740602 - Morning Walk - Geneva
A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada
Prabhupāda: . . . vayasa-tīrtham (SB 1.5.10). And the swan is considered to be the highest of the birds. Therefore it is called paramahaṁsa. Example is given to the haṁsa. Haṁsa means swan. Supreme haṁsa. (break) French artists are famous all over the world. What is that famous artist's name?
Yogeśvara: Claude Monet?
Bhagavān: Picasso.
Yogeśvara: No, he's Spanish.
Devotee: Leonardo da Vinci.
Yogeśvara: He's Italian. (laughs)
Prabhupāda: Yes. It is said that he was very poor man. So he painted in a fruitshop, grapes.
Devotees: Cezanne.
Prabhupāda: Ah. So the crows came to pick up the grapes, and the king was passing, he picked up, "Oh, who is that artist?" He became rich man in association. No, I have seen in that hall. So first-class picture. I have never seen such nice picture. Exactly life. (japa) (break)
Yogeśvara: . . . the book glorifying the Russian ideals, he is thrown out of the country.
Prabhupāda: Just see. It is a country . . . people are not bad. I have seen. They are very nice. The government, the rascals, a few men who are controlling the government, they are all rogues and thieves. The same thing in India. Everywhere the mass population, they are innocent. These rascals made them . . . misleading. In Russia I have seen. The mass people, they are very nice. Andhā yathāndhair upanīyamānāḥ (SB 7.5.31). They are innocent. In India also. The Pakistan happened due to these politicians. The Hindus, Muslims, they are innocent. They don't fight. These politicians engaged them to fight artificially for their political ambition. The wars also declared nowadays, on account of the rascal politicians. The people do not want it. (break) . . . to the Indian railway strike, have you got any news?
Karandhara: It, er, I think it ceased.
Bhagavān: It ceased the other day.
Karandhara: They made some agreement with the union.
Prabhupāda: Government made agreement.
Karandhara: Yeah, they made some compromise with the union.
Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: It seems that the government had arrested all of the union leaders, and this paralyzed the workers' appeal. So the workers finally agreed to go back. They put many thousands of union leaders into jail.
Prabhupāda: It was right. (break)
Yogeśvara: . . . did in such a way that crops can be grown anywhere? Can crops be grown anywhere in the world?
Prabhupāda: Yes. If it does not grow, then what is nature's arrangement?
Yogeśvara: Well, for example, there are some parts in India that are too dry to make . . . to cultivate the ground.
Prabhupāda: Dry means there is no rain. If nature's like, there can be profuse rain. That is nature's arrangement. That is stated in the Bhagavad-gītā: parjanyād anna-sambhavaḥ. Parjanyāt. You must have sufficient rain. And for having sufficient rain, you must execute yajña. Yajñād bhavati parjanyaḥ (BG 3.14). So these people are now becoming rascals. They are not performing yajñas. They are opening slaughterhouse. How there will be rain? Instead of performing yajñas, they are opening big, big slaughterhouse.
Bhagavān: I think now in many parts of the world the desert is increasing.
Prabhupāda: Yes, desert will increase.
Yogeśvara: So under the present conditions, it's necessary to transport food. At least, for the time being, we don't have the possibility of growing food anywhere and everywhere. So some transportation of food is required.
Prabhupāda: Where you get for transportation if there is no grain? If you say there is no hope of producing food grain, then where is the chance of transportation?
Yogeśvara: Well, in some areas there is.
Prabhupāda: In somewhere. If somewhere it is produced, then other place also it can be produced. You perform yajña, saṅkīrtana-yajña. You get enough food. Yajñād bhavati parjanyaḥ, parjanyād anna-sambhavaḥ, annād bhavanti bhutānī (BG 3.14). So in Switzerland there are many slaughterhouses also? Many?
Guru-gaurāṅga: Some time ago I read in the papers that they had so much milk and so much butter that the government proposal was kill the cows.
