View source for Well, you'd laugh if you were ill and there was no doctor, wouldn't you?

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{{terms|"Well, you'd laugh if you were ill and there was no doctor, wouldn't you"}}
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[[Category:Questions asked to Srila Prabhupada]]
[[Category:Questions asked to SP... 1973]]
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<div id="Conversations_and_Morning_Walks" class="section" sec_index="5" parent="compilation" text="Conversations and Morning Walks"><h2>Conversations and Morning Walks</h2>
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<div id="1973_Conversations_and_Morning_Walks" class="sub_section" sec_index="6" parent="Conversations_and_Morning_Walks" text="1973 Conversations and Morning Walks"><h3>1973 Conversations and Morning Walks</h3>
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<div id="GardenConversationwithMahadevasMotherandJesuitPriestJuly251973London_0" class="quote" parent="1973_Conversations_and_Morning_Walks" book="Con" index="52" link="Garden Conversation with Mahadeva's Mother and Jesuit Priest -- July 25, 1973, London" link_text="Garden Conversation with Mahadeva's Mother and Jesuit Priest -- July 25, 1973, London">
<div class="heading">Why should we waste our time?
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<span class="link">[[Vanisource:Garden Conversation with Mahadeva's Mother and Jesuit Priest -- July 25, 1973, London|Garden Conversation with Mahadeva's Mother and Jesuit Priest -- July 25, 1973, London]]: </span><div class="text"><p style="display: inline;">Revatīnandana: Actually, most of the Sanskrit, much of that work is done by one of Prabhupāda's disciples now. He handles much of the Sanskrit.</p>
<p>Prabhupāda: Yes, they are being trained.</p>
<p>Revatīnandana: It's a mechanical process, after all. But the translation, that requires not only knowledge of the language, it requires spiritual realization.</p>
<p>Prabhupāda: Yes.</p>
<p>Revatīnandana: And the spiritual translation is done by Prabhupāda. Not just from knowledge of Sanskrit, but from spiritually realized knowledge. That is the qualification to put the meaning into any language. You have to have realized the message.</p>
<p>Jesuit Priest: Oh, I agree. Certainly our, the great, in the western church, all the translations of the Gospels and the Old and New Testament is done by, for the most part, by men who were saints, and, in other words, it wasn't merely their knowledge of the language, but their incredible closeness to God, in everyone of them, Garems(?) and Augustine and all the great men...</p>
<p>Revatīnandana: The most recent translation accepted by the Church of England, in England, was done by Oxford scholars. Saintly men? I know some of them. I don't think they're actually saintly men.</p>
<p>Jesuit Priest: Well, I wouldn't know anything about that.</p>
<p>Revatīnandana: Well, it's the modern... It's accepted by the Church of England and most other Protestant churches in England. It's the new English Bible.</p>
<p>Jesuit Priest: Yes.</p>
<p>Revatīnandana: And it's recommended by all these churches for their followers to read. And it's translated by scholars, Oxford scholars.</p>
<p>Jesuit Priest: Yes. I see. I take your point, that you can have a translation which is purely academic and a translation which is not merely academic, but has a, sort of a spiritual experience behind it.</p>
<p>Revatīnandana: Um-huh.</p>
<p>Jesuit Priest: In fact, I can say, by... I'm a Catholic priest, and by and large, I think our men, who are to, doing the translations are pretty, like, good chaps anyhow.</p>
<p>Revatīnandana: Hmh. So if, if the translators and the knowledge are adequate, then why is it, as Mrs. Christie just pointed out that so many young people are interested instead in false religious experience of LSD?</p>
<p>Jesuit Priest: Well, I wouldn't know. Because, I would say, because there's some kind of inadequacy in their lives. There's something missing, and that, the thing which is missing, is what we in the Catholic Church call the life of grace, the supernatural. Somehow, something's gone wrong somewhere. And so, they, lots of the young people today...</p>
