So he is analyzing the whole life, that puṁso varṣa-śataṁ hy āyuḥ (SB 7.6.6). Accepting that we have got one hundred years of life, but we have to waste half of it, fifty years, by sleeping at night. So immediately fifty years minus. Niṣphalaṁ yad asau rātryāṁ śete 'ndhaṁ prāpitas tamaḥ. When we sleep, we have no activity. We cannot make any advance, any department of knowledge. Sometimes we sleep more by intoxicating habit. So niṣphalaṁ yad asau rātryāṁ. The whole night is wasted because we cannot produce anything. There are two kinds of production: material production and spiritual production. Arthadam. Artha means factual profit. So there are two kinds of profit. Those who are materialists, they calculate profit by dollars, and those who are spiritualists, they calculate profit: "How much I have advanced today in spiritual or Kṛṣṇa consciousness?" Both of them are profits. So either make this profit or that profit, but don't waste your time. That is the proposal. But the best profit is, for human form of life, to advance in Kṛṣṇa consciousness. So he has analyzed that mugdhasya bālye kaiśore krīdato yāti vimśatiḥ (SB 7.6.7). So fifty years immediately minus from our life. Then, by playing in youthhood and childhood, another twenty years. Seventy years minus. Then jarayā grasta dehasya yāty akalpasya vimśatiḥ. Then, when old age comes, by disease, by invalidity, another twenty years minus. That means fifty plus twenty plus twenty. Out of hundred years, ninety years gone. Then,
- durāpureṇa kāmena
- mohena ca balīyasā
- śeṣaṁ gṛheṣu saktasya
- pramattasyāpayāti hi
- (SB 7.6.8)
The balance ten years, because the whole life we have spoiled in material activities, in the balance, ten years are wasted: "What I have done, and how to pull on? Oh, this was not successful. How I have to make successful? This boy was not educated. That boy was not properly brought up. He has gone out home...," so many anxieties. That means if we do not practice from childhood, then in the advanced age it is not possible. That is the proposal of Prahlāda Mahārāja.
There is a proverb in Bengali that kañcaya noyale bhas pas korbe nyastas (?). Bhas means bamboo. Bamboo, while it is green, you can bend it, but when its yellow or dry, oh, it cannot be bent. It will break. It will be break. Therefore school children... Just like Prahlāda Mahārāja is instructing his class fellows. School children, from five years old, they should be given lesson about Kṛṣṇa consciousness or God consciousness. Otherwise, in advanced age, oh, it is not possible. Generally, we find in our class or in this Kṛṣṇa conscious movement, the youngsters, they become little more interested, but we don't find any old men. Why? Because whatever they have been taught, they cannot forget. It is very difficult to forget what he has been already taught. So they do not become interested.