760412 - Morning Walk - Bombay

Morning Walks by Date, 1976

His Divine Grace
A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada

760412MW-BOMBAY - April 12, 1976 - 22.44 Minutes

Prabhupāda: Yes. Yes. Purchasing flower means they are being cheated. That's all. All third-grade flowers are supplied.

Dr. Patel: But this and that plot, these two plots are actually meant by you for growing flowers. I don't know what they're doing. They are growing ornamental plants but not flowering plants.

Gurudāsa: So that piece of land is not exactly on the parikramā but off the parikramā. It's not so far from our property. You know the big park near Singhania's place?

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Gurudāsa: Then one more park.

Prabhupāda: Park? Singhania's building is there. I have seen. Park, I don't know.

Gurudāsa: It's an open spot, not exactly park. It's near Fogla Ashram.

Prabhupāda: Hmm. So how did you like it?

Gurudāsa: Well, the piece of land is nice.

Prabhupāda: Nice.

Gurudāsa: It has trees on it, some. It's a little bit more than an acre, and the buildings are not very big.

Prabhupāda: They can be repaired.

Gurudāsa: Yes. It would be very easy to add on or construct or do whatever you want. And it's, I'd say, about five to seven minutes' walking.

Prabhupāda: Not far away.

Gurudāsa: Not far.

Prabhupāda: You can have a garage here? So we can see?

Saurabha: Yes, you can walk on the side. (break)

Prabhupāda: . . . Prahlāda Mahārāja.

Dr. Patel: Yesterday I studied Seventh Chapter of . . . Sixth Chapter of Prahlāda Mahārāja, and . . .

Prabhupāda: Oh. Prahlāda Mahārāja's . . .

Dr. Patel: This morning only. Hiraṇyakaśipu, from Śrīmad-Bhāgavata. This morning only I read about this thing.

Prabhupāda: Hare Kṛṣṇa. (break) . . . becomes humble. God is for the humble and meek. In Bible also it is stated. And because everyone is trying to become God, how he becomes humble?

Dr. Patel: I think Christ taught humility by his own action.

Prabhupāda: Oh, yes. Even Vaiṣṇava . . .

Dr. Patel: All Vaiṣṇava . . . I mean Vaiṣṇava ācāryas suffered extremely than that.

Prabhupāda: Kavirāja Gosvāmī, who has written this immortal Caitanya-caritāmṛta, he is presenting himself, purīṣera kīṭa haite muñi se laghiṣṭha (CC Adi 5.205): "I am lower than the worms in the stool." Just see. He is not hypocrite. He is feeling like that: "Oh, what is my value?" Purīṣera kīṭa haite muñi se laghiṣṭha, jagāi mādhāi haite muñi se pāpiṣṭha. Jagāi-Mādhāi was a . . .

Dr. Patel: Those two boys, Caitanya . . .

Prabhupāda: Yes. So he says, "I am more sinful than Jagāi-Mādhāi." Mora nāma yei laya tāra puṇya kṣaya: "If anyone remembers me, then whatever pious activities he has done, it is all finished."

Dr. Patel: These Vaiṣṇava ācāryas don't allow their feet to be touched because they feel that he should . . .

Prabhupāda: So why they do not utilize it proper?

Dr. Patel: This is a private thing . . . (indistinct) . . . they want to be . . . (indistinct) . . . my daughter . . . (indistinct) . . . is now with a boy who is studying . . . he has his M.D. of London . . . (indistinct) . . . they are coming two months' time.

Prabhupāda: It is settled up. Very nice. And son? Your son?

Dr. Patel: My son is in the Caine Hospital, a professor of medicine.

Prabhupāda: No, no, he is also married? No.

Dr. Patel: He is married, yes.

Prabhupāda: Yes. Father-mother's responsibility up to marriage. Then they are . . . they are locked. They are locked.

Dr. Patel: I am more responsible because I have got no wife.

Prabhupāda: The road is not so wide.

Indian man: . . . karti bhi hai. (. . . they do quite a lot.)

Prabhupāda: Kiya hai par udhar jitna hai. Pehle to . . . (They are working but the road is not as wide as it is there. Initially . . .) (break)

Dr. Patel: . . . a lot of money in America. These boys are all from there. They are very good boys. You can get butter from Holland.

Prabhupāda: We can get everything, but the government will not allow. That is the difficulty. We can get grain, food . . .

