Morning walk

Morning Walk

[in car]

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: ...demon came here to try and make Rāmeśvara leave with him.

Devotee: Tried to take him home.

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: A big demon.

Prabhupāda: In order to kidnap?

Rāmeśvara: Yes.

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: Yes, his father arranged it.

Devotee: His father sent him.

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: A very big demon. And Rāmeśvara preached to him, and... What happened?

Rāmeśvara: We made him very embarrassed by preaching to him. He felt very insignificant.

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: Rāmeśvara Mahārāja called him a jackass [laughter] and many other things.

Prabhupāda: So how he was trying to kidnap you?

Rāmeśvara: Yes, and we tried to prove to him that he was afraid of death and we are not. We are better situated.

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: Prabhupāda wants to know how did he actually try to kidnap you: by telling you, or by his philosophy?

Rāmeśvara: He was trying to convince me that the goal of life is sex life.

Prabhupāda: [laughs] Yes. That is the material world.

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: Here's one of our buses, Prabhupāda.

Prabhupāda: Hmm? Oh.

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: That's the bus that will take you to the farm.

Prabhupāda: Yan maithunādi-gṛhamedhi-sukhaṁ hi tuccham [SB 7.9.45].

[Sex life is compared to the rubbing of two hands to relieve an itch. Gṛhamedhīs, so-called gṛhasthas who have no spiritual knowledge, think that this itching is the greatest platform of happiness, although actually it is a source of distress. The kṛpaṅas, the fools who are just the opposite of brāhmaṅas, are not satisfied by repeated sensuous enjoyment. Those who are dhīra, however, who are sober and who tolerate this itching, are not subjected to the sufferings of fools and rascals.]

That is already mentioned. Unless one understands that there is another life, sex life is the only pleasure. That will keep him perpetually conditioned.

Rāmeśvara: He also tried to say that our movement will never be accepted. It is a waste of time. Why are we trying? We'll never be accepted by the public.

Prabhupāda: And why you have accepted?

Rāmeśvara: We said that. Why have so many Americans now given up voluntarily? From wealthy families they have given up so many material things. But then he said, "But you haven't given up material things. Just look at this building. Just see how opulent. How can you claim you have given up?"

Prabhupāda: So what do you mean by...? We shall live in the sky?

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: Flower in the sky.

Prabhupāda: You shall live in the building and we shall live in the sky, in the air? You mean to say like that?

Rāmeśvara: We told him that "This building is actually for rascals like you. To try to inspire you a little bit."

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: They were calling him directly rascal and fool. He was calling him a rascal directly.

Rāmeśvara: We also showed him that our movement is being accepted in different ways.

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: Yesterday we spoke to Gurukṛpā, and he's having..., some of his men were deported.

Devotee: From where?

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: Japan.

Prabhupāda: Again.

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: Yes. So his collection is not going to be as... He wanted to do two hundred thousand dollars this month, but he says it won't be possible.

Prabhupāda: Why deported?

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: Well, because they are Hare Kṛṣṅas. There's one man, he says, in Osaka that's a big demon, one policeman who simply makes his business to try and find out the devotees. So that one man arrested three of them in one day. Anyway, he's just taking another thirty-five thousand out, and he's immediately transferring today ten thousand to Gargamuni, and he's arranging a bank account jointly with Rāmeśvara in Los Angeles for his other money. Rāmeśvara will put the money in fixed deposit, and monthly transfer ten thousand dollars for construction. Gurukṛpā was happy to know that the money could be used for that. He says he's studying, chanting and working very hard.

Prabhupāda: They are trying to drive us away. How to counteract it?

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: Well, we have to do some positive..., very subtle positive preaching. I suggested that—if you recall—I suggested that a cultural center should be opened there on the basis of showing dolls, showing movies, restaurant...

Prabhupāda: Books.

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: ...books.

Prabhupāda: Literature.

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: But very vague.

Rāmeśvara: He's printing Japanese Gītā this year, he says.

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: But very vague, not dressed as devotees. Just strictly cultural.

Prabhupāda: Yes. Cultural. They should... Deity worship one of the items. Otherwise it is called bhāgavata and pañcarātra.

