Kṛṣṇa has given different foodstuff for different animals and human beings. Kṛṣṇa has given stool for the pigs and so nice foodstuff, fruits and grains and milk, for the human being. Not that every food is for everyone. No. What is called? "One man's food, another man's poison." So the stool is also a kind of food. Everything is a kind of food. Even the stone is also food. You know? The pigeons, they eat the stones particles. They can digest. For them, the hardest peas are supplied. So they can digest. Pāyarā-maṭara. It is called in India, pāyarā-maṭara. Pāyarā means pigeon. Pigeon's peas. They require such thing. Just like the gorilla. The gorilla animal, where they live in the African jungles... We have read book. There are trees, the fruits of that tree are so hard, harder than the iron bullet. You can hammer on the bullet; it may bend. But that fruit will not bend. So those fruits are taken by the gorillas, and they chew it just like you chew peanuts or something like that, yes. (laughter)
Hammer
Srimad-Bhagavatam
SB Canto 2
In this verse Brahmājī clears up the wrong impression held by the less intelligent and affirms that he creates the universal variegatedness after the potential creation by the glaring effulgence of Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa. Brahmājī has also separately given this statement in the saṁhitā known as the Brahma-saṁhitā (5.40), where he says:
- yasya prabhā prabhavato jagad-aṇḍa-koṭi-
- koṭiṣv aśeṣa-vasudhādi-vibhūti-bhinnam
- tad brahma niṣkalam anantam aśeṣa-bhūtaṁ
- govindam ādi-puruṣaṁ tam ahaṁ bhajāmi
"I serve the Supreme Personality of Godhead Govinda, the primeval Lord, whose transcendental bodily effulgence, known as the brahma-jyotir, which is unlimited, unfathomed and all-pervasive, is the cause of the creation of unlimited numbers of planets, etc., with varieties of climates and specific conditions of life."
The same statement is in the Bhagavad-gītā (14.27). Lord Kṛṣṇa is the background of the brahma-jyotir (brahmaṇo hi pratiṣṭhāham). In the Nirukti, or Vedic dictionary, the import of pratiṣṭhā is mentioned as "that which establishes." So the brahma-jyotir is not independent or self-sufficient. Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa is ultimately the creator of the brahma-jyotir, mentioned in this verse as sva-rociṣā, or the effulgence of the transcendental body of the Lord. This brahma-jyotir is all-pervading, and all creation is made possible by its potential power; therefore the Vedic hymns declare that everything that exists is being sustained by the brahma-jyotir (sarvaṁ khalv idaṁ brahma). Therefore the potential seed of all creation is the brahma-jyotir, and the same brahma-jyotir, unlimited and unfathomed, is established by the Lord. Therefore the Lord (Śrī Kṛṣṇa) is ultimately the supreme cause of all creation (ahaṁ sarvasya prabhavaḥ (BG 10.8)).
One should not expect the Lord to create like a blacksmith with a hammer and other instruments. The Lord creates by His potencies. He has His multifarious potencies (parāsya śaktir vividhaiva śrūyate (Cc. Madhya 13.65, purport)). Just as the small seed of a banyan fruit has the potency to create a big banyan tree, the Lord disseminates all varieties of seeds by His potential brahma-jyotir (sva-rociṣā), and the seeds are made to develop by the watering process of persons like Brahmā. Brahmā cannot create the seeds, but he can manifest the seed into a tree, just as a gardener helps plants and orchards to grow by the watering process. The example cited here of the sun is very appropriate. In the material world the sun is the cause of all illumination: fire, electricity, the rays of the moon, etc. All luminaries in the sky are creations of the sun, the sun is the creation of the brahma-jyotir, and the brahma-jyotir is the effulgence of the Lord. Thus the ultimate cause of creation is the Lord.
SB Cantos 10.14 to 12 (Translations Only)
The furious Lord of the Yādavas then threw aside His club and plow and with His bare hands hammered a blow upon Dvivida's collarbone. The ape collapsed, vomiting blood.
Lectures
Srimad-Bhagavatam Lectures
Indian man (5): Swamiji, they read a lot that Bhāgavata says that our body is a temple for the soul, and the soul is a temple for the spirit. Would you kindly enlighten us on this point?