Dr. Patel: I think grain they would allow. So many Christian institutions from America donate butter and ghee and rice and wheat to the Christian churches here. I think they would not object. We have not tried, perhaps.

Prabhupāda: No, we are trying. In Bengal they are trying.

Dr. Patel: Not here. They allow. How we are getting that Australian ghee all this time?

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Dr. Patel: They allow from Australia.

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Dr. Patel: They should allow from States also. (break)

Prabhupāda: . . . milk is cheaper than the bottle.

Dr. Patel: Just as wine is cheaper in Paris than water. (laughter) Like that. I had to pay more for a glass of water.

Prabhupāda: Isko thik se banata nahi . . . (indistinct) . . . hum log bhi hai. (They don't make it properly . . . (indistinct) . . . we are also responsible.)

Indian man: Ye baat to apka nahi jamega. (This statement that you made just now is not acceptable.) (laughter) (break)

Prabhupāda: Khub jamega. (It is very much acceptable.) (laughter)

Dr. Patel: It is not here, but . . .

Prabhupāda: It is in Delhi.

Dr. Patel: They should come here. So I can have a ride one day.

Prabhupāda: So where is? Arrange to bring him. (laughter) Otherwise they will not believe.

Dr. Patel: No, no, we believe you, sir. But we want a darśana of it. (laughter)

Prabhupāda: So ask me. Bring it in the meantime. (break) . . . not less than one lakh of devotees, at least—so crowded.

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: Where is that at, Śrīla Prabhupāda?

Prabhupāda: Eh?

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: Where is that?

Prabhupāda: Māyāpur.

Dr. Patel: That is on Holi day, no?

Prabhupāda: Oh, yes.

Dr. Patel: And one on the day you were in Vṛndāvana.

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Dr. Patel: I was told.

Prabhupāda: There also, packed up, so many. Now our temple is going first, even the other temples are so old.

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: It was so crowded that you could not even walk on the road coming into our temple.

Prabhupāda: And it was a barren place.

Dr. Patel: They all come to see the devotees. These foreign devotees, they are enchanted to see them. All these times we were seeing the foreign, foreign, those padres, the Christians. Now we are seeing the sanātana . . .

Prabhupāda: And another thing is that Ramakrishna Mission has constructed temple of Ramakrishna. Nobody goes there. It is lying barren.

Dr. Patel: You were planning to raise a temple in Kurukṣetra?

Prabhupāda: Yes. I have applied to the government for land, twenty-five acres' land.

Dr. Patel: Very big. But is that land available to us?

Prabhupāda: Yes, available. And we have asked government to give us 350 acres of land in Māyāpur to construct Vedic planetarium, 350 feet high. It will require eight crores of rupees minimum. I shall exhibit there all these planetary system, Bhurloka, Goloka . . .

goloka-nāmni nija-dhāmni tale ca tasya

devī-maheśa-hari-dhāmasu teṣu teṣu

te te prabhāva-nicayā vihitāś ca yena

govindam ādi-puruṣaṁ

(BS 5.43)

Dr. Patel: Now the Russians also have come to this conclusion, the Russian scientists and astrophysicists, that there are some planets here in the cosmos which actually have people, I mean, life like human beings. The other day I read a big article on that. Now they agree.

Prabhupāda: They will agree so many things.

Dr. Patel: They will agree later on that the dialectical materialism is not the right thing, but the dialectical spiritualism is the right thing. What Karl Marx said was wrong. But they have started reading the Vedas and all these, Rāmāyaṇa, and Mahābhārata, and . . .

Prabhupāda: They have got good sympathy for the Indian culture.

Dr. Patel: And if they read it, then Karl Marx teaching will go away.

Prabhupāda: And we are getting enquiries from Russia of our books, about our books. We are getting enquiries. I am sending Gopāla Kṛṣṇa to make market of our books.

Gurudāsa: They have some of our books already in Russia.

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Dr. Patel: If they start reading Śrīmad-Bhāgavata and Bhagavad-gītā, then Karl Marx will be lost, because the sanātana-dharma is a spiritual communism in fact.

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Gurudāsa: The only difference is that the ruler never ends.

Prabhupāda: What is that?

Gurudāsa: The ruler never goes out of office, sanātana-dharma.

