Room Conversation
Madras
12 Feb

Devotee: Where you are sitting?

Guest: I am sitting here so that I might give my right ear to you all. I haven't seen you before.

Syamasundara: I'm Syamasundara.

Guest: (indistinct)

Prabhupada: Yes, it is your seat.

Guest: Very good, very nice seat.

Prabhupada: You can take it, this seat.

Guest: The camera should have operated on your beautiful sari. It's very good. Who is the chief of your group? You or he?

Prabhupada: (laughter) As you like.

Guest: He holds a big stick, so I'm asking.

Madhudvisa: Prabhupada is the chief. He has given me the stick.

Guest: Where is my negro friend? He has not come?

Prabhupada: Oh, he is not come. There was no place in the car. There were many negroes.

Guest: (aside:) Sit closer. You belong to this place? No. What place you belong to? (Hindi with other guest) It's a pretty long stick. Let me have a look at it first. It's wrapped in cloth. Oh, I see.

Madhudvisa: It is four bamboos.

Guest: Huh?

Madhudvisa: It is called tri-daná¸i, tridaná¸i.

Guest: Tridaná¸a.

Madhudvisa: Yes.

Guest: Tridaná¸a.

Prabhupada: This is Vaisnava.

Guest: Are there three sticks in it?

Madhudvisa: No, there are three pieces-one, two, three. There is four sticks wrapped here.

Guest: You have taken sannyasa?

Madhudvisa: Our Guru Maha..., Prabhupada has given me sannyasa.

Guest: Sannyasa.

Madhudvisa: Yes.

Guest: Then only you can hold it?

Madhudvisa: Yes.

Prabhupada: Yes, yes. Sit down, sit down.

Guest: I will make the camera come after you(?) (laughter) Can you take a photograph?

Devotee: Huh?

Guest: Photo? No, you can't.

Guest (2): I can't, no. (indistinct).

Guest: Very well. I was told you were seventy-six.

Prabhupada: Yes.

Guest: You don't look like that. I think that's not correct age. Surely you are fifty-six. (laughter) How many of you here...? How many are you here...? Will you sit nearer here?

Devotee: I... This is your good ear?

Guest: Yes. This is my good ear. Yes.

Giriraja: I'll sit on the white bench.

Prabhupada: Then you can sit on...

Guest: How many are you here in Madras?

Giriraja: About fifteen are here in Madras now.

Guest: Fifteen or fifty?

Giriraja: Fifteen.

Prabhupada: One-five.

Guest: One-five.

Devotee: Yes.

Guest: How many are women and how many are men?

Giriraja: Two women and one child woman.

Guest: Three? The rest are boys? Young men.

Giriraja: Yes.

Guest: From seventy-six downward. (laughter)

Giriraja: Yes.

Guest: You belong to West Bengal?

Prabhupada: Yes.

Guest: Or East Bengal?

Prabhupada: My birthplace is in Calcutta.

Guest: Calcutta.

Prabhupada: Yes.

Guest: Great and famous place. Looked after...

Prabhupada: Where you are governor also.

Guest: Looked after very badly. (laughter)

Prabhupada: Lalaji was governor in West Bengal.

Guest: How you have... Yes. I was called governor for some time there. I liked the place when I was there. They were all very kind. They had settled down after a lot of rioting and, and (indistinct), and all that, they had settled down.

Prabhupada: Yes.

Guest: They were all very good to me. They looked upon me as a, an impartial man, which is a very great compliment in our country. Now you have undertaken a very great task. I am not competent to discuss or comment upon it.

Prabhupada: No. I think you are the best man to comment upon it.

Guest: True. Still, I am not presumptuous enough to comment on one who has actually taken up the work. That is the difference between thinking and doing. Thinking is easy. Doing requires inspiration, and you have taken it up.

Prabhupada: I was thinking of taking up this task long, long ago. I wrote one letter to Mahatma Gandhi that "You have got influence all over the world, and you are acknowledged a man of spiritual understanding. Now you have got svaraá¹­, you better retire and take up this preaching of Bhagavad-gita all over the world."

Guest: He was doing if from the beginning, not exclusively that, but applying the Bhagavad-gita to everything that he was doing. He was doing it really, but you are referring to concentrated, exclusive...

Prabhupada: Yes.

Guest: ...teaching of the doctrines and way life described in...

Prabhupada: Sometimes I requested Dr. Radhakrishnan also...

