771103 - Conversation A - Vrndavana
(Hindi)
Bhavānanda: Śrīla Prabhupāda, you called for me?
Prabhupāda: No, I was asking how many men we can accommodate in the new building?
Bhavānanda: Comfortably we can accommodate five to six hundred men in first-class rooms with first-class pakka prasādam .
Śrī Bajaj: That's already established and people are already...
Bhavānanda: Yes, it's already established.
Śrī Bajaj: Functioning.
Prabhupāda: (indistinct)
Śrī Bajaj: But you have plans to further expand and add many more buildings and temples. Because I've seen the big plan.
Bhavānanda: Yes. Prabhupāda has made a plan for fifty thousand devotees to live there.
Śrī Bajaj: Fifty thousand devotees in one place.
Śrī Nārāyaṇa: (Hindi)
Prabhupāda: What activities going on, just describe.
Bhavānanda: At Māyāpura now we have two hundred resident devotees. We have the handloom, we have our own handloom production. We have prasādam, distribution to the local people on the weekends. Two to three thousand people a day are given prasādam, and during the week seven hundred to a thousand take full prasādam .
Śrī Nārāyaṇa: Free? All free distribution.
Bhavānanda: Yes. And we have our Gurukula, mainly local boys, resident boarding, no day students. When I left there were eighty-five boys. Probably it's increased.
Śrī Nārāyaṇa: All local.
Bhavānanda: All local. Our international Gurukula is here. There is local.
Śrī Nārāyaṇa: This is the international, here.
Bhavānanda: This Gurukula is international, and our Gurukula in Māyāpura is mainly local Bengali boys, many coming from brāhmaṇa families, very nice.
Śrī Nārāyaṇa: Then any industries? Hand industries?
Bhavānanda: Our handloom.
Śrī Nārāyaṇa: Handloom. (Hindi)
Bhavānanda: And our gośāla is just developing. That area of Māyāpura, Navadvīpa, is a big handloom...
Śrī Nārāyaṇa: Yes, handloom area.
Bhavānanda: Many handloomers. So we have designs to expand that into a very large area, and most of it will be exported to our temples and devotees all around the world. And all of the handloom workers, they're devotees so they don't take any salary. None of us take any salary. And they get nice rooming and full prasādam and their children are educated. All medicine, everything is supplied to them.
Śrī Nārāyaṇa: You could also, perhaps, introduce this new spinning wheel for the yarn. At present you must be purchasing yarn from the mills.
Bhavānanda: Yes.
Śrī Nārāyaṇa: But have you seen this small nice carakā, spinning wheel?
Bhavānanda: Well, we do our own spinning.
Śrī Nārāyaṇa: Spinning also?
Bhavānanda: Oh, yes. We're training up those who have children... They're trained in the varṇāśrama system. Some of the children in the school have a scholastic bent of mind, so they're educated in Sanskrit and higher studies. Some of them have a vaiśya bent of mind, and they work in the gośāla helping to develop..., milk the cows. Some are... Their parents are working in the handloom. They also have that desire, so they're trained to be handloomers. In this way we will be able to develop a city of fifty thousand devotees.
Śrī Bajaj: Let us not overstrain him and whatever if... He'll feel tired.
Prabhupāda: Thank you very much.
Śrī Nārāyaṇa: (Hindi)
Svarūpa Dāmodara: We have our main festival in Māyāpura at the end of March, March 24th.
Śrī Nārāyaṇa: March 24th?
Bhavānanda: This year? Dola-yātrā. Gaura-pūrṇimā.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Our biggest festival. All the devotees from all over the world...
Prabhupāda: Recently there was a scientific meeting here. Where is that Statesman report?
Śrī Nārāyaṇa: The report from, about Māyāpura? Some literature?
Prabhupāda: No, here. We... Just describe.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: We had a science conference here in Gurukula just about a little more than a week ago.
Śrī Nārāyaṇa: Here in this new building?
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Yes, the same building, at the same hall that you're going to hold your conference. I invited several scholars, scientists around Delhi and Agra. Also Śrīla Prabhupāda's disciples, scientist disciples, came from around the world. The basic theme was to show that life is coming from the supreme life. In other words everything is coming from Kṛṣṇa. But modern science says that we are just product of atoms and molecules.
Haṁsadūta: This is an article which was published in The Statesman, October 22nd, which covers this meeting. It says, "The Nonphysical View on the Origin of Species. Materialists and men of faith continue to disagree over the origins of life. According to the first group life is..." [break]
(Bhakti-caru and kavirāja -Bengali to end)