Dr. Patel: Sanātana is eternal. It is eternal religion. It is the religion of the soul and not of the body, dies. Soul is eternal, so religion is eternal. I am right, sir?

Prabhupāda: Yes. Sanātana means eternal.

Dr. Patel: So this dialectical materialism wherein Karl Marx said that it is a material reaction, chemical reaction in the material, which produces consciousness, it is a falsehood. It is the consciousness keeps the material going. So they will change their opinion now.

Gurudāsa: He's basing his philosophy on Hegel—thesis and antithesis.

Dr. Patel: No, no, Hegel . . . yes, Engels, not Hegel.

Gurudāsa: Thesis and antithesis, and then synthesis.

Dr. Patel: Yes, yes.

Gurudāsa: But it's a false philosophy.

Dr. Patel: I mean Hegel did try to improve upon Karl Marx. Really material is important. When the person dies, why the body should rot? They every day see.

Gurudāsa: Prabhupāda pointed out the other day that when someone dies, we have all the bodily fluids there, all the organs. Why can't we put it together and make life again?

Dr. Patel: That's right. So now they have started reading all these, our books. They will now make amendment on it. As you said, they will thesis, synthesis. The present practice of communism in Russia is much more diluted than what it was twenty, thirty years back.

Prabhupāda: It should be.

Dr. Patel: And it will be totally like India after twenty years.

Gurudāsa: The result is that the biggest problem in Russia is that no one comes to work. Absenteeism.

Dr. Patel: That will be here also. I have been to Ceylon, sir. And in Colombo they are giving free ration to the people. I mean, the rice.

Prabhupāda: There is a story in Bengali. Bhager ma Ganga paye na. Shunben? (The shared mother never gets Ganges water. Do you want to hear?) The woman had seven sons. The mother requested first son, "My dear boy, now I am going to die. Take me to the Ganges side." He said: "Why? You have got so many other sons, why you are requesting me?"

Dr. Patel: She was calling every one, and nobody took her.

Prabhupāda: And then second son, third . . . everyone said like that, and she died without Gaṅgā. Bhager ma Ganga paye na. (The shared mother never gets Ganges water.) So this . . . and everyone has to work. And he thinks that, "Why I shall work? Let him work. No work today."

Gurudāsa: You tell the story about a man beating with a stick, and then the police constable came and said, "You have beaten him." "No, no, no. It was the stick that beat him, not me." (laughter) No responsibility.

Dr. Patel: No, but, you see, the sense of possession in human society is more important. Because they have no sense of possession.

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Dr. Patel: Even with all our philosophic and all our ideal learning, we have the sense of possession of this body which can't leave the moha in it. With all that, sir, then how can they do it?

Prabhupāda: No, higher than that, the sense that everything is possessed by God, that is perfection.

Dr. Patel: That's right, but . . .

Prabhupāda: But they are making . . . just like I possess something, now their possession is . . . now you possess something. We are not reaching the point of God. So it is expanded selfishness. It is not perfect. Perfection will come when they understand that everything is possessed by God. Then that is perfect. Īśāvāsyam idaṁ sarvam (ISO 1). When they come to that conclusion.

Dr. Patel: They have started doing. Even grammar is good. They have started studying the Upaniṣad in quite earnest now. I read a very good article on that, Russian newspapers, studying the philosophy of Vedas and Upaniṣads. (break)

Prabhupāda: They read Rāmāyaṇa by Tulasī dāsa, translated in English, and it was finished within a week. They have got little sympathy for Indian culture.

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: Śrīla Prabhupāda? This idea that he was discussing, how we naturally have a tendency to possess something—if I don't possess the state, I possess the body. Is this the disease?

Prabhupāda: Yes. We have to nullify this, that "I don't possess anything; God possess everything." Then it is perfection.

Dr. Patel: No, that is why, sir, this communism cannot survive, because they say that afterward the state will vanish. It will evaporate. How can it evaporate without spiritualism there at the back? They have a materialistic ideology and material, I mean, there are changes. There is nothing permanent in material. So the communism, so-called material communism, dialectic materialism of Karl Marx, are not full. (break)

Gurudāsa: Your name is man, and Dr. Patel . . . you've been given a title, "Dr. Patel."

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: Prabhupāda gave an example that if you see a note on the floor . . .

Dr. Patel: Only name of God has value.

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: . . . one person walks by . . .

