Morning Walk Conversation
with His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada
October 4, 1975, Mauritius

Cyavana: …convert the Hindus to Christianity, the children. [break]

Prabhupada: …Christian missionaries. They are trying to convert others, but they are closing their churches. They are selling their churches to us.

Pusta Krsna: Finding new suckers. In South Africa they put up big pandals, and because the Indian people, they have no entertainment in the evening, so they go there and they are entertained, and they learn how to sing the hymns that they have. Then you find that the children are singing the hymns because that’s the songs that they’re learning. If we can provide entertainment like that in the form of sankirtana, then they’ll also sing Hare Krsna and become devotees of Krsna. [break]

Prabhupada: …own Christian priests, they asked me that “Why Christianity is dwindling? What we have done?” So I told them, “What you have not done?” (laughter)

Cyavana: Yes.

Prabhupada: “You have violated from the very beginning the orders of Christ, ‘Thou shall not kill,’ and you are killing, only killing. So what you have not done?”

Devotee 1: They say that man has to dominate over the animals. They should…

Prabhupada: Therefore you should kill and eat them. Very good reasoning. “The father should dominate over children; therefore the children should be killed and eaten up.” So rascals, and they are professing religious leaders.

Pusta Krsna: Prabhupada, if every moment we are killing in breathing and walking and doing so many things, and then it says, “Thou shalt not kill,” so then hasn’t God given us an instruction which is impossible?

Prabhupada: No. Conscientiously you should not. But unconsciously, if you do, that is excused. [break] …na punar baddhyate(?). Ahladini-sakti, it is pleasure potency. So pleasure potency is not painful to Krsna. But it is painful. It is painful to us, conditioned souls. This Golden Moon (name of a bar?), everyone comes there for pleasure, but he is becoming implicated in sinful activities. Therefore it is not pleasure. It will give him pain, so many aftereffects. Sex life, even it is not illicit, still, it is painful, aftereffects. You’ll have to take care of the children. You have to bear children. That is painful. You have to pay to the hospital for delivery, then education, then doctor’s bill— so many painful. So this pleasure, sex pleasure, is followed by so many painful things. Tapa-kari. The same pleasure potency is there in the living being in little quantity, and as soon as they utilize it, it becomes painful. And the same pleasure potency in the spiritual world, Krsna’s dancing with gopis, that is not painful. That is pleasing. [break] …man, if he takes nice foodstuff it is painful. If a diseased man, if he takes…

Cyavana: He becomes more sick.

Prabhupada: More sick. Therefore this life is meant for tapasya, not to accept—voluntarily reject. Then it is nice. [break]

Pusta Krsna: …ments today are supporting the most outrageous sinful activities.

Prabhupada: Hm?

Pusta Krsna: The governments today are supporting the most outrageous, sinful activities. So how is it possible to reform the general mass of people?

Prabhupada: Do you mean to say the government is perfect?

Pusta Krsna: No.

Prabhupada: Then? They must be moved. Government means, nowadays, all rascals. They are elected by rascals and they are rascals. That is the difficulty. Everywhere you go, you will meet only rascals. Manda. The definition is given, manda. Even in our camp there are so many rascals. Just see the report. Even they have come to be reformed, they are rascals. They cannot give up their rascal habits. Therefore it has been generalized, manda: “all bad.” But only difference is that in our camp the bad’s are being reformed; outside there is no reforming. There is hope of their being good, but outside there is no hope. That is the difference. Otherwise everyone is bad. Without any discrimination you can say. Mandah sumanda-matayo [SB 1.1.10] Now, how the government will be good? This is also bad. Mahaprabhu’s name is Patita-pavana; He is delivering all bad men. In the Kali-yuga there is no good men at all—all bad. Strong you will have to become to deal with all bad men. [break] The seaweeds are there even in the middle ocean.

Pusta Krsna: Yes.

Cyavana: They call it Sargasso. The call it the Sargasso Sea. It floats in the center of the ocean, seaweed. [break]

Prabhupada: …the fort?

