Now, Kṛṣṇa is, at least in this material world, in this planet, everyone knows Kṛṣṇa. Who is such a person who is so famous all over the world? Especially since we have started this Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement, anywhere we go, they chant, "Hare Kṛṣṇa." As soon as they see us, our men, jokingly or seriously they chant, "Hare Kṛṣṇa." When I was first coming to Nairobi from London, the plane stopped at Athens at twelve o'clock at night. So we got down and was in the public room, and some young men, immediately they began to chant, "Hare Kṛṣṇa," at twelve o'clock. (laughter) So Kṛṣṇa is so famous at twelve o'clock in Athens even. Who is such a person within this world? This is Bhagavān. Aiśvaryasya samagrasya vīryasya yaśasaḥ. Yaśaḥ mean reputation. He is so reputed. Anywhere Kṛṣṇa is known.
Athens
Lectures
Bhagavad-gita As It Is Lectures
Srimad-Bhagavatam Lectures
So our request is that everyone may take to Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement without any hesitation. This is authorized movement and approved movement, and people are accepting all over the world. Unfortunately, in India, they are lacking. I must admit that as the younger generation from other countries, they're enthusiastically join, or joining, our Indian youths are not joining in that way. But we require so many preachers, so many young men, to preach all over the world this sublime movement, Kṛṣṇa consciousness. People are accepting. Even in Africa, who are supposed to be uncivilized, they are also accepting. Everywhere. There is no impediment. Ahaituky apratihatā. People are chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa mantra. You'll be surprised to know that I was going from London to Nairobi, Africa, and our plane stopped for forty-five minutes in Athens, and as soon as we dropped down, some young men there, in Athens, Greece, they immediately began to chant, "Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Kṛṣṇa."
He says that "If I forget You and take by birth as Lord Brahmā, I don't want it. I don't want it." What is the use of taking a birth like Brahmā? "But I shall like to take my birth as even a small insignificant insect, where a devotee is there." This is the ambition of devotee. "I shall prefer to become an insect." Because there are different varieties of living entities, beginning from Brahmā down to the insect, insignificant. In the middle, there are so many varieties—aquatics, trees, plants, demigods, and men, human being. So many thing. So this is the end and one end to another. Ābrahma-bhuvanāl... Kīṭa-janma, insignificant ant, nobody cares for, and Brahmā is very important, supreme person within the... So Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura says that "I will not prefer a birth like Brahmā if I forget You. But I will prefer to become an insect if I remain with Your devotee." Because if one remains with a devotee, he will not forget Kṛṣṇa. That is the advantage. Just like when you go, people address you, "Hare Kṛṣṇa." Oh, it is very great benefit. Automatically they chant Hare Kṛṣṇa. We have seen it all over the world. And when I was going from London to Nairobi, we stopped at Athens, the dead of night. We are in the..., what is called? That transit room.
Devotee: Transit lounge.
Prabhupāda: Yes, lounge. So as soon as they saw us, "Hare Kṛṣṇa!" You see. So this is advantage. Aho bata śva-paco 'to garīyān yaj-jihvāgre vartate nāma tubhyam. Even a dog-eater chants Hare Kṛṣṇa, he becomes glorified.
Philosophy Discussions
Hayagrīva: You once mentioned that Greeks, the ancient Greeks were chased out of India where... They were kṣatriyas chased out of India by Parāśara Muni, something like that. But Socrates was confronted with a society that on one hand included what were called Sophists—these were more or less mental speculators; they were paid money to philosophize or to speculate—and humanists, who said, "Man is the measure of all things." They..., no belief in God or any higher force; nothing beside man. And with the demigod worshipers, the Greek pantheon of gods were very much like the demigods described in the Vedic literatures, like Zeus was like Indra, and Athena was like Sarasvatī. They retained..., the Greeks retained their worship of the demigods, but there is no mention of a Supreme God under whom everyone else served, and Socrates, on..., neglected the worship of these demigods. He felt that there was no use in worshiping the demigods, and he stressed meditation on the self, on the highest good which resides in the heart, which must correspond to the Paramātmā.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Hayagrīva: He believed that the best form of government is an enlightened monarchy, enlightened monarchy.
Prabhupāda: Yes, yes. That is we say, rājarṣi, rājarṣi. Imaṁ rājarṣayo viduḥ (BG 4.2). Rājarṣi means king, at the same time saintly.
Hayagrīva: Saintly.
Prabhupāda: That is idea. He has taken these ideas from the Vedic literature.
Hayagrīva: When this form degenerates, it becomes a tyranny.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Hayagrīva: When it degenerates.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Hayagrīva: The second best form is an aristocracy, and when it deteriorates it becomes an oligarchy, rule of corrupt men. And he considered democracy to be one of the worst forms of government...
Prabhupāda: Yes, that is my, I have said...
Hayagrīva: ...for when it deteriorates, it degenerates into mob rule.