Prabhupāda: Kill all the animals. Oh, just see. They will not give to others.
Bhagavān: The farmers were complaining that their prices weren't competitive 'cause there was so much milk.
Prabhupāda: The price is the standard, not that goods are required. They want money for purchasing wine. This is the difficulty. They are not satisfied simply by eating sufficient. They want money for woman and wine. This is their philosophy.
Bhagavān: In the United States that same problem was there, that the prices were all going up. Everything was having inflation.
Prabhupāda: So if they had sense, they should have exported where there is necessity of this milk, butter, grain. Then the world will be happy.
Yogeśvara: That was my question. If there is necessity for exporting, then there is necessity for maintaining ships and trains and means of communication, employing workers, electrical dynamos for running . . .
Prabhupāda: No, point is if in one place you can produce food grains, butter and milk, why not other place? That is my point. The land is everywhere the same. If one place . . . now here, in Europe and America, there is enough production because the population is less. So the whole America is bigger than India, at least four times. And the population is not even half. What is the population whole America?
Bhagavān: Two hundred million.
Prabhupāda: And India?
Devotee: Five hundred million.
Bhagavān: About six hundred million.
Prabhupāda: Just see. And the land is four times more than India, at least. Therefore you find excess. You see? Otherwise, India is also producing. No, India is not producing. It is not utilizing all the land.
Guru-gaurāṅga: If they are so sinful here, Śrīla Prabhupāda, how . . . if the people here are so sinful, how is it that they have so many nice facilities? It will go away soon, very soon.
Prabhupāda: Yes. Yes. As they increase their sinful activities, these facilities will be taken away. Therefore we propose that "Everything belongs to Kṛṣṇa, and we are all sons of Kṛṣṇa. Just cooperate in Kṛṣṇa consciousness, then the whole world will be happy." This is our proposal. Why do you think it is American, it is Swiss, it is Indian? Everything belongs to Kṛṣṇa. Let us become obedient to Kṛṣṇa, and because we are sons of Kṛṣṇa, let us enjoy the property of Kṛṣṇa. Immediately there will be happiness. I have several times said that the . . . still the whole world can produce so much grains and foodstuff, ten times of the population can be fed. Ten times. In Africa, in Australia, and even in America, so much, I mean, prospect of producing food. But they will not cooperate. They will kill the animal. They will throw the grain to the sea and claim, "It is my land. It is my property."
Bhagavān: Then they complain about scarcity.
Prabhupāda: For money. So rascal civilization is going on. Therefore I challenged that man, "Where is your brain?" There is no brain. You remember that?
Yogeśvara: From the International Labour Organization.
Prabhupāda: Yes. (japa) There is no brain.
Karandhara: Prabhupāda, in a recent study by US Agricultural officials, they found that it is really uneconomical to eat meat. It takes so much energy and man hours to raise and transport and slaughter the cows that it makes it very wasteful.
Prabhupāda: Wasteful, yes. Therefore I say they have no brain. All, they are rascals. Rascal leaders. A little labor in agriculture will be sufficient to produce the family's food stock for the whole year. You can stock. You work only three months, and you get sufficient food for your whole family. And less nine months, you chant Hare Kṛṣṇa. But these rascals will not do that. They will work hard like ass simply for eating. Nūnaṁ pramattaḥ kurute vikarma yad indriya-prītaya āpṛṇoti (SB 5.5.4). They will not accept easy life.
Guru-gaurāṅga: In that agricultural report it said that if they were to eat all the grains that they give to the cows and animals, they could get twenty times more calories than by eating meat.