Prabhupāda: Practical application.

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: Prabhupāda gave the example that if you see a note on the floor, three different people, one person sees it and ignores it, so he doesn't know the proper utilization of the thing. Another person sees it, picks it up and puts it in his pocket. He is dishonest. The third person sees it, picks it up, and seeks out the real owner. So there has to be Kṛṣṇa consciousness, otherwise how do we know who everything belongs to?

Dr. Patel: That is spiritual concern. And spirit itself . . . Kṛṣṇa is . . . I mean, without Kṛṣṇa there cannot be anything. That is the highest culture.

Gurudāsa: Kṛṣṇa even lets people forget Him.

Dr. Patel: (plane overhead) . . . māyā. Vedas say that . . . (break)

Prabhupāda: . . . and prasāda shall be ready. Anyone comes, he may give him. Then it will be nice.

Dr. Patel: But God has made māyā so strong that if the man is not attracted or caught into the web of māyā, the whole saṁsāra would not go. (laughs) That because God wants to . . .

Prabhupāda: The same argument. If people do not become criminal, how the prison house will be maintained?

Dr. Patel: This is a prison house.

Prabhupāda: Yes. Yes.

Dr. Patel: God wants the prison house to . . .

Gurudāsa: No, no. First there are so many criminals, and then prison house has to be built. Because there are so many, a bigger prison house has to be built.

Prabhupāda: Just like now medical science is improving means hospital increasing. That means people are becoming more diseased. And they are taking it advanced.

Dr. Patel: No, no, modern advancement is required, even humanity, sir. Therefore the advancement . . . (indistinct) . . . some thirty, forty, fifty years. So modern medicine is always preventative. Now we have invested . . . (indistinct) . . . colleague, making improvement of our hospitals.

Prabhupāda: Stop disease; otherwise where is improvement? (aside) Hare Kṛṣṇa. (break) . . . poetry, kṛṣṇa-bahirmukha hañā bhoga vāñchā kare, nikaṭa-stha māyā tāre jāpaṭiyā dhare (Prema-vivarta). As soon as the living entity desires sense gratification, immediately māyā captures.

Dr. Patel: That is what I want . . . I really meant. Man is producing the desire. You cannot, I mean . . . (break)

Prabhupāda: . . . sarva-pāpebhyo mokṣayiṣyāmi (BG 18.66).

Dr. Patel: New problem, do you mean to say?

Prabhupāda: No, old problem, everything. Yes, all, all squared up, all accounts squared up. Begin new chapter of your life. Sa guṇān samatītyaitān brahma-bhūyāya kalpate (BG 14.26). As soon as one begins devotional service, he shall be clean of all sinful reactions. Hare Kṛṣṇa.

Dr. Patel: So why not stay for a longer time here?

Prabhupāda: Nobody comes to hear.

Dr. Patel: When you are staying here in Bombay your health does improve very well.

Prabhupāda: No, Bombay I like very well. Because I like Bombay and this beach, I was so much persistent for getting this land. That is the history. Every one of my disciples, they declined. I insisted, "I must possess this land." And Nair was thinking that, "This man has no money, so just involve him, and whatever money he gives us, I shall take it."

Dr. Patel: But before he could sell, he died, poor fellow.

Prabhupāda: And now?

Dr. Patel: He is . . . (indistinct) . . . he died, no?

Prabhupāda: Yes. (break) And when she decided to kill Kṛṣṇa, she was killed.

Dr. Patel: And Kṛṣṇa gave . . .

Prabhupāda: Yes, she got good fortune.

Dr. Patel: Gave her the mukti.

Prabhupāda: Cambat? Cambata? Cambata means this . . .

Dr. Patel: This aviation fellow.

Prabhupāda: No, that what is called? Cambata.

Dr. Patel: . . . he has got some planes here. Some safari service. (break) They are forsaking all their big . . . (indistinct)

Gurudāsa: Why? Why not technology?

Dr. Patel: I don't know.

Gurudāsa: Because the Vedas is the essence of everything. That's why. There's technology here. Why we don't steal the technology?

Dr. Patel: Because we have no technology. That is our technology. You are taking our technology.

Gurudāsa: So why you are not taking your technology, the Vedic system?

Dr. Patel: We have ancient technology. We have ourselves the original technology.

Gurudāsa: Indians should take the Vedic technology. (end)