, accept it and do it in a mood of service and you will be benefitted. Of course figure it out why if you need, but until then at least it may give you peace of mind and feeling of purpose - because it is service - in the meantime.

[raga]

When you eat, more often than not some food remnants end up touching your cloth, making them what's called ucchista (also called <i>jhuta</i>), something seen as contaminated due to contact with saliva. Such clothes are unfit for use during deity service, cooking and other services requiring full external purity. Were such clothes to touch unoffered or offered but untasted items, they would taint the entirety of the food with the quality of your remnants, and of course it wouldn't be good to serve your remnants to the Vaisnavas.

 

Now, one may think that "certainly nothing touched my cloth this time", but there is always a lingering uncertainty there. Perhaps it did? You will never know which droplets landed where. For complete certainty, a subsequent sense of pristine purity and thereby peace of mind, separate sets of clothes should be used for these purposes. The Lord and the Vaisnavas deserve only the purest, and one of our duties in their service is to ensure the purity is not compromised.

 

In general, prasada that is served to initiated Vaisnavas, and especially to renunciates, should not be handled by the non-initiated, but this is something people do not seem to care about in ISKCON. Food is very vulnerable to influences, even when offered, and purity in eating is essential for the progressive attainment of more and more advanced states of devotional meditation and ecstasy.

[Erik]

Dear Prabhuji's,

 

thankx very much for your kind answers, this morning i woke up, this dream depressed me, i even didn't want to see the good omens in it at the end, i just don't like to change clothes and do all this trouble, my mind was blurred and rebellious and my head was warm and i was in this kind of mood:mad2: , but my mindset has changed, especially after your replies.

This is part of the package, doing things the mind doesn't like...it's in service for Krishna, this is the Kriya part.

 

Now i don't mind anymore, it's weird, i don't have any resentment against this changing of clothes anymore.

Absolutely strange and alien to me how quick my point of view changed, unbelievable.

 

So again, many thankx for your views:pray: .

 

Erik.