Prabhupāda: Yes. Wrong civilization. Rascal civilization. And this is due to this rascaldom, nationalism, "This is my land." And at any moment he will be kicked out. Still, he claims, "It is my land." Ahaṁ mameti. Janasya moho 'yam ahaṁ mameti (SB 5.5.8). This is the illusion. Nothing belongs to him; still he is fighting, "This is mine. This is mine." "I" and "mine." Identifying himself with this body, "I", and wrongly conceiving that "This is mine." This is the basic principle of wrong civilization. Both things are . . . nothing belongs to him. Suppose I have come here in Switzerland. If I remain here for one month and I claim, "Oh, this is mine," what is this? So similarly, I come as guest. Everyone comes as guest in the womb of his mother and lives here for fifty years. He is claiming, "It is mine." When . . . when . . . when it became yours? The land was long, long time before your birth. How it became yours? But they have no sense. "It is mine." "Fight." "My land," "My nation," "My family," "My society." In this way, wasting time. These things have been introduced by these Western rascals. In the Vedic civilization there is no such thing as nationalism. You won't find. Have you seen in the Bhagavad-gītā any word "nationalism"? No such thing. This is the original ideas of the tribes. In the jungle there are . . . just like in Africa there are still groups of tribes. This is most crude idea of civilization, nationalism. This is tribalized. It is nothing but development of just tribalism. And eating also the same. They are not advanced in civilization. This nationalism is another form of tribalism, that's all.
Bhagavān: They are actually just cannibals, because they maintain themselves on eating the cow.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Bhagavān: They think it's so horrible to eat another person, but . . .
Prabhupāda: Yes. And they are suffering. Therefore you'll find, in the recent history, every twenty-five years there is a big war, slaughter, mass slaughtering of the people. How nature will tolerate? Now India has learned, imitated the Western countries. Now there is war between India and Pakistan. Otherwise there was no such thing. During two wars between the Pakistan and Hindustan unnecessarily, without any profit, millions of people were killed.
Karandhara: Just recently India exploded an atomic bomb, and now Pakistan is hurrying to get an atomic bomb also.
Prabhupāda: Yes. This is going on. (japa)
Guru-gaurāṅga: The government promised it would be only for peaceful purposes.
Prabhupāda: No, what do they know about peaceful condition? They are all rascals. They do not know what is peaceful condition. Actually, peaceful condition is described in the Bhagavad-gītā:
- bhoktāraṁ yajña-tapasāṁ
- sarva-loka-maheśvaram
- suhṛdaṁ sarva-bhūtānāṁ
- jñātvā māṁ śāntim ṛcchati
- (BG 5.29)
This is peace. Unless there is Kṛṣṇa consciousness, where is the peacefulness? There cannot be. All rascaldom. Mūḍha. Na māṁ duṣkṛtino mūḍhāḥ prapadyante narādhamāḥ (BG 7.15). These rascals and fools, māyayāpahṛta-jñānāḥ, lost of all knowledge—how there can be peace? It is all useless. What is this?
Satsvarūpa: Embracing. Men and women and child, too.
Prabhupāda: Oh.
Yogeśvara: Merged.
Prabhupāda: Merged into one. (laughter) Brahman realization. Hare Kṛṣṇa.
Bhagavān: We can turn back now.
Prabhupāda: Hmm. This way or that way?
Guru-gaurāṅga: This way is all right.
Prabhupāda: Very nice park.
Yogeśvara: In the ancient tribal system, there was some form of religiosity. There was some form of worship of God. The so-called modern civilization doesn't even maintain that.
Prabhupāda: Yes. Their developed consciousness is being used for sense gratification. That's all. They have taken up sense gratification is the highest aim of life. Hedonism. What is that hedonism?
Karandhara: Hedonism means to eat, sleep and be merry.
Prabhupāda: That's all.
Yogeśvara: When I was in school, I read that when the British went to Africa to colonize, the first thing they did . . . in the north there was a tribe called the Ashanti tribe. And the symbol of religion was an axe. Whoever possessed that axe was the leader. So the first thing they did was to import thousands and thousands of axes, and they distributed them to everyone. In this way, they destroyed the religious sentiment and then introduced their own system.
Prabhupāda: Who first started this colonization? Britishers or the Spaniards?
