Disciple: Srila Prabhupada, once you said, "The tractor -- this is the cause of all the trouble. It took all the young men's farm work. It forced them to go into the city and become entangled in sensuality." You said people had to leave the country and the simple life of goodness and God consciousness. And so they went to the city and got caught up in the anxious life, the mode of passion.
Srila Prabhupada: Yes. In the city, people must naturally fall into the mode of passion: constant anxiety due to needless lusting and striving. In the city we are surrounded by all sorts of artificial things for agitating our mind and senses. And naturally, when we have this facility we become lusty. We take to this passionate mode and become filled with anxiety.
Disciple: The country is more peaceful. It's easier to think of spiritual life.
Srila Prabhupada: Yes. There is less disease. Everything is less brain-taxing. In the country the pangs of this material world are less. So you can arrange your life for real profit. Spiritual profit. Realize God; become Krishna conscious. And if you have got a temple in your home or near your home, you have a very happy life. You work just a little -- just for your food -- in the spring a month and a half or so for planting, in the fall a month and a half for harvesting. And in your remaining time, you become culturally enriched. You engage all your talents and energies for realizing God. Krishna consciousness. This is ideal life.
You see the minute fibers on this flower? No other manufacturing process in this world can do this -- such small fibers. And how brilliant is the color! If you study only one flower, you will become God conscious.
There is a mechanism that we call "nature." And from it is coming everything we see around us. Now, how is it that this mechanism is so perfect'? And who is it that has devised this mechanism?
Disciple: Once in London you said, "People do not know that flowers are painted. Krishna paints them with thoughts."
Srila Prabhupada: Yes. Most people think that by itself, unconnected with a painter, this flower has become beautiful. This is foolishness. "Nature has done it." Who is nature? Everything is being done by the natural mechanism of Krishna. Parasya saktir vividhaiva sruyate: the Lord is orchestrating everything by His innumerable, inconceivable energies.
Anyway, learn to love this natural mode of life, life in a wide-open space. Produce your own grain. Produce your own milk. Save time. Chant Hare Krishna. Glorify the Lord's holy names. At life's end, go back to the spiritual world to live forever. Plain living, high thinking -- ideal life.
Modern, artificial "necessities of life" may seem to increase your so-called comfort. But if you forget life's real aim, that is suicidal. We want to stop this suicidal policy. We don't directly attempt to stop the modern advancement of technology. The so-called advancement of technology is suicidal, but we don't always talk of this. [Laughter.]
People today are extremely attached to this so-called advancement. Therefore when Lord Chaitanya appeared five hundred years ago, He gave a simple formula: chant Hare Krishna. Even in your technological factory, you can chant. You go on pushing and pulling with your machine, and chant, "Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna." You can devote yourself to God. What is the wrong there?
Disciple: The leaders know that once a person starts chanting God's names, in time he'll lose his taste for this anxious life of technology.
Srila Prabhupada: That is natural.
Disciple: So the leaders know you are sowing the seeds of their destruction.
Srila Prabhupada: Where is the "destruction"? Rather, it is construction: devote yourself to God, and live forever. This is the proper path. Follow it. You will live forever.
By our method, tyaktva deham punar janma naiti. after leaving your present material body, you don't get any more material bodies. You regain your spiritual body and go back to the spiritual world. And without this spiritual realization, tatha dehantara-praptih: when you leave your present material body, you'll have to accept another material body.
So consider the two methods of living. Which is better? The "advanced" method -- accepting more material bodies. Or our "old-fashioned" method -- accepting no more material bodies. Which is better?
As soon as you accept a material body, you have to suffer: birth, old age, disease, death. The material body means suffering. Therefore, if we prepare so that on leaving this present body we undergo no more suffering, that is intelligent. But if we prepare to receive another material body for more suffering, is that intelligent? Unless you understand the Lord, unless you understand Krishna, you'll have to stay in this material world and accept another body. There is no alternative.
Now our method. We understand, first, that na hanyate hanyamane sarire: when the body is finished, the soul goes on living. Unfortunately, many people have become so dull-brained that they cannot understand this simple truth. Every day of their, lives, people see that a soul in an infant body is going to take on a childhood body, then a teenage body, next an adult body, and later an aged body. People see, with their own eyes, how the soul is transmigrating from one body to another body to still another body.
Nevertheless, with their dull brains they cannot understand that at death, when the aged body is finished, the soul goes on to yet another body, material or spiritual. But people cannot understand this. They are so dull-brained. They cannot make the simple distinction between the body and the soul. It will take five hundred years to teach them this simple truth -- their education is so advanced.