<p>Prabhupāda: That, that I was trying to explain, that nobody can understand God and God's conception, being sinful.</p>
<p>Jesuit Priest: There's a vacuum created, and so they'd rather take it up in...</p>
<p>Mother: It's very extraordinary, though, that every boy that I have spoken to here...</p>
<p>Prabhupāda: Yes. So that is stated in the Bhagavad-gītā: yeṣāṁ tv anta-gataṁ pāpam... ([[Vanisource:BG 7.28|BG 7.28]]).</p>
<p>Mother: ...have all taken LSD or drugs of some kind.</p>
<p>Prabhupāda: ...janānāṁ puṇya-karmaṇām.</p>
<p>Revatīnandana: That was one who hasn't.</p>
<p>Mother: Even your president...</p>
<p>Devotee: I haven't.</p>
<p>Mother: I said...</p>
<p>Revatīnandana: This one, this one...</p>
<p>Mother: The ones I have spoken to. I said the ones I have spoken to. Even your president...</p>
<p>Revatīnandana: And Father Bernard? Father Bernard spent twenty-three years in a Cistercian monastery. He left and came to us right afterwards, and he's never taken LSD.</p>
<p>Jesuit Priest: Who was in a Cistercian monastery?</p>
<p>Revatīnandana: Father Bernard there.</p>
<p>Jesuit Priest: Are you a priest?</p>
<p>Mother: But I say quite a lot of your young people have come to you since they took drugs. I've spoken to... Even your president admitted that he'd taken drugs.</p>
<p>Prabhupāda: There is no restriction for anyone. God is open for everyone.</p>
<p>Mother: But you said... Michael, I said, "Most of the people that I have spoken to." I didn't say "most of the people here." I said, "most of the people..." One person I'd spoken to hadn't, but I can truthfully say that only one hadn't, out of the ones I've spoken to. They have come here... You are... You seem to be able to help the people that have taken drugs so that...</p>
<p>Prabhupāda: That is my duty.</p>
<p>Mother: You've helped them tremendously, and I can see this, but I am so sad that you can't help them to further their education. That's all my, my problem is...</p>
<p>Mahādeva: Prabhupāda was making the point that the purpose of education is to know God.</p>
<p>Mother: Yes, I know. I know. Yes, he has, and I've seen that point.</p>
<p>Prabhupāda: Don't you think this is education?</p>
<p>Mother: Well...</p>
<p>Prabhupāda: This translator work?</p>
<p>Mother: Yes.</p>
<p>Prabhupāda: If we are teaching our boys...</p>
<p>Mother: But you know what I me...</p>
<p>Prabhupāda: ...Sanskrit and English to translate the original Vedic lit..., is it not education?</p>
<p>Mother: Yes, I agree with you. That is education. But I mean a fuller education.</p>
<p>Prabhupāda: You are trying to induce our students to become technologists, medical men. You want that.</p>
<p>Mother: Yes, because the world must have them.</p>
<p>Prabhupāda: That's all right. But our point is that if we can get the help of technologist by paying little money...</p>
<p>Mother: Well, you'd laugh if you were ill and there was no doctor, wouldn't you?</p>
<p>Prabhupāda: ...why should we waste our time?</p>
<p>Mother: If you had acute appendicitis, what would you do?</p>
<p>Devotee: Chant Hare Kṛṣṇa.</p>
<p>Mother: Well, you wouldn't. You'd die. I mean... You laugh when I say that. Somebody's got to be a doctor. You're being very childish. Father agrees. There must be doctors.</p>
<p>Revatīnandana: Well, it's good that... In the society we observe there are many, many people becoming doctors. But there are not very many people becoming brāhmaṇas, people who live a sinless life and who learn the science of God and distribute it to the people. There're not very many people...</p>
<p>Jesuit Priest: I think that... I think that... (?)</p>
<p>Revatīnandana: Not very many, not very many people are doing that.</p>
<p>Jesuit Priest: I don't know. I think that that's a gratuitous statement for which you can have no proof.</p>
<p>Revatīnandana: I'm just saying not many people are doing it. How many pe... How many people, compared to the number of medical students in England, how many people are students in religious seminaries?</p>