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: I felt that it should be done in a very modern American style, but very cultural with Vedic subject matter. Then gradually they would appreciate it. As well as the Library Party. If the Library Party—Satsvarūpa is thinking to go all over the world now—if they go to Japan, they are expecting a good reception in Japan, that will be another advantage if your books are accepted by the professors there. So I thought that a cultural presentation would be appreciated.

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṅa: We have to somehow or another get the local people to join there.

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: Well that's the way, see. They're not going to join as Hare Kṛṣṅas because of the bad publicity. They're not going to join like that. You have to have a different method.

Prabhupāda: What is this church, big church?

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: Gurudāsa also called.

Rāmeśvara: Lutheran Church.

Prabhupāda: Where he is now?

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: He's in Detroit. He told me to book his ticket to London on the same flight that you were going on.

Prabhupāda: I came here in the evening, with umbrella, and in the morning I saw the whole street is white.

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: Whitewashed. You thought it was whitewashed?

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṅa: From the snow.

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: He thought that someone had poured whitewash.

Prabhupāda: When I first saw from the window that the street was all white, "How is that? One whitewashed?" [laughter] Then when I saw in the street, "Oh!"

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: You never saw snow.

Prabhupāda: No.

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: Even in the Himalayas?

Prabhupāda: I saw in Kashmir, but that was not so white.

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṅa: From a distance?

Prabhupāda: No, on the street also, but not so white. That is ice, not snow.

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: Oh, yes. Here it's snow.

Prabhupāda: This is Eighth Avenue?

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: No, this is Central Park West. I used to live on this street. I was living here, Eighty-first Street and Columbus.

Prabhupāda: These are apartment buildings?

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: Oh, yes, all residential. Very big. Actually they are very first-class residential apartments. The ceilings are very high in every one of them, fifteen, twenty-foot ceilings. Nowadays the ceilings are usually only...

Prabhupāda: Ten feet.

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: At most.

Prabhupāda: Otherwise nine feet.

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: Yes, Prabhupāda. The best ceilings I've seen is in Calcutta, in our place in Calcutta. Very high.

Prabhupāda: Calcutta, all aristocratic buildings, they are made according to English pattern, London pattern. Just like our temple, it is made London pattern. It was designed by one high-court judge.

[pause]

Prabhupāda: The land acquisition at Māyāpur, no news?

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: No news. [break] ...who are building the Ratha-yātrā carts and who help in the temple construction, they have to walk [indistinct].

Prabhupāda: Ah. [break]

[walking]

Prabhupāda: "Ah, this is so cold." [laughter]

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: Unbearable. [break] ...too cold, then we can go in our bus to Florida for preaching. In the winter you go to Florida, eighty-five, ninety degrees.

Prabhupāda: Florida. And in summer?

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: Summer it's not very pleasant.

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṅa: It's about the same.

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: Really? Most people, though, most tourists don't go to Florida in the summertime.

Prabhupāda: Very hot?

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: It is a little hot.

Prabhupāda: Some rain?

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṅa: There's moisture in the air and rain, like that.

Hari-śauri: They have a lot of hurricanes there, don't they?

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṅa: A few. But no place is perfect within the material world. [break]

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: On the fourth floor we're going to have doll projects, doll exhibits. So there's an open balcony up there, and I want to do something like that, see up there with the glass, the balcony?

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: I want to do that. Because there's an open balcony right on the street side. Enclose it with glass, it would be very popular. After going to see the doll exhibits people can sit there comfortably, take, you know, rest on the bench. And it can be seen from outside, so it will be indirectly an advertisement. You'll see that there are people sitting there. [break]

Rāmeśvara: ...artists that work on your books, they have to train many devotees to paint, because one day in all the government buildings there will be paintings of Kṛṣṅa. Just like now they have all these paintings of so-called...

Prabhupāda: If they are selling, you can sell these pictures.

Rāmeśvara: I think they will sell. [break] ...popular is that at colleges they like to have art shows come, where they display the paintings and then they move on to another college. So we can do that with some of our art paintings also. They will give us one hall just to hang the paintings for some time.

Prabhupāda: So many trees have come. [break] ...from stone there is grass.

Rāmeśvara: They have no explanation for this. No one ever asks these questions, Śrīla Prabhupāda, why the grass is coming out of stone.

Prabhupāda: No. Our point is why even in moon planet there is stone only, and...

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: No living entities.

