720616 - Letter to Tribhuvanatha written from Los Angeles

Letters by Date, 1972

His Divine Grace
A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada

June 16, 1972

My Dear Tribhuvanatha,

Please accept my blessings. I am in due receipt of your letter dated 10th June, 1972, and with great pleasure I have noted the contents. I was wondering what you are doing, so I am very glad to hear your report of getting the very nice temple in Edinburgh. I think it is Krishna's desire that you have got that place in such perfect location, so now apply yourself very seriously and take advantage of this opportunity for spreading Krishna Consciousness all over that city and in other places in Scotland. The price of 13 Pounds a week for such a large place is not at all bad. Yes, take the place for as many years as they will agree to.

Because there is close proximity of many students, the important thing to give them is our book and literature. They are interested to get knowledge, but the materialistic knowledge will lead them astray from real goal of their intelligence, and all of their credits in education will only add up to so many zeros. But if you yourself are very much well-acquainted with our Krishna philosophy, you will be able to convince them that if they make Krishna or God the center of their learning process, never mind they're scientists, chemists, politicians, whatever they may be, if they put Krishna in front of so many zeros they will come out with a huge sum and their life will be very much perfect. If you require assistance for preaching to the student class, I think Revatinandana can come there and preach very nicely to the scholarly class in their own language. Now in our philosophy classes, each day I am discussing one of your western philosophies and so far we have discussed many, many philosophers like Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, Marx, like that, and now we are discussing Darwin and other scientists from your western countries. Because they have missed the central point that we are not the controllers of nature, rather we are controlled by nature, and because they do not see that there is a Supreme Controller who is controlling even the nature, therefore their vast research and display of intelligence is only so much waste of time. It is just like a child. A child may play with the imitation of another child and the child will hold the doll and play with it as if it is real. But the parents who gave the child the doll, they know good and well the child is nonsense but they tolerate and enjoy sometimes. Just like my sisters used to prepare for me some imaginary puris from their toys of very small cooking things, and I used to pretend I was eating them and we were quite happy that this was the same thing just like our parents were doing. We did not know we were nonsense, one nonsense cooking, another nonsense eating, but our father knew we were nonsense. So it is like that in this material world, everyone is acting more or less like children clinging to some play things provided by the Father and taking them very seriously. But when we become actually wise and see things from the point of view of our Father and take his instruction, then we make progressive advancement out of the childish nonsense state of life or life in this material world.

Now organize the temple very nicely and request tourists to come in, and with many flowers you can decorate the whole hall with flowers and it will be very much attractive. You can make a sign-board that says "Guests are requested to offer a flower to the Deity". The flower market is near-by and any gentleman will bring flowers, and give them prasadam. A gorgeous temple means many flowers, beautiful decorations, and prasadam distribution. Some sort of kirtana must go on continuously. Further, chanting 16 rounds must be completed, that is our spiritual strength. And I am very much stressing nowadays that my students shall increase their reading of my books and try to understand them from different angles of vision. Each sloka can be seen from many, many angles of vision, so become practiced in seeing things like this. If we are selling the books but we do not know what is inside the book, that will be a farce, especially if you are preaching and selling books to the students of Edinburgh.

Now I am coming to London very soon for your Rathayatra Celebration, and I shall be very happy to see you all, my beloved disciples there in England. You mention one very large festival being held there in Edinburgh from July 20 to August 9, so if you can arrange some big, big, meeting for me to speak there and address the public at large as well as the students, that will be very nice. One thing, I am already scheduled to speak in Paris on July 21, 22, 23, so if you arrange some meetings at the Edinburgh Festival, you should schedule them for last part of July or early August accordingly.

The best thing is to always serve Krishna and depend upon Him at every moment and everything will come.

Hoping this will meet you in good health.

Your ever well-wisher,

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami