Street sweeper

Expressions researched:
"street sweeper" |"street sweepers" |"street-sweepers" |"streetsweeper" |"streetsweepers"

CC Madhya-lila

Although outwardly the King was a mundane man interested in money and women, internally he was purified by devotional activities. He showed this by engaging as a street sweeper to please Lord Jagannātha.

CC Madhya 13.187, Translation and Purport:

Sārvabhauma Bhaṭṭācārya informed the King, "The Lord is very satisfied with you. By pointing you out, He was teaching His personal associates how to behave with mundane people."

Although outwardly the King was a mundane man interested in money and women, internally he was purified by devotional activities. He showed this by engaging as a street sweeper to please Lord Jagannātha. A person may appear to be a pounds-and-shillings man interested in money and women, but if he is actually very meek and humble and surrendered to the Supreme Personality of Godhead, he is not mundane. Such a judgment can be made only by Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu and His very confidential devotees. As a general principle, however, no devotee should intimately mix with mundane people interested in money and women.

Nectar of Devotion

In India there was agitation during Gandhi's political movement because the lowborn classes of men like street-sweepers and caṇḍālas are prohibited, according to the Vedic system, from entering the temple.

Nectar of Devotion 9:

In the Viṣṇu-dharmottara there is a statement about touching the lotus feet of the Lord. It is said, "Only a person who is initiated as a Vaiṣṇava and is executing devotional service in Kṛṣṇa consciousness has the right to touch the body of the Deity." In India there was agitation during Gandhi's political movement because the lowborn classes of men like street-sweepers and caṇḍālas are prohibited, according to the Vedic system, from entering the temple. Due to their unclean habits they are prohibited, but at the same time they are given other facilities so they may be elevated to the highest grade of devotional service by association with pure devotees. A man born in any family is not barred, but he must be cleansed. That cleansing process must be adopted. Gandhi wanted to make them clean simply by stamping them with a fictitious name, harijana ("children of God"), and so there was a great tug-of-war between the temple owners and Gandhi's followers.

Message of Godhead

To earn a living, one can honorably adopt the profession of a street sweeper, but one must not change his dress to the saffron robes of a renunciate simply to fill up his empty stomach.

Message of Godhead 2:

"Work" means the work that is ordered in the scriptures and sacred law books. It means standard, prescribed duties. Such work is far better than laziness under the pretension of being a renunciant or mystic. To earn a living, one can honorably adopt the profession of a street sweeper, but one must not change his dress to the saffron robes of a renunciate simply to fill up his empty stomach. In the present age of quarrel and pretension, one should prefer to do the ordinary, prescribed duties rather than adopt the life of a sannyāsī, a renunciate. Those who are genuinely renounced understand that they must not give up performing their prescribed daily duties in the social order, because otherwise there will be disaster, plain and simple. When we cannot secure our everyday sustenance without doing any work, how is it possible to give up our prescribed duties? And yet one must not forget the difficult position of one's being in the network of action and reaction by which the spirit soul becomes bound up in material existence.

1971 Conversations and Morning Walks

The purpose must be spiritual, the purpose must be for Kṛṣṇa.

Room Conversation with Dr. Weir of the Mensa Society -- September 5, 1971, London:

Prabhupāda: God is greater than the greatest and smaller than the smallest.

Dr. Weir: You're using materialist words, Swami. You're using materialist words, greater and smaller.

Prabhupāda: What you meant spiritual?

Dr. Weir: No, but I say you are using materialist words to describe them.

Prabhupāda: What do you mean by spiritual? No speaking?

Dr. Weir: What I say is... (laughter)

Prabhupāda: If I say greater and smaller in this way and you say this is material. Then what is a spiritual expression of this? Can you give me? That means stop talking?

Dr. Weir: I think the object...

Prabhupāda: ...you have to. This is not material. When you speak in spiritual connection this is spiritual.

Dr. Weir: You'd have to invent a new language really.

Prabhupāda: No. Why... the same language, the same language.

Dr. Weir: Well you won't get very far in any form of philosophy...

Mensa Member: (indistinct)

Śyāmasundara: But the consciousness in which something is done denotes it. For instance, I could be sweeping the street. Someone would think, "Ah, I'm just a material street sweeper." But if I'm doing it for Kṛṣṇa it's a transcendental activity, it's a spiritual activity, not a material activity.

Dr. Weir: Ah, yes, but I mean, then you have a, if somebody else who's sweeping faster and better, you say that he's greater spiritually even if he's doing it...

Śyāmasundara: No.

Prabhupāda: No, the purpose must be spiritual, the purpose must be for Kṛṣṇa.

1973 Correspondence

"Don't talk such nonsense please. Don't mislead the public. You are taking big salaries and leading the public wrongly. It would be better for you to be a street sweeper and earn an honest livelihood instead of cheating."

Letter to Karandhara -- Bhaktivedanta Manor 19 July, 1973:

Your victory over the scientist who was saying that life comes from dust is very good. We should not take such nonsense from them. We should speak up against such false theorists and say, "Don't talk such nonsense please. Don't mislead the public. You are taking big salaries and leading the public wrongly. It would be better for you to be a street sweeper and earn an honest livelihood instead of cheating."