In plain words
Purity of the vessel, purity of the ingredients, purity of the cooking
Embodiments of Prema! Above all, you must strive for purity of the citta. If only there is purity of the citta, everything is achieved. For purity of the citta, you must take certain precautions concerning the food you eat. Above all, while cooking you must keep to cleanliness; you must cook with holy feelings. Mere bodily cleanliness is not enough; there must be cleanliness of mind too. In olden days, orthodox brāhmaṇas used to say that the food they ate must be cooked by their own wives alone, and that others were not to cook it. For housewives cook with the welfare of everyone in their home in their minds. If instead one appoints cooks, who knows with what feelings they cook? If the feeling is impure, the food that is cooked turns into ‘poison’. Not only that. The ingredients used for cooking must have been earned by just means. For example, a husband has brought vegetables home. But how he came to bring them, who knows! He may have frightened the vegetable sellers with the force of his authority and brought them away unjustly. Or he may have bought vegetables that they had come by through theft. When one cooks with such vegetables, the food is tainted and turns into ‘poison’. No one can detect this. In daily life, through the food we eat, we do so many deeds and fall prey to so many faults.
Food offered to God becomes free of fault
Embodiments of Prema! Before you eat, pray well to God. Offer the food to God. Then it becomes pure. Pure food brings holy Jñāna. Once, in Ṛṣikeś, there was another āśrama beside the Śivānanda āśrama.