Prabhupāda: That is already explained, that you are soul within this body, the body superficially covered with the senses. Indriyāṇi parāṇy āhur indriyebhyaḥ paraṁ manaḥ manasas tu parā buddhiḥ (BG 3.42). You have to analyze that "First of all, I am prominent by my senses. My body means my senses. But the senses are useless unless there is mind." Indriyebhyaḥ paraṁ manaḥ. If your mind is not in order, your senses cannot act. Therefore mind is superior than the senses, and the mind cannot act if you have no intelligence. So manasas tu parā buddhiḥ. And if you can go beyond the intelligence, then you can find out what is soul. So it requires study. It requires education. The education is there. The books are there. The teachers are there. Unfortunately you are not interested to take the spiritual education. You are now interested in technology, how to hammer, that's all.
What is the use of wasting time to the..., going to the university? Scientific education for hammering? Hammering you can see. You take a hammer and go on. (laughs) What is the use for... Technical nonsense, they have invented technical... Does it require any education? No. Tad-vijñānārthaṁ sa gurum evābhigacchet: (MU 1.2.12) education required if you require to understand the value of life, tattva-jijñāsaḥ.
I sometimes give example: The blacksmith's method and the goldsmith's method. The goldsmith, he has got a small hammer—tuk, tuk, tuk, tuk, tuk, tuk, tuk, tuk, tuk. And the blacksmith has a big hammer—dumh, finish. So our is blacksmith method. We take the big hammer of bhakti yoga and finish all, everything. You see. We won't have to undergo so many tuk, tuk, tuk, tuk. And there is no possibility. If I say, "Now you have to become completely brahmacārī. You have to sit down in the forest and stay at right angle and press your nose for six months," who will follow? There is no possibility. This tuk tuk method, there is no possibility. We have to get this hammer, blacksmith hammer of Kṛṣṇa consciousness, and immediately finish everything. This is Kali-yuga. Simply one... Who can do this? This one hammer, finishing all, who can do this? Vāsudeva-parāyaṇāḥ. Bhaktyā vāsudeva-parāyaṇāḥ. By devotional service one has to become vāsudeva-parāyaṇa, devotee of Lord Vāsudeva. That's all. That is being taught here: how to become lover of Vāsudeva.
Śruti means the knowledge which you receive by hearing, not by your so-called eyes or tongue. No. The tongue, you can chant what you hear. Therefore our beginning of knowledge is śravaṇaṁ kīrtanaṁ. Śravaṇaṁ kīrtanaṁ viṣṇoḥ (SB 7.5.23). Not that go to some technical college and learn it. This is also technical, transcendental technical, but the technique is first of all hear. This is technique. Not take a hammer and understood. This is hearing. This technology begins by hearing. Just like you have come here kindly and hearing. This is the technology, beginning of transcendental knowledge or spiritual knowledge.
We do not know how great Kṛṣṇa is, how His potency is great, how He is manufacturing, how He is... Because we think, "If we have to manufacture something, I require some tools, I require some energy, I require some ingredients. I have to collect it. Then I can make." Therefore we are surprised, "How Kṛṣṇa can make, or how God can create, this universe? Where is that instrument? Where is that ingredient?" They cannot. They are thinking in that way, that "I require instrument. Kṛṣṇa requires the hammer and the saw to manufacture this comic manifestation." I am thinking in that way. Therefore I cannot believe it, how the cause of this cosmic manifestation can be a person.
Sri Caitanya-caritamrta Lectures
There was a physician and his servant. So one day the physician was called by some person to treat his horse. So when the physician came, he asked, "What is the matter?" He says that "The horse has suddenly swollen his throat. So please treat." Then the physician took a hammer and strongly struck the swollen portion, and it was at once cured. The servant saw, "So this is the process of curing swollen parts of the body." So on that very day, he resigned his service and he thought that "Now I have learned how to cure swollen parts of the body," and whenever he was called to treat such disease, he used to hammer over that swollen part and the patient died. So when he came to his former master, "Sir, you cured that horse, the swollen part, by beating hammer, but when I treat, it dies, the patient dies. What is the matter?" So he explained, "You nonsense, the swollen is not cured by beating. That was a special case. The horse took a squash while he was in the garden, and he could not swallow it up. Therefore it was swollen. So I struck therefore, and it was broken, and the same thing, his swollenness, cured. But you foolish, you are simply striking on swollen parts?"
Everyone should be inquisitive to know about the Absolute Truth, Brahman, but education is different nowadays. People are interested with hammer, how to play on hammer, that's all, technology. There is no question of Brahman. Let Brahman go to hell, now take out the hammer. That Russian emblem? Hammer? And scythe? That's all.
