Four Vows Taken Together at Initiation

The International Society for Krishna Consciousness binds members who accept formal initiation to four regulative principles, prohibitions against eating meat, fish or eggs, against the use of intoxicants including caffeine, against illicit sexual activity outside of marriage undertaken for procreation, and against gambling in any form, treated together as a single undertaking accepted at one time rather than as four separate rules a member might adopt piecemeal. Hare Krishna Transformed records that the four are understood within the movement as interconnected supports for spiritual life rather than an arbitrary list, each one held to weaken a specific obstacle, ignorance, intoxication, lust and greed respectively, that the tradition regards as standing between a practitioner and clear devotional consciousness. The 2009 Resolutions of the movement's own Governing Body Commission confirm the principles as continuing to bind initiated members today in the same fourfold form the movement has maintained since its founding, administered as a standard expected of those who have taken initiation and accepted its conditions rather than as an entry requirement imposed on every visitor or sympathizer who has not yet made that formal commitment.