Morning Walk Conversation
with His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada
August 31, 1976, Delhi

Prabhupada: Raso ’ham apsu kaunteya prabhasmi sasi-suryayoh. “I am the sunshine and moonshine.” You cannot see sunshine and moonshine?

Indian man: But sir, the sunshine is the hiranyagarbha. That too is the product. That is material. There is something beyond the sunshine.

Prabhupada: For God there is nothing material. For God…

Indian man (2): I think that’s what Isopanisad says. Om isavasyam idam sarvam.

Prabhupada: Isavasyam idam sarvam. So what is material?

Indian man (2): Yat kinca jagatyam jagat tena tyaktena bhunjithah.

Prabhupada: If it is sarvam, then what is material?

Indian man (2): Tena tyaktena bhunjithah.

Prabhupada: That is another for you.

Indian man (2): (laughs) It’s all right.

Children: This way! This way! This way! This way! This way!

Hari-sauri: This is it. The car’s this way, Srila Prabhupada.

Indian man: Okay child.

Hari-sauri: Hare Krsna. [break]

Prabhupada: …simply, prabhasmi sasi-suryayoh. Why they cannot see? Here is prabha of the surya. Where is the difficulty? Prabhasmi sasi-suryayoh. [break] …this man thinks about death?

Indian man (3): Well, modernized man is mostly either afraid of the death or he doesn’t know of the death.

Prabhupada: Afraid of death everyone. There is no doubt. Unless he’s a madman.

Indian man (3): But then a… I don’t think anybody believes he will be afraid even there is a change of birth or change of body.

Prabhupada: They may say so, but actually they are. As soon as there is some signal of death they are very much disturbed.

Indian man (3): I don’t think one should be afraid of death.

Prabhupada: No, afraid means…

Indian man (3): Because this is something which has to come.

Prabhupada: That is a fact. But nobody wants to die. That is a fact.

Indian man (3): But then you feel that when you feel like living anything in the life you feel after some time that he must have a change. So this is also… [break] …feel that this is a change.

Prabhupada: That change he doesn’t want.

Indian man (4): But modernized man is more busy in his own life. When only he gets into bad time then he thinks “What is this?” But otherwise I think he has no time to think of these things.

Devotee (British): They think once you’re dead you’re dead and that is the end of it. They don’t… They think “We’ll enjoy now and we shall die and that’s the finish.” If you say to somebody, “Have you heard about reincarnation?” “I do not believe in this.” Many people in the West cannot accept that the soul will transcend into another body, move on or move down. To them it’s fantasy and humbug. This is why they are afraid. They are…

Indian man (3): This is same reincarnation. They think that he has gone. I won’t be going, so I’ll keep everything with me. We attend so many places where people die and we think, “Oh, he is gone but maybe I am not going to go.”

Devotee: The ancient Egyptians used to put all their treasures…

Indian man (3): We don’t understand that “All right, this is the end.” So why not we understand and think in that line? That day you said that by chanting he thinks that he’s chanting, maybe other people don’t chant. So they don’t know that they have to go. They think they are going to survive here only. They don’t want to accept that they have to go, I think.

Prabhupada: That means they do not want death. That I have…

Indian man (3): Yes. But definitely others are going and we won’t go also.

Prabhupada: That means he doesn’t want to die. That is a concoction. Other side is that he doesn’t want to die. It is the expression of the same sentiment in a different way.

Indian man (3): But then you see after the childhood and the young age and when he becomes old and after old also there is end you know, when he becomes helpless to do anything, then what is the use of having this body? Even your own relations, they’ll feel that this is a burden. So at that time I think it’s very good, that person himself should feel that all right, he must leave this body now. It’s useless.

Prabhupada: No, he doesn’t want.

Indian man (3): No, some people don’t want. Or many people don’t want. There are a few, I think maybe one in thousand.

Devotee: Does this mean Srila Prabhupada, we should not speculate about the future. Like if someone says, “Next year we should do this,” and so forth. And “Next month we’ll go here and we’ll do that.” And people are always making arrangements for the future and what they are going to do. With nothing in mind that death will take them within a flash. And they’re making all these speculative arrangements.

