
Songs and bhajans-letters from SP from Siksamrta Vol #1

July 11 1973 London.
Prabhupāda: No. Hospitality means the man should ask you, “What can I offer you?” That is hospitality. If he says that “I must give you tea, and you must drink it,” that is not hospitality. (laughter)
Guest (8): (indistinct)
Prabhupāda: No, no. Hospitality is first… According to our Indian system, (Hindi) Then you can say, “Then you can give me a little sweet water.” or “You can give me little milk.” That’s all. Hospitality does not mean I must force you, “You must take it.” That is not hospitality.
Guest (9): (Hindi) Somebody comes to my place…
Prabhupāda: So you should ask, “What can I offer you?”
Guest (9): …say, “A cup of tea will do.” Then?
Prabhupāda: That’s all right.
Guest (9): We cannot give him cup of tea.
Prabhupāda: No, you cannot give, that “I have no tea. You take milk.” (laughter)
Guest (8): No tea, now. Why do you keep that tea in the house?
Prabhupāda: But if you offer milk or little sherbet, nobody will deny it. Even if he’s a tea drinker, he cannot deny taking a little sherbet or little milk or a sandeṣa or some sweetmeat or… What is that? You want to offer him something. So offer him… There are so many things. Why that particular tea should be offered. Is it very nice preparation?
Guest (9): Another tea and coffee. The people generally want…
Prabhupāda: I want things are nice, but…
Guest (9): If we stop that one, I come to coffee and tea.
Prabhupāda: They might have gone to hell, but I am not… (laughter) I cannot offer him hellish things. Bhagavat-prasāda. We are offering our Bhagavat-prasādam. Nobody is denying. You can offer in the same way. We are not offering tea or coffee. Whatever we have got, take it. So this is artificial. We can avoid all these difficulties. There is no difficulty at all.
Guest (9): No, what I (indistinct) I take but wife takes half, and children, they didn’t take it, but they want a cup of coffee. One boy wants cup of coffee, the girl wants a cup of tea and…
Prabhupāda: Well, the…
Guest (9): But the… And when the… That is the… This is the problem…
Prabhupāda: This happened in my life… This happened in my life.
Revatīnandana: Listen. Listen.
Prabhupāda: My wife was taking tea. So I asked her not to take tea, not to take tea. But she didn’t care husband. Then I gave her final, that “Either you have to give up your tea or your husband.” (laughter) So she agreed to give up husband, not tea. (laughter) So I left my home. That’s all. (laughter)
And the rest is history………………..Hare Krsna-All glories to Srila Prabhupada
May 4 1973 LA
Devotee:We develop our attraction for Hare Kṛṣṇa; we lose our attraction for sex life.
Prabhupāda: Yes. Bhaktiḥ pareśānubhavo viraktiḥ… That is the sign of advancement of bhakti. If you don’t be… I was explaining this. If you don’t be detached to these material things, then you should know that you are not advancing in spiritual life. If you have got still attachment for these nonsense material things, that means you are not advanced. Just like if you are eating, and if you are not getting health, that means you are eating nonsense. Eating must result in good health. That is eating. Eating does not mean to fill up the belly with all rubbish things. Eating means that you become healthy, nice eating.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Understanding that in the spiritual world… In the Vaikuṇṭha planets, we get that all the inhabitants are four-handed forms of Nārāyaṇa?
Prabhupāda: Yes, exactly like Nārāyaṇa. Their bodily features… Just like here, you cannot distinguish by the bodily feature who is President Nixon, who is a common man. You cannot distinguish by the bodily feature. Similarly, there also, you cannot distinguish who is a common man and who is Personality of Godhead. They are like that.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: But still, there are plants and all the living entities in the Vaikuṇṭha…
Prabhupāda: They know. Because they have full knowledge, “He knows here is God. Although he is four-handed, I am four-handed, but here is God.” Because there is full knowledge. That is the difference. Here we are selecting some rascal as God, because we have no full knowledge. There, in the Vaikuṇṭha planets, although the common citizens and God is of the same feature of the bodily, but they know, “Here is God, the Supreme.” He has got special signs in the… Yes, that’s all. Just like the king or the president, we may make mistake. We may accept somebody as “Here is president.” No. But the associates of the president, he knows. They know that “Here is president.” Similarly, there is no question of mistake there. Four kinds of defects of material life—to commit mistake, to become illusioned, to cheat, and imperfection of the senses—these things are not there. Everyone’s senses are perfect. When he sees God, he sees perfectly. He does not mistake. He is not illusioned. And there is no cheating and there is no imperfection of the senses. There is no mistake. These are spiritual life.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: So all the living entities are completely satisfied.
Prabhupāda: Certainly. Because they are in the spiritual life. That is real life. Here it is covered. There is no such season as winter season, as summer season. Always spring. Ānandamayo ‘bhyāsāt (Vedānta-sūtra 1.1.12), simply ānanda, blissful life of knowledge. What do they know, the scientists, about the spiritual life?
