Real desirelessness
Bhagavad-gita As It Is
BG Chapters 1 - 6
Conversations and Morning Walks
1974 Conversations and Morning Walks
Satsvarūpa: ...by reading the books, he'd understood that we should become completely desireless. So he wanted more explanation. And in the car coming out Śrīla Prabhupāda just explained that our desire can't go away because that's the symptom of the living entity. We have to have some desire. But real desirelessness means that you have no more material desire. Material desire: someone is always desiring from God, "Give me this, give me this." But when we become purified, then our desire is that "Kṛṣṇa, please take me. Please take me. Whatever service I can render, please accept it." But when one has not enough information, then he desires... His idea of desirelessness is to become like a dead stone. Simply to... Because desire causes suffering and it's bad, material desire, therefore let me simply stop it and become... That will be desireless. But that is not, that state is not possible because our symptom of life is to have desire. So we answer him in this way, to become purified and simply serve Kṛṣṇa all the time. Not that we stop any activities. Prabhupāda was saying he is working day and night. So you cannot become absorbed in nothing. In order to become purely desireless, you have to have some activity that will always... There is a place, there is a plane of spiritual desire, spiritual activity. So there's... (pause)
Prabhupāda: What do you have to say about this? Do you understand, desireless and desireful?
Satsvarūpa: People some... Pseudo transcendentalists, they sometimes criticize us like that. They say, "Hare Kṛṣṇa devotees, you're just too active." They're think that we're fruitive, always running around, always trying to sell books, always very active. That's because they don't understand that desirelessness. They talk like that, and then they'll smoke a cigarette the next moment as they criticize us. They say, "You should not have to do anything if you're transcendental. Why do you have to work so hard?" And then they'll show that they have some very gross desire. (pause) [break]
Prabhupāda: ...therefore they see that this, their conception of Kṛṣṇa, there is mother, there is father, there is friend—"So what is this? Here also we see the mother, father, friend. So how they become free?" They cannot understand. Their brain is so poor they cannot understand. Therefore they: "It is also māyā. To think of Kṛṣṇa, the Supreme, having father, mother, friends, playing pastimes, this is also māyā." Therefore they are called Māyāvādīs. They cannot conceive that in the spiritual world exactly the same things there are, but the position is different. That is absolute, without any designation.Correspondence
1973 Correspondence
Page Title: | Real desirelessness |
Compiler: | Visnu Murti |
Created: | 18 of Sep, 2008 |
Totals by Section: | BG=1, SB=0, CC=0, OB=0, Lec=0, Con=1, Let=1 |
No. of Quotes: | 3 |