Bhakti Vikasa Swami's Blog, page 126

Conquering low tendencies

As far as salvation is concerned, one has to conquer the principles of lust, anger, unlawful desires, avarice and bewilderment. To get freedom from anger, one should learn how to forgive. To be free from unlawful desires one should not make plans. By spiritual culture one is able to conquer sleep. By tolerance only can one conquer desires and avarice. Disturbances from various diseases can be avoided by regulated diets. By self-control one can be free from false hopes, and money can be saved by avoiding undesirable association. By practice of yoga one can control hunger, and worldliness can be avoided by culturing the knowledge of impermanence. Dizziness can be conquered by rising up, and false arguments can be conquered by factual ascertainment. Talkativeness can be avoided by gravity and silence, and by prowess one can avoid fearfulness. Perfect knowledge can be obtained by self-cultivation. One must be free from lust, avarice, anger, dreaming, etc., to actually attain the path of salvation.

Srila Prabhupada; SB 1.9.27 purport

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Blowing up the slaughterhouse

It is not in our aims anywhere to build bombs for any purpose. The same mentality is involved in trying to blow-up a slaughterhouse as is there in meat-eating. Such things will not stop people from unnecessary animal slaughter. It is only by educating people in the science of Krsna consciousness that they will automatically develop all good qualities. Yasyasti bhaktir bhagavaty akincana sarvair gunais tatra samasate surah. And the nondevotee will not have any good qualities even they may be vegetarians. Harav abhaktasya kuto mahad-guna mano-rathenasat dhavato bahih [SB 5.18.12].

Srila Prabhupada, Letter, 26 May 1976

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Boys go to school and become demons

Prabhupada: What is your name?

Devotee: [telling child] Bhakti dasa.

Child: Bhakti dasa.

Prabhupada: Oh! You do not know your name? You ask your father? [laughter]You do not know your name? You are asking your father, “What is my name?”

Child: No, I don’t remember.

Prabhupada: Oh, you don’t remember your name? I…

Bhagavan: We began to call him Bhakti dasa yesterday. [laughter]

Prabhupada: Oh, thank you very much. Very good. [laughs] Making a Vaisnava, very nice boy. Very good-looking boy. Don’t let him deviate. This is the age to be careful so that he may not deviate. What is his age? Twelve years?

Devotee: Eleven.

Prabhupada: Eleven. That’s all. This is the age. Twelve to fifteen years, the boys become, by bad association, they become rotten. This hellish world is like that. They go to school and become demons.

Morning Walk — June 11, 1974, Paris

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I am your servant, you are my master

There is a place which is full of eternal happiness. So this life should be engaged for that purpose, not to fight like cats and dogs. That is not very credit. Credit means ruining one’s life. If one fights like cats and dogs, he becomes cats and dogs. Nature’s law is very strict. Therefore we should be very careful not to become like cats and dogs but to become very humble, humbler than the grass and tolerant than the tree. Amanina. Everyone wants that “I am very honorable man, prestigious man. And you should respect me.” That is our material disease. “I do not want to respect you, but you should offer me respect.” This is the position. Therefore our system is to call another Vaishnava as prabhu. “Sir, you are prabhu, you are master.” But we call prabhu, but I think, “No, you are not prabhu; I am prabhu. You are servant.” This cheating process will not help us. Actually, we should believe that he is prabhu. “He is servant of Krsna; therefore he is my prabhu.” This is Vaisnava mentality. Gopi-bhartur pada-kamalayor dasa-dasa-dasa-dasanudaasa. One who wants to become servant of the servant of the servant of the servant, he is actually prabhu. If falsely one thinks that “I am prabhu,” then his life is spoiled. So this word we use amongst ourself, prabhu, means that “I am your servant, you are my master.” But that should be practically exhibited. That is called tapasya, to learn all these things.

Srila Prabhupada; lecture, October 23, 1976

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The real cause of war —cruelty to animals — & the solution

When a man becomes too proud of his material position, he tries to enjoy his senses in an unrestricted way, being influenced by the modes of passion and ignorance. He is thus described as asuric, or demoniac. When people are demoniac in spirit, they are not merciful toward the poor animals. Consequently, they maintain various animal slaughterhouses. This is technically called suna, or himsa, which means the killing of living beings. In Kali-yuga, due to the increase of the modes of passion and ignorance, almost all men are asuric, or demoniac; therefore they are very much fond of eating flesh, and for this end they maintain various kinds of animal slaughterhouses. In this Age of Kali the propensity for mercy is almost nil. Consequently there is always fighting and wars between men and nations. Men do not understand that because they unrestrictedly kill so many animals, they also must be slaughtered like animals in big wars. This is very much evident in the Western countries. In the West, slaughterhouses are maintained without restriction, and therefore every fifth or tenth year there is a big war in which countless people are slaughtered even more cruelly than the animals. Sometimes during war, soldiers keep their enemies in concentration camps and kill them in very cruel ways. These are reactions brought about by unrestricted animal-killing in the slaughterhouse and by hunters in the forest. Proud, demoniac persons do not know the laws of nature, or the laws of God. Consequently, they unrestrictedly kill poor animals, not caring for them at all. In the Krsna consciousness movement, animal-killing is completely prohibited. One is not accepted as a bona fide student in this movement unless he promises to follow the four regulative principles: no animal-killing, no intoxication, no illicit sex and no gambling. This Krsna consciousness movement is the only means by which the sinful activities of men in this Kali-yuga can be counteracted.

Srila Prabhupada’s purport to SB 4.26.5

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Predictions from the 1970s

Syamasundara: I’ll read you some of their predictions. They’re very frightening. They say by 1980 — that’s eight years from now — that they will be able to create synthetic life in the form of artificial viruses which will be used to cure some forms of genetic diseases. Artificial life. In eight years they say they will have artificial life.

Prabhupada: And that artificial life?

Syamasundara: Small viruses or living organisms, very small. But by the year 2000 they say they will be able to keep…

Prabhupada: 2000!

Syamasundara: Yes. That’s twenty-eight years from now. They say that they will be able to deep-freeze embryos, that means unborn babies, as insurance against nuclear holocaust and for interplanetary colonization. In other words, they can send these unborn babies in frozen form to other planets and have an arrangement for them to be born and grow in the spaceship and then go out.

Prabhupada: Don’t waste your time with these rascals.

Syamasundara: They’ll have an artificial and mechanical baby factory, effective control of most human defects. Single-celled life will be created from chemicals off the shelf. They can make intelligent animals to do menial work. And then in seventy-eight [eighty?] years they say that they will be able to regenerate…

Prabhupada: Just like there was Pan American, they were selling tickets for
going to Candraloka. Reservation.

Atreya Rsi: Prabhupada, is it possible that man could ever make even a one-celled living being?

Prabhupada: Even if he makes, what is credit there? Cells are already there. What is the question of making?

Syamasundara: All they’re doing is creating the conditions for the jiva to enter, actually I think. Isn’t it?

Prabhupada: Whatever their proposing, these things are already there. So even they can create something, Xerox copy, what is the credit?

Syamasundara: But then they’ll have control over it. That’s their…

Prabhupada: No, no control, because you are beginning from something on which you have no control. So where is your control?

Syamasundara: “From now on I am the master. I can create more Einsteins. I can create many Einsteins.”

Prabhupada: But first of all keep Einstein living. Why he is dying?

Syamasundara: That’s on their program too.

Prabhupada: That’s on their program — that is is another foolish thing.

Syamasundara: Postponement of death by at least fifty years…

Prabhupada: So what is the profit? After fifty years he has to die. Stop, stop death, then that is credit.

Syamasundara: They say they will be able to take out someone like Einstein’s brain when his body dies and keep it alive, a disembodied brain, and use it like a computer.

Prabhupada: All right. Whatever. [sounding disgusted] No. All rascals, fools. As if in the brain there is the thing. What is this brain? It is a material substance, what is there, lump of matter.

Syamasundara: They haven’t even come near to these things yet.

Prabhupada: They’ll never come.

Svarupa Damodara: Mostly scientists are digging up, trying to find out something when they get some very basic preliminary ideas, they speculate so much [indistinct] this, so on. “In such-and-such time I’ll be able to make such and such things.” Every scientist does like that. Ultimately it is all…, it is always…

Prabhupada: Failure.

From a 1972 discussion of Charles Darwin

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How you can live always in Vrndavana

What is the picture of Vrndavana? Vrndavana means there Mother Yasoda, Nanda Maharaja, the Radharani, the gopis, the cowherds boys, Sridama, Sudama, the land, the water, the trees, the birds — everyone is trying to satisfy Krsna. That is Vrndavana. Vrndavana means nothing… When Krsna left Vrndavana for Mathura, all of them become dead. That is Vrndavana. Similarly, you can live always in Vrndavana, always in Vaikuntha, if you are mad after Krsna.

Srila Prabhupada, Talk on Srimad-Bhagavatam 3.25.26 – November 26, 1974, Bombay

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Krsna accepts or rejects according to guru’s pleasure

There is Narottama dasa Thakura Prarthana. Asraya laiya bhaje, krsna nahi tare tyage: “One who takes asraya, shelter of a devotee, Krsna does not give him up. Krsna accepts him.” Yasya prasadad bhagavat-prasadah…. Because if that person who is giving shelter, if he’s pleased, Krsna is immediately… If he recommends a fool, “Oh, Krsna, here is a devotee,” Krsna will accept
immediately. It doesn’t matter whether he’s a fool or rascal. Because he is recommended by representative, he will be accepted. Yasya pra… This is the meaning of yasya prasadad bhagavat-pra… Without his recommendation there is no entry in Krsna’s kingdom. Yasya-prasadad na gatih kuto ‘pi. If he displeases Krsna’s representative, he has no entrance to the Krsna’s kingdom, however learned he may be or whatever he may be. Immediately rejected.

From Srila Prabhupada’s lecture on Srimad-Bhagavatam 6.1.21 & Room Conversation – December 12, 1970, Indore

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Claiming ownership of land

We are generally illusioned. We are claiming ownership of the land. But before my birth the land was here, and after my death it will still be here. How long will I go on claiming, in body after body, “This is my land! This is my land!”? Is it not nonsense? One has to be out of illusion. We should know that whatever we are doing in the material concept of life is illusion.

From: Krsna consciousness, the Topmost Yoga System, by Srila Prabhupada

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Aryans and non-Aryans

Aryans do not deviate from the instructions of Krsna, nor do they have doubts about Krsna, but non-Aryans and other demoniac people fail to follow the instructions of Bhagavad-gita and Srimad-Bhagavatam. This is because they have been trained in sense gratification at the cost of all other living entities. Nunam pramattah kurute vikarma: (SB 5.5.4) their only business is to indulge in all kinds of forbidden activities for sense gratification. Yad indriya-pritaya aprnoti: they deviate in this way because they want to gratify their senses. They have no other occupation or ambition.

Srila Prabhupada, SB 6.16.43, Purport

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