751004 - Morning Walk - Mauritius

Morning Walks by Date, 1975

His Divine Grace
A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada

Listen to a 'Nectar Drop' created from this Conversation

751004MW-MAURITIUS - October 04, 1975 - 31:13 Minutes

Cyavana: . . . they're trying to convert the Hindus to Christianity, the children. (break)

Prabhupāda: . . . Christian missionaries. They are trying to convert others, but they are closing their churches. They are selling their churches to us.

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: Finding new suckers. In South Africa they put up big paṇḍāls, and because the Indian people, they have no entertainment in the evening, so they go there and they are entertained, and they learn how to sing the hymns that they have. Then you find that the children are singing the hymns because that's the songs that they're learning. If we can provide entertainment like that in the form of saṅkīrtana, then they'll also sing Hare Kṛṣṇa and become devotees of Kṛṣṇa. (break)

Prabhupāda: . . . own Christian priests, they asked me that "Why Christianity is dwindling? What we have done?" So I told them, "What you have not done?" (laughter)

Cyavana: Yes.

Prabhupāda: "You have violated from the very beginning the orders of Christ, 'Thou shall not kill,' and you are killing, only killing. So what you have not done?"

Devotee (1): They say that man has to dominate over the animals. They justify . . .

Prabhupāda: Therefore you should kill and eat them. Very good reasoning. "The father should dominate over children; therefore the children should be killed and eaten up." So rascals, and they are professing religious leaders.

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: Prabhupāda, if every moment we are killing in breathing and walking and doing so many things, and then it says, "Thou shalt not kill," so then hasn't God given us an instruction which is impossible?

Prabhupāda: No. Conscientiously you should not. But unconsciously if you do, that is excused. (break) . . . na punar baddhya. Āhlādinī-śakti, it is pleasure potency. So pleasure potency is not painful to Kṛṣṇa. But it is painful. It is painful to us, conditioned souls. This Golden Moon, everyone comes there for pleasure, but he is becoming implicated in sinful activities.

Therefore it is not pleasure. It will give him pain, so many aftereffects. Sex life, even it is not illicit, still it is painful, aftereffects. You'll have to take care of the children. You have to bear children. That is painful. You have to pay to the hospital for delivery, then education, then doctor's bill—so many painful. So this pleasure, sex pleasure, is followed by so many painful things. Tāpa-karī (CC Adi 4.63). The same pleasure potency is there in the living being in little quantity, and as soon as they utilize it, it becomes painful. And the same pleasure potency in the spiritual world, Kṛṣṇa's dancing with gopīs, that is not painful; that is pleasing. (break) . . . man, if he takes nice foodstuff it is painful. If a diseased man, if he takes . . .

Cyavana: He becomes more sick.

Prabhupāda: More sick. Therefore this life is meant for tapasya. Not to accept, voluntarily reject. Then it is nice. (break)

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: . . . ments today are supporting the most outrageous, sinful activities.

Prabhupāda: Hmm?

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: The governments today are supporting the most outrageous, sinful activities. So how is it possible to reform the general mass of people?

Prabhupāda: Do you mean to say the government is perfect?

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: No.

Prabhupāda: Then? They must be moved. Government means, nowadays, all rascals. They are elected by rascals and they are rascals. That is the difficulty. Everywhere you go, you will meet only rascals. Manda. The definition is given, manda. Even in our camp there are so many rascals. Just see the report.

Cyavana: Yes. Yesterday.

Prabhupāda: Even they have come to be reformed, they are rascals. They cannot give up their rascal habits. Therefore it has been generalized, manda: "all bad." But only difference is that in our camp the bads are being reformed; outside there is no reforming. There is hope of their being good, but outside there is no hope. That is the difference. Otherwise everyone is bad.

Without any discrimination you can say. Mandāḥ sumanda-matayo (SB 1.1.10). Now how the government will be good? This is also bad. Mahāprabhu's name is Patita-pāvana, He is delivering all bad men. In the Kali-yuga there is no good men at all—all bad. Strong you will have to become to deal with all bad men. (break) The seaweeds are there even in the middle ocean.

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: Yes.

Cyavana: They call it Sargasso. The call it the Sargasso Sea. It floats in the center of the ocean, seaweed. (break)

Prabhupāda: . . . the fort?

Cyavana: Just straight ahead, where the ship is there. There are two ships there.

Prabhupāda: There.

Cyavana: Yes. That's where they come in.

Prabhupāda: This is not.

Cyavana: No, the next, where the white ship is.

Devotee (1): Very small ship.

Cyavana: Not so small. They've had as many as thirty-five or forty ships, not all in the berths, but in the harbor. They bring everything in from overseas, and then they take out the sugarcane.

Prabhupāda: Oh. Generally they come from Europe?

Cyavana: Everywhere, all over the world. They trade with the whole world—America, Hong Kong, Japan. (break)

Prabhupāda: They are collecting fish?

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: Shellfish.

Cyavana: These little clams they eat. Inside the shell there's a slug they eat. Meat. (break)

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: . . . translated now Caitanya-caritāmṛta. Will you also maybe translate Caitanya-bhāgavata? (break) . . . by, Lord Caitanya's fame will spread all over the world.

Prabhupāda: Hmm?

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: As time goes by, Lord Caitanya's fame will spread all over the world.

Prabhupāda: Hawaii Island is better than this island. Huh? Is it not?

Cyavana: I think so.

Harikeśa: It never becomes cold there. It never becomes cold.

Prabhupāda: No.

Cyavana: Here they suffer from the cyclone every year. And every fifteen years it is treacherous.

Prabhupāda: Cyclone, typhoon is there in Japan also.

Cyavana: Yes. Only thing, here there is Indian culture.

Prabhupāda: What Indian culture? They are killing cows. (laughter) What is Indian culture?

Cyavana: Remnants. Nothing.

Prabhupāda: Their Indian culture is that some of them speak Hindi, that's all. (laughter) This is their Ind . . . (break)

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: . . . last night that they're starting a foundation, Mahatma Gandhi Foundation, here, to teach Indian culture, and he said, "Not just the Bhagavad-gītā, but Indian culture." You mentioned that we should take Indian culture directly from Bhagavad-gītā, not from here . . . not little from here and little from there. (break) You give the example, Prabhupāda, that to fight with a declared enemy is very easy, but to fight with someone who is playing as a friend, although he is your enemy, is more difficult. (break)

Prabhupāda: He is more dangerous than Buddha. What is that big building?

Cyavana: They are building now a prison on the point there, a new prison. I tried to walk there one morning, and they stopped me because they are afraid someone may go in there and make some tunnel, or some place where they can escape, before they finish it.

Brahmānanda: It looks like a hotel.

Cyavana: Yes. It will be very luxurious.

Prabhupāda: (break) Tumhara jo straight. dal jo hai na moong usko humko dikhana hum tarkeeb batayenge. (Show me the straight mung lentil—whatever you have and I shall tell you a trick.)

Devotee (2): . . . Vyāsadeva and Nara-Nārāyaṇa, they are still in the Himalayas meditating, why don't they come and join our parties and help this Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement by their . . .?

Prabhupāda: They are giving you chance to preach. They have given their books. Is it not sufficient?

Devotee (2): Yes, it's great help. (break)

Prabhupāda: . . . bones or what?

Cyavana: Yes. It's coral. It's from coral.

Prabhupāda: An animal.

Cyavana: It's called an exoskeleton, because it's on the outside instead of the inside. We have a skeleton inside the skin, but their skeleton is on the outside of the skin, and the flesh is within. (pause)

Prabhupāda: So they trim the coconuts?

Cyavana: They pull them down, yes.

Indian man (3): They don't know how to cut. They cut with sticks.

Harikeśa: Do they cut them down before they're grown?

Cyavana: No, they let them ripen.

Harikeśa: Then they eat them. (break)

Prabhupāda: Any questions? No.

Brahmānanda: The Minister for Youth was there last night.

Prabhupāda: Huh?

