July 25 1973 London
Prabhupāda: …[not]satisfied to remain in the village. That is the defect of the modern civilization.
Mother: In India, you mean. You’re talking of India now.
Prabhupāda: Everywhere.
Mother: Everywhere.
Prabhupāda: Yes. Everywhere.
Mother: What about India? I mean, do they believe, the villagers?
Prabhupāda: India, actually, they do so.
Mother: Yes.
Prabhupāda: The villagers, they have cows and land. That is sufficient for their economic problem. But the industrialists, they are alluring them, “To get more money, come here.” So they are going to the cities. And the food production in the village is neglected. And therefore the food grain price is rising. Actually, everyone should be engaged to produce food, but the modern set-up of civilization is that few people are engaged in producing food, and others are eating. They are offering… They are artificially getting money. So they are offering paper, “Here is ten dollars.” Although it is a paper, cheating. And they are captivated by cheating. They, they are thinking, “I have got now hundred dollars.” What is this hundred dollars? It is paper. So some people are cheating and some people are being cheated. This is the society.
Mother: Yes. But I think one has to be clever enough not to let people cheat you.
Prabhupāda: Clever means that he must stay in his own land. He should not be cheated by the paper and go to the city.
Mother: But we have to teach our young to be able to define between those who cheat and those who…, be able to tell people who…
Prabhupāda: The whole civilization is a plan of cheating others. That’s all. And they’re all sinful. According to our Vedic understanding, there are four things sinful, pillars of sinful life: illicit sex, unnecessary killing of animals, intoxication and gambling.
Mother: But you can lead a very happy life still, eating…
Prabhupāda: No. Our students are trained in that way.
Mother: There are a lot of very good people in the world.
Prabhupāda: Just see. You can see from your son. They can sit down anywhere. They can lie down. There is no artificial living. They are satisfied with nice foodstuff made from vegetable and milk. And chanting Hare Krsna, holy name of God.
Some Conclusions–WOW- this is a very powerful and informative statement by Srila Prabhupada about how even “normal” people, what to speak of devotees, should go about living in this world to make ends meet or in other words feed and shelter his family.
1. (“satisfied to remain in the village. That is the defect of the modern civilization”. The opening statement he explains why people want to remain in the cities-because they are not satisfied with simple living high thinking. They all want more and more and more of what will never satisfy their thirst for sense gratification.
2.) “The villagers, they have cows and land. That is sufficient for their economic problem. “. Who in the world of so many bright thinkers have offered this as a solution to all ones economic problems? Nobody is saying this except for Srila Prabhupada. Practically speaking without exception every politician, scientist and social reform person are all trying to make adjustments for continued living in the decaying cities of the world. And yet despite all their valiant attempts things are only getting worse.
3.) “But the industrialists, they are alluring them, “To get more money, come here.” Who doesn’t want a pay raise, or better benefits as they remain indentured slaves to their boss and work site? When one gives up his freedom to do and work as he pleases and takes the job offerings of his masters, he gives up his or her freedom to live as a free soul. Prabhupada preached self independence or self reliance and finding a way to work without getting that “paycheck” which means in the end- we are a slave to that paycheck. We are depending upon others for our subsistence instead of God-Krsna. Among the 4 classes of men-brahmanas ksatriyas, vaisyas and sudras-only the sudras, cannot seem to find a way to make ends meet in this world without working for others. Working for others means you make them rich and you continue life- paycheck to paycheck.
4.) “And the food production in the village is neglected. And therefore the food grain price is rising.
Right now the commodity food grains prices are rising rapidly and there is becoming an acute shortage in the world grain markets.Only part of this problem is due to the bad weather. Everybody knows food prices are going thru the roof now and there is almost 5% inflation costs across the board which they cannot control and is at an all time high. If your salary doesn’t increase to match the inflation of food/product prices, how do you make up that difference? Rob a bank? Or just go on a robbing spree which is what we are seeing right now in the USA.
People all over the USA are now just walking into stores and taking what they want and running out with their booty and they they don’t worry about police consequences because they know the police will do nothing about it. Same thing is going on with murdering somebody with a gun on the street. It used to be shootings mostly only took place at night, but now daylight shootings are becoming commonplace. I saw a story yesterday about the DNA labs in the US that process DNA at a crime scene. They are all 3 years or more behind on their evidence analysis due to just too many samples coming into their labs and the criminals are all well aware of this fact. So as the saying goes “they are getting away with murder”
5.) “Actually, everyone should be engaged to produce food, but the modern set-up of civilization is that few people are engaged in producing food”.
