VEDANTA SUTRAS:

With regard to the method and the means of bhakti yoga we read in the commentary of Bhagavan Ramanuja on the Vedanta Sutras: 'The attaining of bhakti comes through discrimination, controlling the passion, practice, sacrificial work, purity, strength, and suppression of excessive joy.'

Viveka, or discrimination, is, according to Ramanuja, discriminating, among other things, pure food from the impure. 'When the food is pure the sattva element gets purified and the memory becomes unwavering.'

The question of food has always been one of the most vital with the bhaktas. Apart from the extrvagance into which some of the bhakti sects have run, there is a great truth underlying this question of food. The materials which we receive through our food into our body structure go a great way to determine our mental constitution; therefore the food we eat has to be particularly taken care of.

This discrimination of food is, after all, of secondary importance. The very same passage quoted above is explained by Shankara in a different way, by giving an entirely different meaning to the word AHARA, translated generally as 'food'. According to him, 'That which is gathered in is Ahara. The knowledge of the various sensations such as sound, is gathered in for the enjoyment of the enjoyer; the purification of this knowledge gathered in by the senses is called the purification of the food (ahara). The purification of food means the acquiring of the knowledge of sensations untouched by the defects of attachment, aversion, and delusion. Such is the meaning. Therefore such knowledge, or Ahara, being purified, the sattva material of its prossessor—the internal organ—will become purified, and the sattva being purifie, an unbroken memory of the Infinite One will result.'

These two explanations are apparently conflicting; yet both are true and necessary. The manipulating and controlling of what may be called the finer body, that is to say, the mind, are no doubt higher functions than the controlling of the grosser body of flesh. But the control of the grosser is absolutely necessary to enable one to arrive at the control of the finer. The beginner, therefore, must pay particular attention to all such dietectic rules as have come down from the line of the accredited teachers. But the extravagant, meaningless fanaticism, which has driven religion entirely to the kitchen, as many be noticed in many of our sects, is a peculiar sort of pure and simple materialism. It is neither jnana nor bhakti nor karma; it is a special kind of lunacy. So it stands to reason that discrimination in the choice of food is necessary for the attainment of this higher state of mental composition, which cannot be easily obtained otherwise.
---
--                              (edited)
---