Bg lecture 13/35 Geneva 6/6/74
“Everywhere, the living entities are there, and Kṛṣṇa has made provision for every one of them. There is no question of scarcity. But people are not obeying the orders of Kṛṣṇa or the authorities, that “You produce…” Annād bhavanti bhūtāni [Bg. 3.14]. Even in Bible, it is said, “Thou shalt not kill.” They are not producing food grains, and they are killing the animals and eating.
How they will be happy? It is not possible. Most sinful ACTIVITIES YOU PRODUCE YOUR FOOD. THE BULL WILL HELP YOU, AND THE COWS WILL SUPPLY YOU MILK. They are considered to be father and mother. Just like father earns money for feeding the children, similarly, the bulls help producing, plowing, producing food grains, and the cow gives milk, mother. And what is this civilization, killing father and mother? THIS IS NOT GOOD CIVILIZATION. IT WILL NOT STAY. THERE WILL BE CATASTROPHE, WAITING. MANY TIMES IT HAS HAPPENED,AND IT WILL HAPPEN because transgressing the law of nature, or laws of God, is most sinful. That is sinful.
Just like you become criminal by transgressing the law of state, similarly, when you transgress the law of God, then you are sinful.”
Note— this is a very interesting lecture by SP because he is directly telling us to produce food. Most devotees agree it is not good to kill cows for the bull is our father and the cow is our mother. But how many devotees believe it is sinful not to grow your own food? So there are two parts to this order by Krsna-dont kill cows and grow your own food.
So are we still considered pious if we dont kill cows yet dont grow our own food? Are we implicated in sinful karmic acts by buying food that comes from the supermarket?
You could just look at the supply chain of how this food comes to us.. First the farmer is using a tractor which runs on fossil fuel which they get by drilling thousands of places into mother bhumi earth -is this a pious activity? And how do they get the “right” of license to do so? Did Krsna sanction this demoniac activity? How many wars have been or are now being fought over the rights to oil fields? Do governments know that they have to supply their people with oil in order to keep them pacified? Will these same governments do practically anything to get access to these oil fields? The American Indians were given certain rights to lands that had oil reserves under them , yet some governments just took them away from them. Is this a pious activity?
There are so many things to consider in order to know if we are acting without any sinful repercussions or karma attached to them. But how many think this way?
BG 4.14 purport…The living entity is responsible for his own acts. The Lord only gives him facilities, through the agency of material nature, the external energy. Anyone who is fully conversant with all the intricacies of this law of karma, or fruitive activities, does not become affected by the results of his activities. In other words, the person who understands this transcendental nature of the Lord is an experienced man in Kṛṣṇa consciousness, and thus he is never subjected to the laws of karma.
And what about the immense karma involved with our European colonists who came from England and Europe and basically killed everyone and everything in their way just to obtain the “right” of owning the land which first “belonged” to the native Americans anyway? Is there no ongoing karma involved in this?
So Krsna just wants us to grow our own food, that’s all. He doesn’t want us to go out and conquer some country or empire. When we keep our living simple and our thinking somewhat highly developed, it minimizes our own personal physical impact on the land and thereby our consciousness can be directed more easily to the Person who has given us all these things that we take for granted.
Therefore Srila Prabhupadas mission, at least the second part, was to establish self sufficient farms or homesteads all over the world and thru the process of bhakti yoga or devotional service, will make our daily karmic burden less and eventually decrease our severe attachments to our body, our family members ,body’s of our relatives, and the expansion of body attachment is community and national attachments .
Hare Krsna
damaghosa das