Festival Lectures
This education, technical education, how you can very nicely hammer, this will not solve the problem. So if we want real solution of the problems, then our duty is first of all to take the shelter of nitāi-pada-kamala. Then we'll be happy, and we'll get moonshine, and our all fatigueness will be subsided.
Conversations and Morning Walks
1969 Conversations and Morning Walks
Śyāmasundara: You were saying earlier today that we can also supplement our Kṛṣṇa consciousness while we're working, hammering the nails.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Śyāmasundara: So chanting along with devotional service, performing our duties while concentrating on Kṛṣṇa, is also part of the process, isn't it?
Prabhupāda: Yes. Anything, any way. The whole idea is manāḥ kṛṣṇe niveṣayet. Mind should be fixed up in Kṛṣṇa. That is the process.
1973 Conversations and Morning Walks
Prabhupāda: We are thinking in my terms. "Oh, such a huge universe! How a person can create? Where he got this tool? Where he's got the hammer? And how he constructed it?" I am thinking like that. Because I am limited, I am thinking in my limited way. So I am denying, "There is no God." Therefore we have to first of all understand acintya, inconceivable power. Then we can understand God.
Prajāpati: But sometimes they might hit their thumb with a hammer or something and they will start swearing, calling on God's name, but in a very bad way.
Prabhupāda: That's all right. God's name. God's... In every respect, these materialists, they want to use God for their sense gratification. That is the prime fact. Our philosophy is that "God is not agent for your sense gratification, but you are agent for God's satisfaction." That is our philosophy, just the opposite. Even so-called religionists, they also take God as the agent of their sense gratification. They go to church to order God, "Supply our bread." Actually, He is doing. God is supplying bread. But they go for ordering, that "Give us our..." The rascal does not know, God is already supplying. Why should we go to church for ordering Him to supply bread? He is already supplying, even to the cats and dogs. They do not now what is the purpose of going to the church. That is going on. That is the disease, material disease. "I want to satisfy my senses, and anyone who will help me in my sense gratification, I shall worship him. If he does not, then I shall not." Everywhere. This Nixon became president because he promised that "I shall satisfy your senses." Now he is not doing so, so "Get out." This is the whole formula, material world." You satisfy my senses, you are my friend. And as soon as stop, then you are not my friend." That's it.
1974 Conversations and Morning Walks
Prabhupāda: That communist emblem, what is that?
Devotees: Hammer and sickle.
Prabhupāda: Yes. That is good.
Indian: Yeah, good.
Prabhupāda: But no hammer. Only this... What is called?
Devotees: Sickle.
Prabhupāda: No hammer. That will be our emblem. Only sickle. Not hammer. The hammer has hammered the whole human civilization. So just make a counter-emblem. The communists will appreciate.
1975 Conversations and Morning Walks
Prabhupāda: Everyone can grow food if he works for two months. Everyone can grow his whole year's foodstuff. There is so much land. But no, they'll not grow food. They will grow hammer, manufacturing it. You see? Tire tube, then atom bomb, then this and that. They are busy. They are busy fool. Actually they are fools, and they are very busy. Everyone is busy. There are so many parts in the motorcar, three thousand part, and they are busy in manufacturing three thousand parts of motor parts. So everyone is busy in producing things unwanted.
1976 Conversations and Morning Walks
Prabhupāda: Even a third-class born or fourth-class born could become a first-class man. This training should be given. There must be an institution how to become peaceful, how to become truthful, how to become honest, how to become religious, how to become believer in God. Why not this institution? They have opened institutions how to learn to deal the hammer, technology. But if, in the society, there is no first-class man on this basis, then who will guide? If there is no brain, then who will guide the hand or the leg?
Prabhupāda: Who cares for Bhāgavatam? Technology, hammer..., cuta-cut-cuta. Nobody is now interested in philosophy or English literature.
Rādhāvallabha: He'll say there is no experience of anyone taking a next birth.
Prabhupāda: No experience? You are not diseased? Do you want disease? Still, you say you have no experience? When you are put into some disease and go to hospital and the doctor surgically operates your body, so you have no experience? You did not want that. Your fertile brain, when it is operated with hammer, so you did not experience? How do you say that you have no experience? You are suffering every moment. But you don't want suffering. How do you say that there is no experience? That is foolishness. They are suffering every moment, adhyātmika, adhibhautika, adhidaivika. Still, you say you have no experience? Means shameless. In Indian language we call vehāyā. He has got repeated experience; still, he'll say, "No, I don't care for it."