I read a statistic once that only a hundred years ago in America 95% of the people lived on farms, and today, just the opposite-95% live in the cities and only 5% live on farms. So as Prabhupada asks , who is producing the food?
Just looking at this from an intellectual distance-everyone has heard the expression, ‘dont put all your eggs in one basket’ Why not? Because if you drop the basket you lose everything. Now today everyone in the world is totally dependent upon the cities grocery store. So what happens if that supply is cut off? We have all seen what happens in panic time. When the so called covid scare started, people were rushing to the stores to buy all the necessities of life-like toilet paper, and of course some food too. The city stores are geared to stock only three days worth of food. After that if the supply chain (namely the trucks, oil, gas etc) breaks down, they are all out of luck and panic sets in.
This total dependence on “the system” is not good for safety security and of course being able to live day by day.
If we trust the system to never fail you, we are in for a big surprise. They just had a massive rock slide on one of the major interstate freeways here in Colorado. What do you think that means for the transportation wholesale and retail industry?
6.)“They are artificially getting money. So they are offering paper, “Here is ten dollars.” Although it is a paper, cheating. And they are captivated by cheating. They, they are thinking, “I have got now hundred dollars.” What is this hundred dollars? It is paper. So some people are cheating and some people are being cheated. This is the society.”
It is a historical fact that every society that has created fiat money has eventually failed. Fiat money means paper notes created by the government to pay debts which people are made to accept for financial transactions. Prabhupada once told us that in his early days in India when they created the “rupee”, the people were given the option of accepting either the rupee, silver or gold coins. He added, that today the silver and gold options no longer can be given. So people are accepting some piece of paper which of itself has no value but is given with a promise to pay the bearer a similar value which gold or silver would give to you. So they can by this process, print up as much paper money as they “need” to pay off the endless debts the governments accrue due to mismanagement, and the result is that the paper money(dollars or rupees or whatever) had less and less actual value as time goes on.And the actual gold bullion that is supposed to be there in the national treasury (Fort Knox, etc) to cover these new printed notes– is just not there. These huge countries of the world are amassing huge billion dollar debts to other countries and nobody knows how they are going to be paid off.
So if we do not prepare ourselves for this coming financial collapse, which is coming, we are in for big trouble. Just consider Germany post war when people were bringing wheelbarrows full of german marks to try to buy things like a loaf of bread-but they could not do because nobody trusted the German mark at that time.
So fiat money is basically this-a promise to pay in the future by a corrupt government. No let us continue to keep all our eggs in one basket, that is very good thinking !
7.) Mother: Yes. But I think one has to be clever enough not to let people cheat you.
Prabhupāda: Clever means that he must stay in his own land. He should not be cheated by the paper and go to the city.
Prabhupada sums up here the whole problem and solution. The entire system of modern so called civilization is one of cheating and the solution to this systemic cheating is to stay on your own land and grow your own food and in this way become safe, secure and healthy by eating what you grow. That he calls “clever living” or being able to “think out of the box” of modern day life.
8.) The whole civilization is a plan of cheating others. That’s all. And they’re all sinful. According to our Vedic understanding, there are four things sinful, pillars of sinful life: illicit sex, unnecessary killing of animals, intoxication and gambling.
This so called modern way of life is not good, far from perfect and becoming daily more problematic in every way.
If one cannot see that then he or she is in for a big surprise.And worse still are those who have the solution to these problems but wont change the course of their lives and do what is practical and needful . I know personally lots of local people around where I live that also feel the exact same way as described above and are making plans to change a lot of things in their lives. They are Christians by name and know that serious bad times are coming, so are not waiting until it is too late to do something about it.
What will you do?
Hare Krsna
damaghosa das
Garden video
https://www.amazon.com/MOVE-CITY-TAKE-CONTROL-GROWING/dp/1696418623
All sorts of various flowers for Krsna’s pleasure-this is just one small spot of many-that large gray colored “bush” is a Chehalis apple tree covered with a kaolin clay powder to keep the insects off the apples.
probably a hundred summer and winter squash here below-
we still have 4 large ones left over from last summer and they are still in good shape!
a hundred tomato plants here plus 20 pepper plants
What else can I say? Chant Hare Krsna and be happy