Prabhupāda: ...no living entities?

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: No life.

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṅa: They say there is no air.

Hari-śauri: It's due to atmosphere, that's their reasoning.

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: They say stone can be in both places, but life, living entities, cannot.

Bali-mardana: They classify organic and inorganic.

Prabhupāda: They may talk all rubbish, foolish things. We don't believe it.

Rāmeśvara: They say that on a planet like Jupiter the atmosphere is full of methane, which is poisonous, so no life can live there.

Prabhupāda: Only here.

Rāmeśvara: Only here. [laughter]

Devotee: ...Pacific Ocean one volcano came up and it formed an island, and within five years there was grass growing on it. So they tried to say that the seeds of the grass floated in the ocean and reached the island and began to grow. They couldn't explain how it became vegetated so quickly.

Prabhupāda: So why the seeds does not go by air to the other planets?

Rāmeśvara: When they first developed the radio, they set up a system to send out radio messages into outer space. And their idea was that if there was any intelligence on other planets they would answer by sending...

Prabhupāda: So whether your radio message reached there?

Hari-śauri: We should wait, Śrīla Prabhupāda, a minute, because police over there, they may object if we walk. [break]

Prabhupāda: ...only in America. [laughter] All intelligence monopolized by America.

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: Sounds like the old British policy.

Prabhupāda: Foolish policy. Just like the deaf man, he thinks everyone is deaf. You know that? This is psychology. Deaf man will think that everyone is deaf. Broadcast radio message in the Pacific Ocean, the aquatics they do not reply, that means there is no life? Rascal theory.

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: Anyway, maybe they speak a different language.

Devotee: They don't understand that there may be different mediums of communication.

Rāmeśvara: The government announces to the public that so much money from the taxes has to be spent on this space exploration. But according to the information that you're giving us, it is not possible for them to be spending so much money to photograph Phoenix, so they must be stealing the money.

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṅa: You mentioned that in previous ages when there was yajña taking place on this planet, sometimes the demigods would come down. So that means that is it possible that they would be communicating with the people of this planet?

Prabhupāda: Hmm. They're speaking Sanskrit language. In all other planets they are speaking Sanskrit.

Hari-śauri: You also said they had the ability to make themselves visible or invisible to the population. Actually, they have many sightings of what they call UFOs, so-called spaceships and things like this, or things that they cannot explain, but the government doesn't release the information because they think that people will panic. Sometimes aircraft pilots, they've reported that their aircrafts are being inspected whilst they're up in the air.

Prabhupāda: Inspection?

Hari-śauri: Yes.

Prabhupāda: Who inspects?

Hari-śauri: Well, they don't know who. But there's all kinds of things that they can't explain, but they don't release the information. What the scientists can't explain, they won't tell anyone.

Rāmeśvara: After they claimed they have landed on the moon, they announced that they wanted to build a gigantic dome on the moon's surface, and within the dome they would have these pumps pumping air, and in that way earth people could go to the moon and live there.

Prabhupāda: So what happened to their project? Stopped now?

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṅa: They're going to do it on Mars instead.

Prabhupāda: Hmm?

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṅa: They're going to do it on Mars instead. [break]

Rāmeśvara: ...do it on the moon because they want to have people go there to drill into the surface of the moon to see if there are any valuable minerals or jewels underneath the surface.

[pause] [break]

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: That is a modern sculpture.

Passerby: Hare Kṛṣṅa!

Devotees: Hare Kṛṣṅa!

Passerby: Jaya! [laughter]

Prabhupāda: He says jaya also.

Devotees: Yes.

Hari-śauri: This is the kind of artwork that they're putting up everywhere now. [bangs on the sculpture]

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṅa: Hollow. Called the formless form.

Prabhupāda: Hmm? Yes.

Devotee: That's supposed to be pleasing to the eye. It's supposed to bring pleasant thoughts into the mind. [laughter] It simply makes them crazy.

Rāmeśvara: It's like the "emperor's new clothes." Everyone thinks it is pleasing because the leaders or the artists say it is pleasing. Everyone is being fooled. And if they say it is meaningless then they are called a fool.

Prabhupāda: In Bengali it is called pare mukhe jalha[?]. Somebody says, "Oh, it is very hot!" "Oh, it is very hot!" [laughter] He did not taste, but the other man says, "Oh, it is very hot!" So he says,"Oh, it is very hot!" Pare mukhe jalha.