Rādhāvallabha: How does he have experience of rebirth?
Prabhupāda: Apart from that... That you have to take. Because you are put into difficulty which you do not want, this is your experience. So the intelligent man's question will be that "I did not want this, but who has put me into this condition?" That is intelligent.
Prabhupāda: Just like a man has gone to jail, he's giving education to the prisoners, "My dear brother prisoners, this life is not good, you become honest, don't come to the jail." So other prisoners, they are working hard, they are hammering on the bricks, they think that "This man is not hammering on the bricks, he's talking only."
Interviewer: I didn't gather that.
Bali-mardana: In the prison the people are, their work is, say, to hammer on bricks. So when, if someone comes into the jail and tells the prisoners, "You shouldn't be doing this, actually you should become honest and go out of the jail and be free." Now if the persons in the jail... Because... They will then become envious that "this person, instead of working hard like us, he's simply talking." They cannot understand the benefit that he's giving them and they become envious, that "Because he's not working like us he is nonsense." So do you understand the analogy? It's an analogy. Just like we are coming in the world and telling people to get out of this world, to understand the spiritual world, spiritual side of life. But because we're not working like them, sometimes they misunderstand what is our purpose.
Interviewer: :Well, are your Kṛṣṇa members out of the, out of jail?
Prabhupāda: Just like, some of us are working like the hammerman, breaking bricks with hammer, but that does not mean he does not understand. So long one is in the jail, one is not in freedom, he has to work like that by force. But that is not his proper work. He has got a different work outside the jail or in his freedom life.
Interviewer: Well, what people are saying about the members of the Kṛṣṇa society is that they are not doing the jail work.
Prabhupāda: That I have already explained. The prisoner who is hammering the bricks, he's thinking that this man is simply instructing that you have a different life outside the jail, he's not hammering on the brick. Therefore he is surprised, "How is that he is not hammering like me?"
Interviewer: But then is that man that's hammering the bricks, isn't he going to quit hammering the bricks, too?
Prabhupāda: He may not hammer, he's giving instruction. Just like I was invited in Ahmedabad jail to give some instruction. So I'm not hammering on the bricks because I was in the jail.
Interviewer: No, you're giving instruction.
Prabhupāda: Yes, I'm meant for giving instruction, I am not meant for hammering on the bricks.
Interviewer: But then once you get this...
Prabhupāda: So the person who is hammering on the bricks, he's thinking that "This man is simply talking."
Interviewer: That's why he thinks that the Kṛṣṇa people are separate.
Prabhupāda: He wants to draw him in the business of hammering bricks.
Interviewer: Of hammering bricks. Right, right.
Prabhupāda: That is the difference.
Interviewer: That's the difference. Well, what I'm talking about is...
Prabhupāda: He's thinking that "He's not contributing in hammering the bricks." But he does not know that this hammering on the bricks is not a very good business.
Interviewer: Not a very good business.
Prabhupāda: He does not know, the rascal, who is trying to bring us also in the business of hammering the bricks.
Interviewer: (simultaneously) of hammering the bricks, that's right. Yes.
Prabhupāda: That is the difference.
Interviewer: Yes. Well when you get through with, talking, instructing the man hammering the bricks, is he going to lay down his hammer, too?
Prabhupāda: No, he doesn't require. The same... You try to understand.
Bali-mardana: He may continue hammering, but his knowledge will be complete. He'll have complete understanding.
Prabhupāda: At least he must know that "This hammering is my punishment." He knows that "This hammering is not by business, it is my punishment." That is knowledge, that is knowledge. When a prisoner understands that "This hammering business is not my real business, it is my punishment."
Prabhupāda: Therefore they are envious of the Kṛṣṇa conscious men. They do not see that "These people, they are not hammering like us." So therefore they are thinking that there is no contribution of hammering. They think the hammering is the real business.
Interviewer: That's pretty good. (laughter) I think people understand the analogy, they think hammering is the business. What do you think is the business?
Prabhupāda: Huh?
Interviewer: The world thinks hammering is real business.
Prabhupāda: Yes, so our business is to educate them that "Your hammering business is not your life. Your freedom is real business."