Yogeśvara: It was a Britisher.
Karandhara: Spaniards were, I think . . . Portuguese.
Prabhupāda: Portuguese. Because they had very small land.
Karandhara: They were navigators.
Prabhupāda: So find out some place.
Bhagavān: The boy didn't realize the potency of your answer last night. He was asking how to fight Fascism, and you were saying by chanting and dancing. But, factually, by setting the example is the greatest way to fight all these maladies.
Prabhupāda: Māyā. Māyā. Yes, we are fighting with this māyic civilization.
Bhagavān: Because they can fight with guns, but afterwards neither one of them knows how to set an exemplary life. So they just keep fighting with guns.
Prabhupāda: With gun and without gun, you will die. The Fascist will die and the other party also will die. Gun or without gun, he cannot exist. But our fight is to stop death. Tyaktvā dehaṁ punar janma naiti mām eti (BG 4.9). Our fight is for this purpose—no more death. This is real fight. Your . . . what is your fight? You may save yourself for two years or three years or ten years, but you have to die. You have no such program not to die. But here is a program, no more death.
Yogeśvara: They have one program. They are freezing bodies.
Prabhupāda: (laughs) That is another nonsense.
Yogeśvara: Then they will defrost them in fifty or one hundred years.
Prabhupāda: All future programs.
Nitāi: They have never done that, have they?
Yogeśvara: Well, there are people in the refrigerator now. There are people who have voluntarily put themselves in a big block of ice. They were told before they went inside that they would be defrosted in about fifty years.
Prabhupāda: Then what he will do? (laughing)
Bhagavān: They should take a few out now and see if it worked.
Prabhupāda: No, that can be done. The yogic process which is called kumbhaka. Samādhi. You stop your breathing, and you can keep yourself for thousands of years. That is the kumbhaka. But this art is known by the frogs also.
Yogeśvara: By the frogs?
Prabhupāda: Yes. Automatically . . . there was news that in the coal mine all of a sudden a frog came out, and it was estimated that . . . because the coal is formed by the ruins. So when there was ruins, at least ten thousand years ago, during the ruins, the frog was encaged. And it formed coal. Still he was living. That means he lived at least for ten thousand years. So Brahmā lives for ten millions of years. So what is the . . . they are also condemned. Ā-brahma-bhuvanāl lokāḥ punar āvartinaḥ (BG 8.16). Kṛṣṇa says: "What is the use of going to the Brahma-loka? Even if you live for millions of years, you will have to die." Yad gatvā na nivartante tad dhāma paramaṁ mama (BG 15.6): "But if you come to Me, you will never have to die." Our struggle is for that purpose. Antavat tu phalaṁ teṣāṁ tad bhavaty alpa-medhasām (BG 7.23). For these things, those who are trying, they are less intelligent.
Bhagavān: (referring to passerby) He's got one arm, and he's running to keep healthy.
Prabhupāda: Yes. (laughs) In the morning they begin fishing, this walking, and golfing, no engagement. These poor fellows, they have been not informed that there is better engagement. They do not know. This is their civilization. And here, Kṛṣṇa conscious young men, they are chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa. That is the difference. They appreciate the Kṛṣṇa conscious boys. "Bright faces," they say. The priests and the common gentlemen, they say, and they inquire, "Are you Americans?" They see it. (japa) Come and see in our Los Angeles temple, in every temple, how these younger boys and girls are sitting so peacefully, look so nice. Is it not? A year ago, all hellish. Hellish. The same boys, the same girls. That's a fact. Just the counterpart of our Society is the hippies—frustrated, all disappointed, mad. They should come forward now to cooperate with this movement. The other day the one somebody came to solve the problems of the hippies?
Yogeśvara: Oh, in Rome? Desmond O'Grady?
Prabhupāda: Yes. As soon as we suggested "Chant Hare Kṛṣṇa," he left.