Rāmeśvara: The city pays these artists hundreds of thousands of dollars to make these forms. [break]

Prabhupāda: ...it is constructed?

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: Metropolitan Museum of Art extension.

Prabhupāda: Oh.

[pause] [break]

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: We can return back now. [break] This one is older, this is new. There are twice as many floors in the same amount of space. It's actually double. [break] ...think there's an advancement in living conditions. Seems to be worsening, but they're taking it as advancement.

[break] [in car]

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: Ten to eleven.

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṅa: About the same as Mercedes. Ten thousand.

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: Nandakī, is it as good mechanically as a Mercedes?

Nandakī: No, I don't think so.

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṅa: Mercedes is very sturdy.

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: The comfort's better.

Nandakī: But after two years this all becomes finished, all this. Starts falling apart.

Prabhupāda: But Mercedes is strong.

Nandakī: No, Mercedes is strong.

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṅa: Very long lasting.

[pause]

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṅa: But Mercedes, they say it's supposed to last about two hundred thousand kilometers.

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: The engine.

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṅa: In Europe most of the taxi drivers use Mercedes because they are so long-lasting.

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: That means the engine.

Puṣṭa Kṛṣṅa: And the body also lasts. Good quality.

Nandakī: You see them ten years old, still running. [break]

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: ...telling you that the Māyāpur time, the Rāma-navamī comes in April, Gaura-pūrṅimā is in March, it will take a total of six weeks. This year our saṅkīrtana book distribution was set back severely on account of the over-long duration of the festival, and all of the devotees and GBC men wanted that it should be about three weeks.

Prabhupāda: That's all right.

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: So the problem is that Gopāla Kṛṣṅa is saying that he wants all of the devotees to stay there for the opening of the Bombay temple.

Prabhupāda: Not necessary.

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: It's not necessary. Because there is at least..., there would be still about a hundred, hundred and fifty devotees there anyway.

Prabhupāda: Some of them. They can go sometime later.

Rāmeśvara: Or the next year.

Prabhupāda: Oh, yes. Some batches may go this year, some batches may go...

Rāmeśvara: The following year, Gaura-pūrṅimā festival there can be a paṅḍāl program in Bombay. Then they can visit it the next year. The main point is we don't have to be there for the opening.

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: That's true. As you recall, perhaps, in Māyāpur we discussed that we would like to go in Vṛndāvana first and end the festival in Māyāpur on Gaura-pūrṅimā.

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: That way we'll get the cooler weather and we'll get the best preaching in America.

Prabhupāda: Yes. [break] ...so dismantled and constructed this building. When I was ten years before, they were dismantled. Very nice building.

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: Dismantled.

Prabhupāda: Just to change the fashion, they spend so much. [break] ...walking generally this. [break] ...producing company?

Devotee: Yes, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. MGM.

Prabhupāda: And this is Rockefeller Center?

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: No, Prabhupāda.

Rāmeśvara: Now they have designed these buildings so that many of them have fountains and big courtyards, and you can walk from one street to the other by going through the center of the building.

Prabhupāda: Ācchā.

Rāmeśvara: And in the middle of the courtyard they have this crazy sculpture. All over the city. [break]

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: ...some of our artists make big sculpture out of metal?

Prabhupāda: Hmm? No. That's not possible.

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: Philosophically not possible?

Prabhupāda: No, practically.

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: Because some of our men here who have helped to make this wall, the front wall of the temple that we're making in front of the Deities, they are artists, and they have the ability to cast large... They've done this previously,

Prabhupāda: Let them do some small first of all.

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: And show you.

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: All right. They say that they can do it very easily.

Rāmeśvara: What will it look like?

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: Well, we can do anything.

Prabhupāda: Three, three foot, four foot [indistinct].

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: Yeah, that's the first thing. First thing we're going to cast is Pañca-tattva for installation.

Prabhupāda: Yes. But it must be very nice, just like in Jaipur they have made those.

Rāmeśvara: You have to find a material which is strong and light so you can ship it easily to the temples.

Tamāla Kṛṣṅa: Brass.

Rāmeśvara: Or plexiglass even. Or fiberglass I mean, fiberglass.