Cyavana: Just straight ahead, where the ship is there. There are two ships there.

Prabhupada: There.

Cyavana: Yes. That’s where they come in.

Prabhupada: This is not.

Cyavana: No, the next, where the white ship is.

Devotee 1: Very small.

Cyavana: Not so small. They’ve had as many as thirty-five or forty, not all in the berths but in the harbor. They bring everything in from overseas, and then they take out the sugar cane.

Prabhupada: Oh. Generally they come from Europe?

Cyavana: Everywhere, all over the world. They trade with the whole world—America, Hong Kong, Japan. [break]

Prabhupada: They are collecting fish?

Cyavana: These little clams they eat. Inside the shell there’s a slug they eat, meat. [break]

Pusta Krsna: …translated now Caitanya-caritamrta. Will you also maybe translate Caitanya-bhagavata? [break] …by, Lord Caitanya’s fame will spread all over the world.

Prabhupada: Hm?

Pusta Krsna: As time goes by, Lord Caitanya’s fame will spread all over the world.

Prabhupada: Hawaii Island is better than this island. Huh? Is it not?

Harikesa: It never becomes cold there. It never becomes cold.

Prabhupada: No.

Cyavana: Here they suffer from the cyclone every year. And every fifteen years it is treacherous.

Prabhupada: Cyclone, typhoon is there in Japan also.

Cyavana: Yes. Only thing, here there is Indian culture.

Prabhupada: What Indian culture? They are killing cows. (laughter) What is Indian culture?

Cyavana: Remnants. Nothing.

Prabhupada: Their Indian culture is that some of them speak Hindi, that’s all. (laughter) This is their Ind…

Pusta Krsna: [break] …last night that they’re starting a foundation, Mahatma Gandhi Foundation, here, to teach Indian culture, and he said, “Not just the Bhagavad-gita, but Indian culture.” You mentioned that we should take Indian culture directly from Bhagavad-gita, not from here, not little from here, and little from there. [break] You give the example, Prabhupada, that to fight with a declared enemy is very easy, but to fight with someone who is playing as a friend, although he is your enemy, is more difficult.

Prabhupada: He is more dangerous than Buddha. What is that big building?

Cyavana: They are building now a prison on the point there, a new prison. I tried to walk there one morning, and they stopped me because they are afraid someone may go in there and make some tunnel or some place where they can escape before they finish it.

Brahmananda: It looks like a hotel.

Cyavana: Yes. It will be very luxurious.

Prabhupada: (Hindi) [break]

Devotee 2: …Vyasadeva and Nara-Narayana, they are still in the Himalayas meditating, why don’t they come and join our parties and help this Krsna consciousness movement by their…?

Prabhupada: They are giving you chance to preach. They have given their books. Is it not sufficient?

Devotee 2: Yes, it’s great help. [break]

Prabhupada: …bones or what?

Cyavana: Yes. It’s coral. It’s from coral.

Prabhupada: An animal.

Cyavana: It’s called an exoskeleton because it’s on the outside instead of the inside. We have a skeleton inside the skin, but their skeleton is on the outside of the skin, and the flesh is within.

Prabhupada: So they trim the coconuts?

Cyavana: They pull them down, yes.

Indian man 3: They don’t know how to cut. They cut with sticks.

Harikesa: Do they cut them down before they’re grown?

Cyavana: No, they let them ripen.

Harikesa: Then they eat them.

Brahmananda: The Minister for Youth was there last night.

Prabhupada: Huh?

Cyavana: When you were speaking with those two boys last night, that was the Minister of Youth who was sitting with the High Commissioner. He was appreciating that they were coming to challenge, that they were understanding. They cannot understand their own so-called culture. They have not been able to get the young people here to adopt it. Instead they are trying to imitate the West.

Pusta Krsna: Blind leading the blind.

