Food is a powerful analytical category for the study of contemplative traditions, with this panel introducing four new studies of contemplative foodways in Vaiṣṇava, Jaina, and Yoga traditions. It begins in the sixteenth-century, considering how the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava tradition reinterprets the tāntric practice of offering food to the deity as a bhakti practice that serves as devotional contemplation of Kṛṣṇa. The panel then pivots to two papers from Jaina contemplative traditions. The first demonstrates how Jaina contemplative teachings can reinvigorate contemporary debates on faux meat, with the second demonstrating how Jaina contemplative teachings have become entangled in contemporary transnational anti-vegan cognitive dissonance alleviation strategies. The final paper, presented by an engaged public scholar, examines through ethnography how yoga spaces engage with animal and environmental ethics, asking how contemplative concepts and practices inspire awareness of relationality with animals and ecosystems, as well as what yogis consider as “food” in contemplative practice.
In this paper, I argue that the tāntric practice of offering food to the deity (naivedya) is reinterpreted within the sixteenth-century Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava tradition as a bhakti practice that infuses devotional contemplation of Kṛṣṇa into ritual and elevates such contemplation over the importance of all ritual action. I analyze how Gopāla Bhaṭṭa Gosvāmin’s framing of naivedya in Haribhaktivilāsa expands the practice from the realm of ritual worship (arcanā) into the contemplative practice of surrendering the Self (ātma-nivedana) in entirety as an offering (arpaṇaṁ) to Kṛṣṇa. This helps to reframe naivedya as devotional service (sevā), a point that is further developed by Jīva Gosvāmin in Bhakti Sandarbha. I further connect the Haribhaktivilāsa’s presentation of naivedya to Jīva Gosvāmin’s comments on food contemplations in Bhakti Sandarbha and his Durgama-saṅgamanī commentary on Bhaktirasāmṛtasindhu, which respectively emphasize the expansive devotional nature and efficacy of food contemplations in broader Kṛṣṇa-bhakti theology.
Plant-based meats designed to mimic animal flesh promise major harm reduction by displacing industrial animal agriculture. Yet some animal ethicists argue that “faux flesh” carries a symbolic cost: it can preserve the imaginative framework in which animals remain edible, even when no animals are eaten. This paper brings that debate into conversation with Jain contemplative foodways, focusing on Jainism’s triadic account of violence as enacted through thought, word, and bodily action. I argue that Jain dietary discipline sharpens the ethical significance of representation by treating mental and linguistic formations as karmically and morally weighty, not merely as predictors of future physical harm. At the same time, I develop a Jain-inflected harm-reduction view: faux meat may be ethically preferable to animal flesh while still calling for practices that retrain desire, perception, and language so that “meat” does not remain the normative horizon of food.
Due to the widespread harms the dairy industry causes to animals, humans, and the environment, some Jains contemplate and adopt veganism into their personal and community foodways. Jain pro-veganism has, nevertheless, led to pushback against veganism within the global Jain community. This paper specifically shows how contemporary Jains draw upon Jain scriptures to advocate against veganism, while nevertheless also incorporating non-Jain anti-vegan arguments encountered transnationally. By integrating perspectives from Food Studies, Critical Animal Studies, and Human-Animal Relations, the paper reveals how transnational cognitive dissonance alleviation strategies are a central component of many Jains’ increasing contemplations of anti-veganism. Drawing from recent discourse in the vegan/anti-vegan debate in the global Jain community, the paper will illustrate how non-Jain, transnational cognitive dissonance alleviation strategies perpetuated by the dairy industry have penetrated Jain anti-vegan scriptural discourse within Jain communities, causing those who promote them to inadvertently contemplate and perpetuate harmful anti-vegan discourses.
With escalating ecological crises and their profound impacts on human and non-human lives, there is growing dialogue about whether our complex relationship with the more-than-human world must be addressed through the ways that we view, treat, and perhaps eat non-human animals. Putting Critical Animal Studies and Food Studies into dialogue with Contemplative Studies and Yoga Studies allows yoga and contemplative practices to move laterally across disciplines to develop inquiry into the mental states and afflictions that prevent humanity from being at peace with each other, other forms of life, and ecosystems. This paper ethnographically examines how contemporary yoga spaces engage with animal and environmental ethics using ethnographic methods. As an engaged public scholar, I explore how yoga communities enact ahiṃsā, ecological responsibility, and care for more-than-human life, and how contemplative concepts and practices can inspire deeper awareness of how we treat animals and ecosystems through awakening compassion for all beings.