Prabhupāda: It is due to misunderstanding. They do not understand what kind of preaching, what kind of education we are giving. We are giving education how to become free from the hammering business in the jail. They think hammering business and keep oneself within the jail is the real life because they have been accustomed to that. And when we speak that "Hammering or to keep within the jail is not your real business: your real business is freedom," naturally they find contradiction, and they think that we are doing something against their business. That is the difficulty.
Prabhupāda: Controlling one from coming to the jail life. If you give good instruction to a man, that "Don't become criminal, don't come to the jail, don't be engaged in the hammering business," it appears negative, but that is positive life.
Prabhupāda: They do not understand that we are talking on the spiritual platform and they are on the material bodily platform. Therefore they find contradiction. One has to be little sober to understand this movement and what platform we are speaking. They are accustomed, on the same example, hammering the bricks. And when they see others, they are not hammering the bricks, they think they are different. They cannot understand that life can be without hammering the bricks. Karmīs. In the Bhagavad-gītā, the word mūḍha, that has been explained by Viśvanātha Cakravartī, karmīs, these mūḍhas. They cannot understand.
Interviewer: I'm going to have to go back and hammer a few bricks. (laughter) It's been a pleasure, thank you very much, for your time.
Prabhupāda: Because they are accustomed to the business of hammering the bricks from time immemorial, they think "This is the business. How is that this man is not engaged in this business?"
Hari-śauri: Even after he'd understood the analogy that the man was in the prison and hammering bricks, he was still thinking that "Well, shouldn't he still be hammering bricks?" He was asking that. He was still thinking like that. It's amazing.
1977 Conversations and Morning Walks
Prabhupāda: I have seen in America the old man of family, one dog, one television, simply wasting time. And 50 cents for eat. How they are wasting the valuable human life. How they are kept in the darkness. This is life. I have seen television. All some fictitious stories. Here, trained position. They have manufactured one big hammer and training strongly and these rogues they are sending their hammer to train and as soon as the hammer... smashed. They want to see.
Prabhupāda: How they would reveal? They are thieves and rogues. Their idea is: three thousand years ago there was no civilization. This is their poor idea.
Bhāgavata: (break) I was speaking with him. He's an Indian here in Bhuvaneśvara. He said Vyāsa could not have written the Vedas five thousand years ago because writing did not start till 2,500 years ago. I said, "What is your proof?" He said, "Because we can see in the caves the markings, and these things did not come till 2,500 years ago." I said, "Do you think Vyāsa was a cave man, that he was banging on the walls with hammers?" So I said, "He is a great professor." He said, "No, no. Actually Vyāsa is not even a person. He's only a school." So I said, "Well, you do not understand." These are very atheistic type of people.
Prabhupāda: No, no. There are uncivilized men. Without any knowledge they can produce children. Do they have any scientific knowledge? How they are producing children? The same man, the same woman, the same child. What is the difference?
Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: He says, "Man alone has progressed from the caveman state to the present spaceman state."
Prabhupāda: Progressing means eating, sleeping, nothing more progress. He eats by killing an animal in the jungle, and you are eating, killing an animal in the organized slaughterhouse. That's all. So what is the difference between you and him? You are committing sinful activities by hammering, the killing, but he does not do so. He's not so sinful.
Correspondence
1970 Correspondence
You have seen the picture of Lord Narayana—He has got four hands, two hands are for the atheist and two hands are for the theist. For the theist-devotee the Lord has the Lotus-flower or blooming peace and prosperity, and the Conchshell dissipating all inauspicity by its vibration. But for the atheist there is the big Club for hammering on the head of the atheist, or separate the head of the atheist by the sharpened edge of the Disc.
1971 Correspondence
I beg to thank you very much for the magazine interview. You have so rightly said, "It's a hellish life without Krsna." These words of yours have pleased me so much. Actually it is a fact and one who has become so disgusted with material life is actually advanced in Krsna Consciousness. This is first class propaganda and it will be a hammer-blow to the proponents of materialism and atheism. I am so glad that you are feeling and speaking like this and I thank you very much.
1973 Correspondence
Yes, Mayapur construction must be completely finished before I return. The next time I come there must be no more workers or carpenters with their "tack-tack" sound. I would have continued to stay in Mayapur but the hammering sounds drove me away. When you are completely finished I will go there, otherwise not.
| Page Title: | Hammer |
| Compiler: | MadhuGopaldas, Tugomera |
| Created: | 15 of Mar, 2011 |
| Totals by Section: | BG=0, SB=2, CC=0, OB=0, Lec=9, Con=19, Let=3 |
| No. of Quotes: | 33 |