760831 - Morning Walk - Delhi

Morning Walks by Date, 1976

His Divine Grace
A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada

760831MW-DELHI - August 31, 1976 - 17:18 Minutes

Prabhupāda: Raso 'ham apsu kaunteya prabhāsmi śaśi-sūryayoḥ (BG 7.8): "I am the sunshine and moonshine." You cannot see sunshine and moonshine?

Indian man: But, sir, the sunshine is the hiraṇyagarbha. That too is the product. That is material. There is something beyond the sunshine, sir.

Prabhupāda: For God there is nothing material. For God . . .

Indian man (2): I think that's what Īśopaniṣad says. Om īśāvāsyam idaṁ sarvam.

Prabhupāda: Īśāvāsyam idaṁ sarvam (ISO 1). So what is material?

Indian man (2): Yat kiñca jagatyāṁ jagat tena tyaktena bhuñjīthāḥ.

Prabhupāda: If it is sarvam, then what is material?

Indian man (2): Tena tyaktena bhuñjīthāḥ.

Prabhupāda: That is another for you.

Indian man (2): (laughs) It's all right.

Children: This way! This way! This way! This way! This way!

Hari-śauri: This is it. The car's this way, Śrīla Prabhupāda.

Indian man: Okay child.

Hari-śauri: Hare Kṛṣṇa. (break)

Prabhupāda: . . . simply prabhāsmi śaśi-sūryayoḥ. Why they cannot see? Here is prabhā of the sūrya. Where is the difficulty to see? Prabhāsmi śaśi-sūryayoḥ. (break) . . . this man thinks about death.

Indian man (3): Well, modernized man is mostly either afraid of the death or he doesn't know of the death.

Prabhupāda: Afraid of death, everyone. There is no doubt. Unless he's a madman.

Indian man (3): But then, er, I don't think anybody believes he will be afraid, even there is a change of birth or change of body.

Prabhupāda: They may say so, but actually they are. As soon as there is some signal of death they are very much disturbed.

Indian man (3): I don't think one should be afraid of death.

Prabhupāda: No, afraid means . . .

Indian man (3): Because this is something which has to come.

Prabhupāda: That is a fact. But nobody wants to die. That is a fact.

Indian man (3): But then you feel that . . . when you feel like living anything in the life, you feel after some time that he must have a change. So this is also . . . (break) . . . feel that this is a change.

Prabhupāda: That change he doesn't want.

Indian man (4): But modernized man is more busy in his own life. When only he gets into bad time then he thinks, "What is this?" But otherwise I think he has no time to think of these things.

Bhakta Robin: They think once you're dead, you're dead, and that is the end of it. They don't . . . they think, "We'll enjoy now and we shall die, and that's the finish." If you say to somebody, "Have you heard about reincarnation?" "I do not believe in this." Many people in the West cannot accept that the soul will transcend into another body, move on or move down. To them it's fantasy and humbug. This is why they are afraid. They are . . .

Indian man (3): This is same reincarnation. They think that he has gone. I won't be going, so I'll keep everything with me. We attend so many places where people die, and we think, "Oh, he is gone, but maybe I am not going to go."

Bhakta Robin: The ancient Egyptians used to put all their treasures . . .

Indian man (3): We don't understand that, "All right, this is the end." So why not we understand and think in that line? That day you said that by chanting he thinks that he's chanting, maybe other people don't chant. So they don't know that they have to go. They think they are going to survive here only. They don't want to accept that they have to go, I think.

Prabhupāda: That means they do not want death. That I have . . .

Indian man (3): Yes. But definitely others are going, and he won't go also.

Prabhupāda: That means he doesn't want to die. That is a concoction. Other side is that he doesn't want to die. It is the expression of the same sentiment in a different way.

Indian man (3): But then you see after the childhood and the young age, and when he becomes old, and after old also there is end, you know, when he becomes helpless to do anything. Then what is the use of having this body? Even your own relations, they'll feel that this is a burden. So at that time I think it's very good, that person himself should feel that all right, he must leave this body now. It's useless.

Prabhupāda: No, he doesn't want.

Indian man (3): No, some people don't want. Or many people don't want. There are a few, I think maybe one in thousand.

Bhakta Robin: Does this mean, Śrīla Prabhupāda, we should not speculate about the future? Like if someone says: "Next year we should do this," and so forth. And "Next month we'll go here and we'll do that." And people are always making arrangements for the future and what they are going to do, with nothing in mind that death will take them within a flash. And they're making all these speculative arrangements.

Indian man (3): I personally feel that when you buy anything in the market, for example you buy a dress, sometimes it wears for ten years, sometimes you are cheated and it wears only for two years. So this is also same way, you know. Sometimes early death means . . .

Prabhupāda: That is for the dress. What about the man who's using the dress?

Indian man (3): Well, he's again the same . . .

Prabhupāda: You are identifying the dress with the man. That is foolishness. As soon as you say "dress," you should have to find out the man who has got the dress.