Svarūpa Dāmodara: There is no…,
Prabhupāda: No information, no research. That kūpa-maṇḍūka, this frog in the well. That’s all. They have no information of the Pacific Ocean. They are researching within the well. That’s all. They have no information even of this material world. What do they know about the so many planets, so many, huge outer space? What do they know?
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Almost nothing.
Prabhupāda: Nothing. Not even of this planet, what to speak of other planets. And still, they are proud. “Nobel Prize.”
Svarūpa Dāmodara: If they know that there is definitely a blissful world, spiritual world, they would not work this hard.
Prabhupāda: Yes, why? Just like Lomaśa Muni. Lomaśa Muni, his duration of life is that when one Brahmā dies, one hair from the body falls. So in this way, when all the hairs of his body will fall down, he will die. He has such a great length of… So he was standing on the side of a sea and chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa. So Nārada Muni approached him, “Why don’t you make a small cottage here?” He said, “How long I shall live? (laughter) Ah, standing will do. Let me finish my bead…(?)” Just see. And here they’ll live for twenty years and making skyscraper building, (makes sound:) “Doc, dong, doc, dong, doc, dong.” (laughter) Does not calculate that “I shall live for twenty or thirty years.”
Svarūpa Dāmodara: That is not guaranteed also.
Prabhupāda: That is also not guaranteed. Why I am taking so much trouble? They are so foolish persons. Therefore Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura says, anitya saṁsāre moha janamiyā jīvake karaye gādhā. This so-called scientific education means people become more attracted with this temporary world and he works very hard, just like an ass. Ass, the example of ass is because the ass does not know what is his interest, but works very hard. Therefore ass example is given. Ass, he carries the washerman’s cloth, tons, but not a single cloth belongs to him. He is naked. And still he is working. He does not know, “Why I am working for the washerman, carrying so much load?” That sense he hasn’t got. He thinks that “Washerman gives me to eat some grasses.” Although grasses are all over. That is ass. That is ass. So these scientific research workers, they are asses. He does not know that “I shall live for thirty years. So what is the use of my research work?” But intelligent man will say, “Let me utilize this thirty years to prepare for my next life.” That is intelligence. But they. But they have no idea of the next life.
ei līlā varṇiyāchena dāsa vṛndāvana
ataeva saṅkṣepa kari’ kariluṅ varṇana
SYNONYMS
ei līlā—this pastime; varṇiyāchena—has described; dāsa vṛndāvana—Vṛndāvana dāsa Ṭhākura; ataeva—therefore; saṅkṣepa—briefly; kari’—doing; kariluṅ varṇana—I have described.
TRANSLATION
This incident has been described in detail by Vṛndāvana dāsa Ṭhākura. Therefore, I have described it only in brief.
PURPORT
This is a matter of etiquette. If a previous ācārya has already written about something, there is no need to repeat it for personal sense gratification or to outdo the previous ācārya. Unless there is some definite improvement, one should not repeat.: https://prabhupadabooks.com/cc/madhya/12/150
Several QAs with Srila Prabhupada
Letter to Caturbhuja — Los Angeles 9 May, 1973: May 09, 1973
My Dear Caturbhuja,
Please accept my blessings. I beg to aknowledge receipt of your letter dated April 27, 1973. Thank you very much.
In answer to your several questions, first; what is meant by conditioned sould? Conditioned soul means one who has accepted something illusion as reality. Conditioned means that due to imperfect desires the spirit soul becomes dependent on material conditions for his satisfaction.
Your second question; how does he become conditioned when the jivatma is eternal full of bliss and knowledge? The answer is that it is not the soul itself that becomes mixed with matter but it is his consciousness that becomes absorbed in trying to enjoy the matter. Out of desire to lord it over, the jiva soul forgets that he is eternal, full of knowledge and full of bliss and identifies with the material energy. So it is the consciousness of the conditioned soul that is affected.
Continue readingSrila Prabhupada: Already successful – No successor
Source: IRM
Will the power of the kṣatriyas will be in the hands of the Kṛṣṇa conscious persons sometime during this Kali-yuga?
Morning Walk — March 11, 1975, London:
Devotee (1): Śrīla Prabhupāda, will the Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement will take over the world eventually?
Prabhupāda: Huh?
Devotee (1): Is going to take over the world eventually some time during the Kali-yuga, in this Kali-yuga?
Prabhupāda: No, that is not possible, because only the fortunate persons will take.
Devotee (1): I mean, but will the power of the kṣatriyas will be in the hands of the Kṛṣṇa conscious persons sometime during this Kali-yuga?
Prabhupāda: Provided you become very expert to preach. Unless you preach, how they will take? (break)