<p>Jesuit Priest: Well, do you know?</p>
<p>Revatīnandana: No, I'm asking you.</p>
<p>Jesuit Priest: Well, I do. I do. I do know it.</p>
<p>Revatīnandana: So give us a comparison.</p>
<p>Jesuit Priest: Yes. Well, I... We've no problem at all...</p>
<p>Prabhupāda: Now, another thing is...</p>
<p>Jesuit Priest: ...in finding plenty of young men to go along with the principles...</p>
<p>Revatīnandana: Neither have we. And you're teaching them to preach God consciousness.</p>
<p>Jesuit Priest: Yes.</p>
<p>Revatīnandana: And Prabhupāda is teaching us to preach God consciousness.</p>
<p>Jesuit Priest: Yes. Well, I know... I've never questioned that...</p>
<p>Revatīnandana: So there's no necessity, there's no necessity of canvassing amongst the seminaries or here for medical doctors.</p>
<p>Mother: No, no. You've missed the whole point. Mrs. Christie's original statement was, if the young men here went on, not mer..., keep the knowledge and the search for the knowledge and love of God, by all means, but let them go on to develop their knowledge in the world of science, in the world of learning, and thus become leaders in that particular branch with a spiritual motif behind it, and instead of enclosing yourselves inside a circle like this, being able to spread the love of God amongst the tens of thousands of young people in the world. That's all...</p>
<p>Revatīnandana: No. I, I suspect...</p>
<p>Mother: We need it. We need it.</p>
<p>Revatīnandana: I suspect that for the hundred, hundred or hundred and twenty of us in England, I think, for the number of us, I'll bet we're doing more work per man to spread it among the young people than your mission is.</p>
<p>Jesuit Priest: I wouldn't know. You're making this statement. I haven't proof.</p>
<p>Revatīnandana: Well, I know that in almost all of our centers they suddenly happen to be developing a temple like this. We spend every day, from ten o'clock in the morning until nine o'clock at night engaged in preaching work.</p>
<p>Jesuit Priest: I think most of us do, too.</p>
<p>Prabhupāda: Now, in each of our centers we have got minimum fifty heads, maximum two hundred, 250. In Los Angeles, you see... Just we have got recent photograph. Bring the photograph from my room. You can bring. So we are giving them place, we are giving them food, we are giving them education.</p>
<p>Jesuit Priest: Yes.</p>
<p>Prabhupāda: In this way. So we invite anyone, everyone, without any distinction, without any discrimination. He may be Christian, he may be Hindu, he may be Mohammedan. "Come on. Live with us, and learn how to love." That is our mission. We say, according to our Vedic description,</p>
:sa vai puṁsāṁ paro dharmo
:yato bhaktir adhokṣaje
:ahaituky apratihatā
:yayātmā suprasīdati
:([[Vanisource:SB 1.2.6|SB 1.2.6]])
<p>If you actually want peace of your mind, then you must try, you must learn how to love God. So our preaching is... It doesn't matter, whatever religion you are following, it doesn't matter. If you have achieved this aim, how to love God, then your system is first-class. That's all. That is our question. Sa vai puṁsāṁ paro dharmo yato bhaktir adhokṣaje ([[Vanisource:SB 1.2.6|SB 1.2.6]]). Bhakti, means love of God. How much you have learned to love God, that much we want to know. We don't say that "You are Christian, you become followers of Hindu rituals or Mohammedan rituals." No. You remain in your position, but just try to love God to the best of your capacity.</p>
<p>Mother: Well, I think we do that.</p>
<p>Jesuit Priest: We're all doing that.</p>
<p>Prabhupāda: Yes.</p>
<p>Jesuit Priest: Most people.</p>
<p>Prabhupāda: Yes. So that is our mission. Now, if you find it difficulty, you can come and join with us. That's all. Practically, in Europe and America, they are all coming from Christian group, Jewish group. So... Yes. This is a recent photograph of our Los Angeles center. They are regularly living in the temple, as they are living in the temple.</p>
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