Prabhupāda: Yes, yes, that's a fact, very good. But the best thing is monarchy, because if the monarch is rājarṣi, he is not only king... That is necessary. Kṛṣṇa wants that, that the government should be ruled; therefore we praise, offer so much respect to Mahārāja Yudhiṣṭhira, Mahārāja Parīkṣit and Lord Rāmacandra, how to become an ideal king. He is Personality of Godhead. He showed how to become Rāma-rājya. So this is very good because it is not expensive. One man is maintained by the state very nicely, and nowadays these democracies' mob rule means instead of one king there are 300,000 kings in a state, and they are looting the hard-earned money by income tax, and everything is so polluted. So the condemnation of democracy is supported by us. It is mob rule. It has no value.
Hayagrīva: Socrates and Plato.
Prabhupāda: That's all right.
Hayagrīva: They had city states that were, uh...
Prabhupāda: Mini-states.
Hayagrīva: ...democracy. They were, they were so small that everyone could get together.
Prabhupāda: Pañcayat, in India it was pañcayat. So each man of the village, it is to reduce the responsibility of the state if that small cases, the pañcayat, some of the important men of the village they would sit together, and whatever they will decide, that the state will accept, court will accept. So minimize the responsibility of the court in deciding several cases. So in the India the Pañcayat system is there.
Hayagrīva: The what?
Prabhupāda: Pañca, Pañcayat means...
Hayagrīva: Pañcat?
Prabhupāda: Pañca.
Hayagrīva: Pañca.
Prabhupāda: Pañca means five, five selected men from the village sit down and decide the case. That will be accepted by the government.
Hayagrīva: Greece, Greece was not a country as such; it was composed of small towns or cities, and Athens was...
Prabhupāda: Anywhere.
Hayagrīva: ...Athens was the biggest, and everyone got together and the wisest men spoke, and they voted on their decisions.
Prabhupāda: That is the beginning of Parliament.
Hayagrīva: Parliament.
Prabhupāda: So in monarchy also there was council of learned men, brāhmaṇas, great saintly persons.
Conversations and Morning Walks
1971 Conversations and Morning Walks
Prabhupāda: So if you repeatedly chant, it will remain. It will always remain in your heart.
Guest (1): Always going on.
Prabhupāda: Yes. There is no chance of escape. Chant constantly, Hare Kṛṣṇa Hare Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa Hare Hare, Hare Rāma Hare Rāma Rāma Rāma Hare Hare. It remains in the heart. Not only my heart. Others' heart, they also joke, "Hare Kṛṣṇa!" If it can remain in others' heart, why not my heart? Those who are joking me, imitating me. We... Last time, when I was going in Africa, I stopped for few minutes in Athens. Some of the younger residents chant, "Hare Kṛṣṇa!" You see? As soon as they saw us, they began to chant Hare Kṛṣṇa. They could understand, "These are Hare Kṛṣṇa people." Yes. So by their dress, by their tilaka, they oblige others to chant Hare Kṛṣṇa, either for imitating or for joking. So they gain. But if Hare Kṛṣṇa chanting has got any effect, even by joking like that, he'll get gain. If it is actually spiritual, by simply joking he will get gain.
1973 Conversations and Morning Walks
Prabhupāda: In Athens, we stopped for forty-five minutes. The... I was going to Nairobi. So some young men by seeing us began to chant, "Hare Kṛṣṇa."
Harry: Yes.
Prabhupāda: So everywhere we go, as soon as people see us, they say, "Hare Kṛṣṇa." In Montreal, when I was going on road, the children will chant, "Hare Kṛṣṇa." So it is now popular. Yes.
1974 Conversations and Morning Walks
Gupta: When we pass, people say "Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Rāma."
Prabhupāda: This is the test of Vaiṣṇava. If one is actually Vaiṣṇava, then by seeing him one will chant Hare Kṛṣṇa. This has been created all over the world. Yes. Wherever we go, they chant Hare Kṛṣṇa. Even at midnight in Athens. Yes. That we have experienced. This is the definition given by Caitanya Mahāprabhu.
Woman: In which country of Europe has the Hare Kṛṣṇa movement been the most powerful or successful?
Prabhupāda: Everywhere.
Woman: Every one?
Prabhupāda: Everywhere, yes. In Africa, in America, in Canada, in Japan, in China. Most successful in America. Most successful-many men have taken to this Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement.
Woman: What about Greece?
Prabhupāda: I never went to Greece.
Satsvarūpa: You said you went to the airport and they were chanting.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
O'Grady: Really?
Woman: I would think they would be in danger in Athens.
Bhagavān: It is danger.
Woman: There's no way that this movement could be very successful in Athens or in Greece. Not too many things are successful in Greece.
Prabhupāda: Yes, when I was going to Nairobi from London I got down, transit, on the hall. Some young men, as soon as they saw me, they began to chant, Hare Kṛṣṇa.
O'Grady: No, really? In Greece, this was, in Athens?
Prabhupāda: Athens, yes.
1976 Conversations and Morning Walks
Rāmeśvara: Prabhupāda has a very busy schedule coming up in the next month and a half. He's going to Detroit, Toronto, Pittsburgh, and our farm in that area, then Washington, D.C., New York, London, Paris, Rome, Tehran, and back to Bombay, all within about forty-five days.