Indian man (3): Well this body is also a dress.

Prabhupāda: Then it is perfect understanding. But if you understand the dress and the man the same, then you are foolish. Dress is not the man.

Indian man (3): No, dress is not the soul, but dress is again the body.

Prabhupāda: Dress is the body. Vāsāṁsi jīrṇāni yathā vihāya (BG 2.22). That is explained. This body is just like dress. So, but the dress is different from the man who puts on the dress.

Indian man (3): Well, that is different. Man is different.

Prabhupāda: The dress, it becomes old, and it will be changed. That's all.

Indian man (3): But dress is the body. Dress is the body.

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Bhakta Robin: We have to put up with so much pain for it. You see, we're not this body, and to forget that we're not this body, but still every minute we're given pain to remember that this body is there.

Prabhupāda: What is that?

Bhakta Robin: You stub your toe, and it gives so much pain just for something so small.

Prabhupāda: What you are eating?

(pause)

Prabhupāda: So water is wasted.

Hari-śauri: Yes, it's dripping still.

Indian man (3): Tap must not be working. (break)

Bhakta Robin: . . . so the front is always full of water for people, birds to take. But all the water is dripping over the side, and it's being wasted on the ground. (break)

Prabhupāda: (referring to bhel purīs) Rādhā-vallabhi. It is offered to Rādhā-vallabha.

Hari-śauri: What's that made from, Śrīla Prabhupāda?

Prabhupāda: There's a kind of purī with some filling, dāl.

Hari-śauri: Ah, kachorī?

Prabhupāda: It is not kachorī.

Bhakta Robin: Prabhupāda, you've taught so . . . (break) . . . instruction for cooking this prasādam.

Prabhupāda: I have seen. I have seen. In our family, I know. That's all. But from my childhood it is my nature, if somebody is preparing, I see it.

Bhakta Robin: It seems to me that most people in India can cook something. Even if there's just cāpāṭis they can do this. But people in the West now are so helpless. They buy everything, it seems, in packets, and you would not know how to prepare any food as much as just to cut the packet and pour it out, and even then they don't even know how to put water into the pan.

Prabhupāda: They do not know how to eat on the whole. India knows how to eat.

(pause)

Prabhupāda: I have traveled all over the world, and this is my experience. Nobody knows how to eat.

Bhakta Robin: Nowhere at all, Śrīla Prabhupāda?

Prabhupāda: Only India. (break) . . . every province they have got different dishes. Because the woman, they are trained up how to cook very nice.

Bhakta Robin: I even see these boys, when I was in Chandigarh, in a dish next door to the temple we were starting there.

Prabhupāda: Woman is meant for that purpose, how to make nice, palatable dishes.

Bhakta Robin: Just these young boys who were carrying the bricks every morning, they would prepare their own vegetables and cāpāṭis like this, and I was amazed to see this, because you would never get anyone doing this . . .

Prabhupāda: Jaya. In Bengal there is a ceremony after marriage, bahu-bhāta. The newly married girl, she shall cook, and all the relatives, friends, are invited, and they appreciate, "Yes, nice cook." Then she is accepted as member of the whole family. Bahu-bhāta.

Bhakta Robin: And if not, Prabhupāda? If her cooking is not . . .

Prabhupāda: Therefore she is trained up.

Bhakta Robin: And if she's not trained up?

Prabhupāda: She must be trained up. Just like Rādhārāṇī, She was trained up in sixty-four arts.

Bhakta Robin: Sixty-four arts.

Prabhupāda: Do you think to captivate Kṛṣṇa is easy thing? How much qualified She must have been so that Kṛṣṇa was attracted. (loud laughing in background) What is this?

Indian man (3): Laughing is also exercise.

Bhakta Robin: Standing in a ring.

Prabhupāda: . . . (indistinct)

Indian man (3): Exercise they are doing. To laugh loudly, you know that is also exercise.

Bhakta Robin: It's a form of prāṇāyāma.

Prabhupāda: Eh?

Bhakta Robin: A form of prāṇāyāma, breathing. The scientists, or doctors, say it takes so many muscles in the body to laugh and so many to frown, and it takes less to laugh. So they say why waste energy? Everyone should laugh instead of frowning all the time, and be happy. (break)

Prabhupāda: . . . Ninth Canto, I shall take up Eleventh and Twelfth.

Bhakta Robin: Someone was explaining about these Cantos, that you start with like the feet from Kṛṣṇa, and as you read through the Cantos you slowly move up the body of Kṛṣṇa, and the Twelfth Canto is the . . .

Prabhupāda: Head.

Bhakta Robin: . . . is His head. The Twelfth Canto must be a really beautiful book, too.

Prabhupāda: Vrndavana me mandir hai, aiiye sab. kal ja rahe hain. (In Vṛndāvana there is a temple, you all should come. I am going tomorrow.)

Indian: Aaj shaam ko yahan discourse hoga. kitna baje? (Today in the evening there is a discourse here. What time?) (end)