The justice which condemns to the death penalty any murderer does him true justice and shows mercy by taking life for life. According to spiritual philosophy, the person who kills an animal should expect the same fate. No sane person would take such a risk.

There is also some karma in taking plant life, but it is nullified by the process of offering food to God, because the Lord says that He accepts such vegetarian offerings.

One must also renounce exciting and toxic substances, including coffee, tea, alcohol and tobacco. To be intoxicated in this way is to be influenced by ignorance, and may lead to an inferior birth in our next life.

Other techniques that allow us to break free from the cycle of repeated rebirths include offering the fruits of our labor to God. All human beings must work in order to provide for their bodies, but if one acts only for one's own satisfaction, then one must accept the consequences of karma, whether good or bad, in his future live.

Certainly, we must act for the satisfaction of the Lord. This action takes the name of devotional service, and it is free from all karma. To act in the consciousness of God is to make sacrifices.

Human beings have to sacrifice their time and money for the satisfaction of Krishna, the Supreme and Sovereign Being. The action should be offered as a sacrifice to God, lest it bind its author to the material world. The action performed as devotional service not only preserves the person concerned from the reactions of karma, it also gradually raises him to the service of spiritual love offered to the Lord, such is the key which allows access to the kingdom of God.

Adopt spiritual vegetarianism.

Spiritual vegetarianism consists in eating plant foods and dairy products after having first offered them to the Lord. If we adopt this mode of sacrifice which consists in purifying our food by offering it to God before eating it, the Supreme Lord will protect us from all karma resulting from the destruction of plants. Otherwise, according to the law of karma, the law of action-reaction or the law of cause and effect, we will be personally held responsible for such an act, and will have to suffer the consequences.

Righteous beings, servants of God, who naturally follow the directives of the Supreme Lord are freed from all faults, because they eat only consecrated food, offered in sacrifice to God.

But those who prepare food (meat, fish, egg) for their sole pleasure of the senses, in truth feed only on sin.

Human beings are provided with cereals, fruits, vegetables and milk, by the grace of the Supreme Eternal. To thus nourish ourselves with sanctified food, protects us from