Srila Prabhupada: Thanks to modern so-called education, people have become asses -- no sense of the distinction between the body and the soul.
Are our children here getting enough milk?
Disciple: Yes, as much as they want.
Srila Prabhupada: Yes. Children must get at least two cups of milk a day. If they drink plenty of milk, their body becomes stout and strong, and they develop a keen brain for understanding the distinction between their body and their soul.
Do people see how our simple, natural way of life benefits society? Do they see we are not killing our children through abortion, but rather maintaining them with buckets and buckets of milk? Is this not a better civilization?
Just consider. Due to selfishness, or fear of "overpopulation," people are killing children -- mothers are killing their own children. Is that civilization?
Disciple: In the Bhagavad-gita, Krishna says that those in the mode of ignorance take irreligion to be religion, and religion to be irreligion.
Srila Prabhupada: Religion? For these modern rascals, there is no religion. And there is no morality. For instance, here we have so many children, but never do we say, "We cannot maintain these children -- kill them." We never say that.
So many children? Never mind. Let them all be trained as Krishna conscious, God conscious citizens. Let them live comfortably and drink their milk.
So, which is the better civilization? Running around in motorcars -- put-put-put-put-put -- and killing your own child. Is that civilization?
Disciple: In a sense, many of the children here are not even our own. When, say, a mother with no husband comes here to live with us, naturally we also welcome her children.
Srila Prabhupada: That is compassion. We welcome children -- and the modern rascals kill children. So why do people not see the distinction between our traditional civilization and their so-called modern civilization?
Disciple: They don't have any good argument against our civilization and our compassion, except that they want to be free to do as they like. No hindrances. Complete freedom.
Srila Prabhupada: But they're not free. Rather, they're fools. They're not free. Who can be free of nature's law? But still they're thinking, "We're free." This is simply foolishness.
If you were actually free, that would be another thing. But by nature's law you are not free. You are responsible for even your tiniest act. Commit even the tiniest misdeed, and you are responsible.
So where is your freedom? Ahankara-vimudhatma kartaham iti manyate: "Identifying falsely with his material body, the bewildered soul thinks himself freely doing activities that the body and nature's modes carry out by themselves." Of course, because the soul wants to think himself the independent doer, because he wants to take credit and be "responsible," he becomes responsible. Because he chooses to act not on God's account but on his own account, he becomes accountable.
Again, where is your freedom? The Lord's material energy -- this energy we call "nature" -- goes on working, with or without your approval. If you are free, then why is your body growing old and preparing to die? If you are free, then do not die.
No one wants to die -- unless he's a madman. So how can these modern rascals think they're free when they have to die? What is the answer?
Disciple: They will spout some nonsense. "I accept death as part of life."
Srila Prabhupada: Death is "part of life"?
Disciple: Yes. "It's natural."
Srila Prabhupada: Well then, rascal, when there is some danger of death, why do you go away? Sit down and die. [Laughter.]
In truth you don't accept death. You're simply bluffing, talking foolishly. You don't want to die. That is a fact. You're talking foolishly -- "I accept death" -- but you don't accept it. No, not at all. But because you have no choice, then you say, "I accept death." The real fact is this: You do not wish to die. Unfortunately, you find you have no alternative. "Oh, then I accept. All right." [Laughter.]
So you can talk like that -- foolishly. [Laughing.] But an intelligent man does not want to die. He wants to become spiritually realized and then return to the spiritual world and live with God. He wants to find the way to avoid death forever.
Disciple: One time a college student bragged to me, "Death? I'm not afraid of death." But when I made as if to strike him, naturally he cringed in fear. "See?" I told him. "You are afraid."
Srila Prabhupada: Even a dog is afraid of death. What to speak of a man. When animals are taken to be slaughtered, they wail with fear. Even animals are afraid of death. So of course man is afraid of death. Everyone is afraid of death.
Disciple: Sometimes people say, "We're enjoying life. Why are you always bothering us about death?"
Srila Prabhupada: Why? Because I love you. And I am intelligent enough to understand that when you die, when you leave your body, you may get a degraded body and spend your next life as a dog. I have concern for you: "Please, friend, don't become a dog."
Let's say a child is flying a kite from the roof of some building, and a gentleman sees him -- running carelessly this way and that, coming closer and closer to falling over the edge. Naturally the gentleman will say, "Hey! You're going to fall!" That is his duty.
Now, the child may scream, "Leave me alone! Why are you bothering me? [Laughter.] Why are you bothering me?"
"Because I am a human being," the man will say, "and you are a foolish child. Therefore, I am bothering you."
Dinesh
Srila Prabhupada: Why? Because I love you.
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