Yogeśvara: The social worker.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Yogeśvara: With the long hair.
Prabhupāda: Ah-hah. So, he did not like the idea?
Yogeśvara: He didn't think it was very practical.
Guru-gaurāṅga: He thinks it works, but not all the time. He thinks it works for some people, but not for all people.
Prabhupāda: And all people . . . any good thing, it is meant for some people, not for all people. But if there is an ideal class of men, the others will follow. Jewel. Jewel is always costly. Still everyone aspires, "If I get a jewel." That is wanted. Not that everybody can possess jewel, but still, everybody will appreciate jewel.
Yogeśvara: There are a lot of people who don't accept it, because they think, "Maybe it is another imitation jewel. Maybe I'll get cheated again."
Prabhupāda: So why don't you become once more cheated? You have been cheated so many times. Why not try this also? If that is his argument, that means you have been cheated so many times. So why not once more, and see whether it is cheating or reality? That sense will not come. "Oh, I have been cheated so many times. Therefore I shall not take." So why not become once more cheated and see the value? The example, as I said, sometimes, corer opor rag kore bhuye bhat khaoa. (Eating rice on the ground and angry at the thief.) . . . that he lost his utensils several times. The thief stole it. Therefore he promised, "Now I shall take my food on the ground. I shall not purchase any more utensils." What is . . .? This is bathing place or . . .?
Yogeśvara: This is where they go water skiing.
Prabhupāda: Hmm?
Yogeśvara: Water skiing?
Prabhupāda: Water skiing?
Yogeśvara: Yes. They stand on two pieces of wood and they hold on to a rope, and a fast boat pulls them along the water, like that.
Prabhupāda: Oh. Like . . . what you have? Surfer? Surfer?
Karandhara: Surfing. Yeah, similar.
Prabhupāda: Surfing. Surfing or suffering? (laughter) Unnecessarily, whole day and night they are . . . this is also another example of māyā. He is actually suffering, but he's thinking, enjoying. It always remains calm and quiet? There is no waves?
Guru-gaurāṅga: Sometimes. In the morning it's very calm.
Prabhupāda: But there cannot be any big waves.
Guru-gaurāṅga: No. Not like ocean. (break)
Bhagavān: They are importing dogs in India now, I think.
Prabhupāda: Ah.
Bhagavān: European dogs.
Prabhupāda: (laughing) First of all they were importing European masters, and now they are importing dogs. Now they will have to import European brāhmaṇas. Yes. Because in India all the brāhmaṇas are now finished. So for their ritualistic ceremony they will have to import from Europe, America. Long ago . . . not long ago, about four, five years ago, I wrote this fact. (break) . . . the Communists, as they making that the state is the proprietor of everything, so what is the harm of accepting God as the proprietor of everything? What is the harm? He is giving up his own right. The state is the proprietor. So why not make God is the proprietor? What is the harm? And actually, God is the proprietor. Now this lake, it is not made by the state; it is made by God. They are claiming this is Swiss lake. What is that?
Yogeśvara: Geneva Lake.
Prabhupāda: Geneva Lake. And a few steps forward, a French lake. So either to the French or Geneva it does not belong. It belongs to God. He's a fool. Why don't you say: "God's lake"?
Yogeśvara: We could propose them that they change the name, but I think they might be afraid it would drive away the tourists.
Prabhupāda: Yes. Harer nāma harer nāma harer nāma eva kevalam . . . (CC Adi 17.21). (end)
- 1974 - Morning Walks
- 1974 - Lectures and Conversations
- 1974 - Lectures, Conversations and Letters
- 1974-06 - Lectures, Conversations and Letters
- Morning Walks - Europe
- Morning Walks - Europe, Switzerland - Geneva
- Lectures, Conversations and Letters - Europe
- Lectures, Conversations and Letters - Europe, Switzerland - Geneva
- Audio Files 30.01 to 45.00 Minutes
- Conversations and Lectures with Bengali Snippets