Prabhupada: (laughs) Yes. Did you understand the words, “The blind leading the blind”? Do you agree? [break] …culture, the basic principle is mistaken, bodily concept of life. How it can be perfect? [break] … world’s present so-called culture based on misconception. Therefore it cannot be perfect. Whatever they are doing, it is failure.

Pusta Krsna: Can’t satisfy anyone. Now people are under the conception that culture means that you can satisfy anything you like, any desire. Therefore there is birth control and so many things. So they are thinking that “If we can satisfy all of our desires, it is very nice culture.”

Prabhupada: But where is satisfaction?

Brahmananda: They think that unhappiness comes from repression of one’s desires.

Pusta Krsna: Yes. They think that actually that we’re suffering from so many desires, that we must be very poor creatures because we become devotees.

Prabhupada: So why so many desires? Because one desire is not complete, therefore you desire next. Therefore the process of desiring is defective, and our process is to purify the desires, not to remain in the imperfect platform of desiring, but whatever desire you have got, just purify it. Then it will be satisfied. So desire produced by bodily concept of life will never be satisfied. Therefore some of them are trying to become desireless, the impersonalists. Nirvana.

Brahmananda: That is also impossible.

Prabhupada: That is not possible.

Indian man 3: Still there is a desire to become desireless. [break] …nice example for Mr. Seller, a murghee(?). He thinks the rains are getting under and then cutting his slack.

Prabhupada: Expensive. [break]

Pusta Krsna: That was one of those men over there. (laughter)

Prabhupada: Huh?

Pusta Krsna: One of the men over there made that sound, Prabhupada.

Cyavana: They just came out of that dancing club.

Prabhupada: Oh.

Cyavana: They spend the whole night in there.

Harikesa: Getting drunk.

Brahmananda: They’ve become dog already.

Cyavana: One night and you’re a dog. [break]

Pusta Krsna: …ready, Prabhupada. We wake up in the morning, and instead of selfish desires you’ve taught us how to offer to Krsna.

Devotee 2: In the Srimad-Bhagavatam you mentioned that the trees, they also can see, (in a) purport. So I was wondering, do all the various species of life, are they fully equipped in some fashion or another with all the various senses?

Prabhupada: Yes. Living being means possessing all the senses.

Pusta Krsna: “Absolute is sentient thou hast proved, impersonality calamity thou hast moved.” [break]

Prabhupada: …tree in Hare Krishna Land, they are so beautiful, heh? And what is this?

Devotee 2: These are very short. (laughter)

Cyavana: They are also torn by the cyclone. The cyclone has pulled up all the big ones.

Indian man 3: These are different in Durban.

Pusta Krsna: They are not as fortunate.

Prabhupada: Better place than this?

Pusta Krsna: Yes. Very nice weather there. The people very much like us there too, Prabhupada. Big crowds. Like us. [break]

Cyavana: …bassa is nicer, Srila Prabhupada.

Prabhupada: Mombassa.

Cyavana: Yes.

Pusta Krsna: Goloka is the best.

Cyavana: You once said that is the nicest place in the material world.

Prabhupada: Huh?

Pusta Krsna: Goloka is the best.

Prabhupada: So Durban is better or Mombassa?

Pusta Krsna: Well, I’ve never been in Mombassa, I can’t say, but Durban is very nice. We have a very nice house there for you to translate in for several weeks if you’d like. Hare Krsna.

Prabhupada: Hm? What is Brahmananda’s opinion?

Pusta Krsna: Well, he’s never been to Durban.

Cyavana: There’s no one here who’s been to both places.

Prabhupada: You did not go to Mombassa?

Cyavana: Mombassa I have been, but not Durban. So you will have to judge. [break]

Pusta Krsna: There’s many mosquitoes in Mombassa, isn’t it?

Cyavana: I don’t know.

Pusta Krsna: Yes. And malaria. That you don’t find. No? When I went to the innoculation center and I said I was going to Kenya, they gave us both malaria tablets. They said, “Take one a week.” That’s true. But you don’t find malaria in Durban. (end)