Prabhupāda: Athens, Athens, Athens.
Rāmeśvara: Athens?
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Rāmeśvara: Oh. The new center in Athens.... It opened so fast, it's...
Interviewer: How long will you spend at each stop?
Rāmeśvara: About a week.
Correspondence
1947 to 1965 Correspondence
Your article heading as "Let us be True to one another" published in the A.B. Patrika (Allahabad Edition) D/30.12.51 attracted my attention and I read it over and over again. This article contains the nucleus of future activities of the human society in the spiritual realm and I have read in your statement about your deep thought on the onward march of human civilization. You have rightly said the following words in this connection viz.
"So we search for new ways, new aspects of the truth more in harmony with our environment. And we question each other and debate and quarrel and evolve any number of 'isms' and philosophies. As in the days of Socrates, we live in an age of questioning, but the questioning is not confined to a city like Athens: it is worldwide".
There are two ways of answering such questions, I mean the deductive way and inductive way. Mortality of man is established by either of the above ways. In deductive way we take it for granted from reliable source, "Man is Mortal." But in the inductive way we approach the same truth by our poor reasoning of "observation and experiment." By observation we can see that Gandhi dies, Fotilal dies, C.R. Das dies, Patel dies and therefore we conclude that man dies or, "Man is Mortal". Then again in the same deductive way when we reason that man is mortal, and find that Jawaharlal is a man and thus conclude that Jawaharlal is mortal.
The wonderful temples, the mosques and the cathedrals of past centuries were built up to give them the real food and were not built up by blind or unquestioning faith. The were built up on full faith and reasoning which were based on the deductive process. The Vedas, the Bible or the Koran would ask the human being to make proper use of his conserved energy in the transcendental service of God and unsophisticated men in the old days would follow such instruction unhesitatingly for realizing the Absolute Truth. Such temples, mosques were therefore centres of high culture to provide real food to human consciousness.
But in the present age in the absence of such high culture there is hardly any difference between the temples, mosques and cathedrals and the high commercial buildings in a busy city. If the culture is to be revived it is quite possible to do it even in your parliamentary buildings in New Delhi or in the commercial buildings of New York. As the Socratesian ways of reasoning is not bound up within the walls of Athens so also the Brahminical culture is not bound up within the walls of India. You can find out the nine prescribed qualifications of a Brahmin, the seven qualifications of Ksatriyas, the three qualifications of Vaisya and the one qualification of a sudra, world wide. You can therefore pick up Brahmins and other orders of society all the world over. Gandhiji although born in a Vaisya family, possessed almost all the nine qualifications of a Brahmin and if possible we can find out such Brahmin in other parts of the World.
1975 Correspondence
Athens
My dear Dina Dayala,
Please accept my blessings. I am in due receipt of your letter dated 18th inst. with Greek pamphlet. This preaching work is very pleasing to me. Go on with your translation work, and Krishna will surely bless you. Thank you very much.
Do everything in consultation with the GBC. I hope this meets you in good health.
Your ever well-wisher,
A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami
ACBS/as
Arvind Shah (Mathiawala)
166 Parkview Ext.
Athens, Georgia 30601
My Dear Arvind Shah:
Please accept my best wishes. I am in due receipt of your letter dated September 12, 1975 and have noted the contents. I cannot quote immediately from sastra, but psychologically we can understand that there is no such things as Hindu religion, but according to the Vedic sastra there is varna-asrama, the religion of varna and asrama. The whole varna-asrama system discourages sex life. Circumcision is a facility for sex life. So in other systems of religion or throughout the whole universe the tendency is to enjoy sex life, whereas the varna-asrama system discourages sex life. Sex life is the cause of bondage of the conditioned soul to remain in the material world. If one can conquer over the sex impulses voluntarily, he conquers over the influence of material nature. So the ideals being different, I think in the Vedic system such circumcision is prohibited.
1976 Correspondence
Athens
My dear Dina Dayala das,
Please accept my blessings. I beg to acknowledge receipt of your letter dated February 6, 1976.
It is nice to hear that your activities are going on successfully in Athens. Caitanya Mahaprabhu says, prithivite ache yata nagar adi gram sarvasa . . . so now it is actually becoming a fact. This movement is being spread everywhere. Maintain your activities and increase gradually. I have instructed everything in my books. You may translate the Bhagavad-gita first.
Now we are starting new centres in Athens and a new building is being acquired in Rome. So as you have requested you can make a program for Rome, and I can go there just after the program in France. The program in France and Rome will be between July 26, and August 10, 1976, before I will be going on to India to officially open our Hyderabad centre.
In Europe we are going to open 2 new centres, one in Athens, Greece, and the other on Corsica, a French island.
| Page Title: | Athens |
| Compiler: | MadhuGopaldas |
| Created: | 17 of Feb, 2011 |
| Totals by Section: | BG=0, SB=0, CC=0, OB=0, Lec=5, Con=5, Let=7 |
| No. of Quotes: | 17 |