In plain words
Above all, today is Vijayadaśamī. Today you must take a vow. What is that vow? If you give up these three, smoking, drinking and eating meat, sacred feelings will enter your heart. Many people do not know this. Through smoking many bad qualities start, and not only that, bad diseases too start. Just once, let one who smokes take a single puff and blow the breath out like that onto a white cloth: the colour turns yellow. That very thing is the root cause of cancer. So today health is being ruined by smoking. The purity of the mind is being ruined. Next, drinking. This drinking is a great demon. It makes a man forget his very self. It brings about such a change that he cannot recognise what state he is in. He himself does not know what he is saying. It turns him into nothing but a drunkard. It turns him into a madman. What is a drunken man's behaviour like? So we must never let drink near us at all. Eating meat: you yourself are a body. A body made of the five elements. This is a body made of food. A body made of muscles. This body is made of the five elements.
A hovel of filth, a servant's basket wasting away with disease, a tuber that comes to move at birth, a thornbush that cannot swim the sea of worldly life, a quiver of arrows: rise and look! Whenever we think of it, this body as lasting, do not trust it, O mind! Take refuge at the feet of Hari.
When this human body itself is made of flesh, to put flesh into it again! Does anyone eat human flesh? Why? Because it is a body that has eaten flesh, no one eats it. This is a most fortunate body. We must give it sacred food. We must eat substances that are worthwhile. Through that, it becomes possible to perform sacred karmas. For us to get good sleep, for good thoughts to come, food is very necessary. Bhīṣma, so great a Jñāni, was himself spoiled by bad food.