Guest: Huh?

Prabhupada: ...when he was vice-president.

Guest: Radhakrishnan? Nowhere in comparison with Gandhi.

Prabhupada: No.

Guest: Radhakrishnan, highly intellectual, good man, but he was more of a... There was no inspiration he gave.

Prabhupada: No, no.

Guest: God seems to have decided to spare him from that, from hard work.

Prabhupada: Yes. (laughter)

Guest: He was very happy, and he was very good and I love..., I have great love for him, and he was a very just man. He was a teacher of...

Prabhupada: In Calcutta he was a professor...

Guest: ...politics, not of the Bhagavad-gita.

Prabhupada: Yes.

Guest: Now, would you allow me to think aloud...

Prabhupada: Oh, yes.

Guest: ...in the matter you have taken up?

Prabhupada: Yes.

Guest: First of all, they are scattered all over the world, your society. Scattered all over the world. They do not live together, anywhere.

Prabhupada: No. I have got different centers.

Guest: You have.

Prabhupada: Yes. In different cities.

Guest: And they live together there?

Prabhupada: Oh, yes. We have got devotees in each center, not less than twenty-five and up to two hundred.

Guest: I see. Oh, as big as that.

Prabhupada: Yes.

Guest: Now, taking up my thoughts on the crude difficulties of management. First of all there is the very crude necessity of getting money to run these institutions.

Prabhupada: Yes.

Guest: And that means...

Prabhupada: I may inform you, in this connection...

Guest: Huh?

Prabhupada: ...that we are spending at the present moment seventy to eighty thousand dollars per month.

Guest: That's right. So whatever the exact amount may be, it's likely to be a big amount, and that means befriending people who will be prepared to part with the money...

Prabhupada: Hard-earned money.

Guest: ...the money that they worship. Eh? (laughter)

Prabhupada: Yes.

Guest: Money god is greater than Brahma and Siva and Visnu, just about, unfortunately. The people have made an idol of gold and silver and letter of paper, paper making the promises of government...

Prabhupada: Yes.

Guest: ...which are never kept. (laughter)

Prabhupada: I was going to say, it is a fraud.

Guest: Fraud.

Prabhupada: Maya.

Guest: But that is...

Prabhupada: It is maya. I give you piece of paper and you think on thousand rupees. This is maya.

Guest: Yes. You see it depends on the credit to the man who gives the promise. Paper is mainly the document of credit. Governments have till now kept their credit, but now they have learned to disregard their promises also.

Prabhupada: Yes.

Guest: So that is one of the main troubles.

Prabhupada: Yes.

Guest: But I think any religious movement like yours, people think they can buy up the grace of God by giving some money. Right? So you won't find any difficulty in getting money, because there is air of sin in the world, and the sinful people think they can compromise by giving money. Let them give.

Prabhupada: That is also good.

Guest: Let them give. That..., but that is the smallest point. Another point is, I suppose in each institution, in each center, there are men as well as woman...

Prabhupada: Oh, yes.

Guest: And they live together.

Prabhupada: Not together. Woman's section is different.

Guest: Huh?

Prabhupada: Women's section is different.

Guest: Different.

Prabhupada: Yes.

Guest: It's very important...

Prabhupada: Yes.

Guest: ...because all religious organizations have floundered on scandal, and you will have to be very careful about that.

Prabhupada: Yes.

Guest: This is what an old man has a right to tell you.

Prabhupada: Yes. No, from the very beginning, because in Western country the boys and girls, they intermingle very freely.

Guest: Oh, yes, we know all that.

Prabhupada: Yes...

Guest: We know for a fact.

Prabhupada: ...and therefore I, as far as possible, I get them married.

Guest: Yes. But that doesn't prevent permissive culture. It acts as a sort of guarantee (Prabhupada laughs), as a sort of insurance against scandal. But scandals do come out.

Prabhupada: Yes, and that is a...

Guest: So you are left with, that is another crude problem...

Prabhupada: Oh, yes.

Guest: ...that you have to take great care about. The traditional life of separate living is safer for organization. So all right to have men and are married and then in family they can mix. There is no difficulty. But when you start the separate organization, against which people are ready to manufacture stories, then you will have to be much more careful.

Prabhupada: Yes.

Guest: So that is one comment I make as an old man.

Prabhupada: Oh, yes. You are very valuable. Yes.