Cyavana: When you were speaking with those two boys last night, that was the Minister of Youth who was sitting with the High Commissioner. He was appreciating that they were coming to challenge, that they were understanding. They cannot understand their own so-called culture. They have not been able to get the young people here to adopt it. Instead, they are trying to imitate the West.

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: Blind leading the blind.

Prabhupāda: (laughs) Yes. Did you understand the words, "The blind leading the blind"? Do you agree? (break) . . . culture, the basic principle is mistaken, bodily concept of life. How it can be perfect? (break) . . . world's present so-called culture is based on misconception. Therefore it cannot be perfect. Whatever they are doing, it is failure.

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: Can't satisfy anyone. Now people are under the conception that culture means that you can satisfy anything you like, any desire. Therefore there is birth control and so many things. So they are thinking that "If we can satisfy all of our desires, it is very nice culture."

Prabhupāda: But where is satisfaction?

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: Never comes.

Brahmānanda: They think that unhappiness comes from repression of one's desires.

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: Yes. They think that actually that we're suffering from so many desires, that we must be very poor creatures because we become devotees.

Prabhupāda: So why so many desires?

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: You should be free.

Prabhupāda: Because one desire is not complete, therefore you desire next. Therefore the process of desiring is defective, and our process is to purify the desires—not to remain in the imperfect platform of desiring, but whatever desire you have got, just purify it. Then it will be satisfied. So desire produced by bodily concept of life will never be satisfied. Therefore some of them are trying to become desireless, the impersonalists. Nirvāṇa.

Brahmānanda: That is also impossible.

Prabhupāda: That is not possible.

Indian man (3): Still there is a desire to become desireless. (break) . . . nice example for Mr. Sellak, a murghi. He thinks the grains are getting under and then cutting his slack.

Prabhupāda: Expensive. (break)

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: That was one of those men over there. (laughter)

Prabhupāda: Huh?

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: One of the men over there made that sound, Prabhupāda.

Cyavana: They just came out of that dancing club.

Prabhupāda: Oh.

Cyavana: They spend the whole night in there.

Harikeśa: Getting drunk. (people shouting)

Brahmānanda: They've become dog already.

Cyavana: One night and you're a dog. (break)

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: . . . ready, Prabhupāda. We wake up in the morning, and instead of selfish desires, you've taught us how to offer to Kṛṣṇa.

Devotee (2): In the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam you mentioned that the trees, they also can see. Purport. So I was wondering, do all the various species of life, are they fully equipped in some fashion or another with all those various senses?

Prabhupāda: Yes. Living being means possessing all the senses.

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: "Absolute is sentient thou hast proved, impersonality calamity thou hast moved." (break)

Prabhupāda: . . . trees in Hare Krishna Land, they are so beautiful, heh? And what is this?

Devotee (2): These are very short. (laughter)

Cyavana: They are also torn by the cyclone. The cyclone has pulled up all the big ones.

Indian man (3): These are different in Durban.

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: They are not as fortunate. (break)

Prabhupāda: Better place than this?

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: Yes. Very nice weather there. The people very much like us there, too, Prabhupāda. Big crowds. Like us. (break)

Cyavana: . . . bassa is nicer, Śrīla Prabhupāda.

Prabhupāda: Mombassa.

Cyavana: Yes.

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: Goloka is the best.

Cyavana: You once said that is the nicest place in the material world.

Prabhupāda: Huh?

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: Goloka is the best.

Prabhupāda: So Durban is better or Mombassa?

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: Well, I've never been in Mombassa, I can't say, but Durban is very nice. We have a very nice house there for you to translate in for several weeks if you'd like. Hare Kṛṣṇa.

Prabhupāda: Hmm? What is Brahmānanda's opinion?

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: Well, he's never been to Durban.

Cyavana: There's no one here who's been to both places.

Prabhupāda: You did not go to Mombassa?

Cyavana: Mombassa I have been, but not Durban. So you will have to judge. (break)

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: There's many mosquitoes in Mombassa, isn't it?

Cyavana: I don't know.

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: Yes. And malaria. That you don't find. No? When I went to the inoculation center and I said I was going to Kenya, they gave us both malaria tablets. They said, "Take one a week." That's true. But you don't find malaria in Durban. (end)