Indian man (3): I personally feel that when you buy anything in the market, for example you buy a dress. Sometimes it wears for ten years, sometimes you are cheated and it wears only for two years. So this is also same way, you know. Sometimes early death means…

Prabhupada: That is for the dress. What about the man who’s using the dress? You are identifying the dress with the man. That is foolishness. As soon as you say “dress,” you should have to find out the man who has got the dress. Then it is perfect understanding. But if you understand the dress and the man the same, then you are foolish. Dress is not the man.

Indian man (3): No, dress is not the soul, but dress is again the body.

Prabhupada: Dress is the body. Vasamsi jirnani yatha vihaya [Bg. 2.22]. That is explained. This body is just like dress. So, but the dress is different from the man who puts on the dress.

Indian man (3): Well, that is different. Man is different.

Prabhupada: The dress, it becomes old and it will be changed.

Indian man (3): But dress is the body. Dress is the body.

Prabhupada: Yes.

Devotee: We have to put up with so much pain for it. You see, we’re not this body and to forget that we’re not this body, but still every minute we’re given pain to remember that this body is there.

Prabhupada: What is that?

Devotee: You stub your toe and it gives so much pain just for something so small.

Prabhupada: That you are eating? (pause) So water is wasted.

Hari-sauri: Yes, it’s dripping still.

Indian man (3): Tap must not be working. [break]

Devotee: …so the front is always full of water for people, birds to take. But all the water is dripping over the side and it’s being wasted on the ground. [break]

Prabhupada: Radha-Vallabha, it is offered to Radha-Vallabha.

Hari-sauri: What’s that made from, Srila Prabhupada?

Prabhupada: There’s a kind of puri with some filling, dal.

Hari-sauri: Ah, kacuri?

Prabhupada: It is not kacuri.

Devotee: Prabhupada, you’ve taught so… [break] …instruction for cooking this prasadam.

Prabhupada: I have seen, I have seen. In our family, I know. That’s all. But from my childhood it is my nature, if somebody is preparing, I see it.

Devotee: It seems to me that most people in India can cook something. Even if there’s just capatis they can do this. But people in the West, they now are so helpless. They buy everything it seems in packets and you would not know how to prepare any food as much as just to cut the packet and pour it out and even then they don’t even know how to put water into the pan.

Prabhupada: They do not know how to eat on the whole. India knows how to eat. (Pause) I have traveled all over the world, and this is my experience. Nobody knows how to eat.

Devotee: Nowhere at all, Srila Prabhupada?

Prabhupada: Only India. [break] …every province they have got different dishes. Because the woman, they are trained up how to cook very nice.

Devotee: I even see these boys when I was in Chandigarh, in a dish next door to the temple we were starting there.

Prabhupada: Woman is meant for that purpose, how to make nice palatable dishes.

Devotee: Just these young boys who were carrying the bricks every morning, they would prepare their own vegetables and capatis like this, and I was amazed to see this because you would never get anyone doing this…

Prabhupada: Jaya. In Bengal there is a ceremony after marriage, bahu-bhata. (?)The newly married girl, she shall cook, and all the relatives, friends, are invited and they appreciate, “Yes, nice cook.” Then she is accepted as member of the whole family. Bahu-bhata.

Devotee: And if not, Prabhupada? If her cooking is not…

Prabhupada: Therefore she is trained up.

Devotee: And if she’s not trained up.

Prabhupada: She must be trained up. Just like Radharani, She was trained up in sixty-four arts. Do you think to captivate Krsna is easy thing? How much qualified She must have been so that Krsna was attracted. (loud laughing in background) What is this?

Indian man (3): Laughing is also exercise.

Devotee: Standing in a ring.

Prabhupada: (indistinct)

Indian man (3): Exercise they are doing. To laugh loudly you know that is also exercise.

Devotee: It’s a form of pranayama.

Prabhupada: Eh?

Devotee: A form of pranayama, breathing. The scientists, or doctors, say it takes so many muscles in the body to laugh and so many to frown, and it takes less to laugh, so they say why waste energy? Everyone should laugh instead of frowning all the time and be happy. [break]

Prabhupada: …Ninth Canto, I shall take up Eleventh and Twelfth.

Devotee: Someone was explaining about these Cantos that you start like the feet from Krsna and as you read through the Cantos you slowly move up the body of Krsna and the Twelfth Canto is the…

Prabhupada: Head.

Devotee: Is His head. The Twelfth Canto must be a really beautiful book, too. (Hindi) (end)