Guest: That is a wise thing from an old man. That's one thing. Then these are minor matters. On the philosophy of action which you have taken...

Prabhupada: Yes.

Guest: ...of converting the people to Sri Krsna...

Prabhupada: Consciousness.

Guest: ...to worship of Sri Krsna...

Prabhupada: Yes.

Guest: ...I wonder whether you will place more importance, I ask my friend, Mr.,...uh...

Prabhupada: Giriraja.

Guest: ...Giriraja, whether it is the Gita that you may stress on or the Bhagavatam.

Prabhupada: Gita is the preliminary study of Bhagavatam.

Guest: True, but in Bhagavatam there is lots of danger, so far as Sri Krsna goes. The Bhagavatam, so far as it relates to the other incarnations of Maha-Visnu Himself, different, but so far as Sri Krsna goes, it deals with a chapter of His life which can mislead people...

Prabhupada: Yes. That we are very cautious.

Guest: Huh?

Prabhupada: That we are very cautious.

Guest: You will have to be very cautious.

Prabhupada: Yes. I was discussing this point...

Guest: Generally, generally people begin to think, "I am Sri Krsna..."

Prabhupada: Ah, that is nonsense.

Guest: "...God.'' That is what happens.

Prabhupada: Yes.

Guest: That will be danger. But so far as the Gita Acarya's teachings, He is a different person. There's no reference to early life in Vyasa's Bhagavad-gita. The Bhagavad-gita is simply about an acarya. Occasionally He says "I am Isvara," but He's an acarya primarily. I need not..., I am not trying to sermonize to you. I'm trying to explain what I feel.

Prabhupada: Yes.

Guest: Very difficult doctrine of detachment. The Gita Acarya says sannyasa is difficult, and you are likely to become a hypocrite if you, if you...

Prabhupada: Mithyacaraḥ; sa ucyate.

Guest: ...if you prematurely take sannyasa. Therefore try and compromise the principles of sannyasa, that is to say of renunciation with worldly action, and, I mean, performance of duty, by performing the duties without caring for the results. That is the renunciation He has preached, I have understood.

Prabhupada: Yes.

Guest: The defects are here that way which you will confirm, I have no doubt. But the question which I put to Giriraja was whether it would not have been better if you work from inside rather than make yourself a separate cult and organization. Separate organization, once you form, becomes like a person who is born. It gets his attachment, his ego, his everything. So the separate organization, like Mr. Banu, becomes an ego. He is fond of his own attachments, of his own interest, and so the organization must be looked after. The organization should succeed. The organization should succeed better than other organizations. There is (indistinct) among organizations. So all the egotistic weaknesses apply to organizations also. Therefore I was wondering whether it would not, if you had convinced that your mission was to spread the Gita Acarya's teachings as to how to act with detachment and with faith in the grace of God, where you go wrong, could not be having better done without making yourself separate.

Prabhupada: No. The thing is, when there is detachment, there must be another attachment.

Guest: Yes. To God.

Prabhupada: Yes. But that is required.

Guest: Huh?

Prabhupada: That is required. Just like...

Guest: Yes. Attachment to... There is a Tamil, Kurul. You have heard of the name Kurul? Tamil (indistinct), makes this point very clear.

Prabhupada: Yes.

Guest: If you wish to live without detachment, attach yourself to God.

Prabhupada: Yes.

Guest: That will be the...

Prabhupada: Param drsá¹­va nivartate [Bg. 9.59].

Guest: Yes.

Prabhupada: After getting good attachment, one gives up the inferior attachment.

Guest: Right. That will better right. The attachment should be to God.

Prabhupada: Krsna.

Guest: Krsna, Govinda, es I will call Him.

Prabhupada: Yes, yes.

Guest: Attachment should be to Govinda, not to an organization.

Prabhupada: Yes. No. Govinda is absolute. Govinda and Govinda's organization the same. Govinda is absolute.

Guest: I don't want to discuss it, I told you. I'm not competent to discuss. I'm just telling you what I think.

Prabhupada: No. I'm also answering this point. Just like Krsna, His name, His form, His pastimes, His entourage, they are all the same. Otherwise, what is the benefit of chanting Krsna's name? Suppose I am thirsty just now. If I simply chant the name of water, "water,'' I'll not be satisfied. Water is required, actual substance. But when you chant "Krsna,'' if Krsna name is different from Krsna, then you... (end)