Expressions researched:
"Padma Purana"
Prabhupāda: Vedic literature.
Allen Ginsberg: What...?
Prabhupāda: Padma Purāṇa, Purāṇas.
Allen Ginsberg: Bhāgavata Purāṇa.
Prabhupāda: Bhāgavata Purāṇa.
Allen Ginsberg: Has the detailed analysis of what goes on within the Kali-yuga?
Prabhupāda: Oh, yes. Oh, yes, yes. I'll read you sometimes.
Allen Ginsberg: There are translations of that. There are some translations of that.
Hayagrīva: Geology, zoology, astronomy.
Prabhupāda: Biology, you can teach them the evolution of the species from Padma-Purāṇa, 8,400,000's, one after another. Yes.
Hayagrīva: What about astronomy? Anything like that? No. Okay. Any animal husbandry they can learn out there. Animal husbandry they will learn...
Prabhupāda: That they will learn practically, cow keeping.
Hayagrīva: At what age should they be taught to cook prasādam?
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Hayagrīva: At what age should they be taught to cook?
Prabhupāda: After twelve years.
Prabhupāda: The story is a mouse came to a saintly person: "Sir, I am in trouble. If you kindly release me?" "What is that trouble?" "A cat, they are after me. I am always at risk of life." "So what do you want?" "You also make me a cat." "All right. You become a cat." Then again he came. "Sir, again the complaint is here." "What is that?" "Dogs are chasing me." "Then what do you want?" "I want to become a dog." "All right. You become a dog." In this way he came up to the tiger by the benediction of the... And when he became a tiger, he was... (snarling sound-laughter) Just like our Brahmānanda Prabhu. "All right. Again become mouse." You see? So these civilization is like that. They became tiger, and they are so much badly trained up that they have to become again a mouse. That is the way. That is the way of nature. If you don't improve yourself in Kṛṣṇa consciousness, then you again become stool worms. The human form of life is an opportunity to come out of the cycle of birth and death, but if one does not take—these are the statements in Padma Purāṇa—then he loses the chance.
Prabhupāda: Cinmaya-śarīra. Ānanda-cinmaya-rasa.
Dr. Singh: This is my friend Śrī Ramakrishna. I just called my wife and another lady (indistinct).
Prabhupāda: Cinmaya, cinmaya-śarīra (?) we have got. In the Padma Purāṇa, the length and breadth of this cinmaya-śarīra is given: one ten-thousandth part of the tip of the hair. Keśāgra-śata-bhāgasya (CC Madhya 19.140).
Dr. Singh: This is my wife.
Prabhupāda: Ah, how are you?
Dr. Singh: And this is Mrs. (indistinct), one English friend of ours who is out..., who is...
Prabhupāda: So why are you sitting down?
Prabhupāda: There it is stated
Lord Kṛṣṇa says that there are different species of life, yoni. According to Padma Purāṇa there are eight million, four hundred thousand species of different forms of life. So Kṛṣṇa claims that "All these living entities, in different forms of life, I am the seed-giving father of all of them, and the material nature is the mother." Just like father impregnates with the seed, and the mother gives the body, similarly God impregnates material nature with all kinds of living entities, not in different forms, but the original seed. And according to one's karma, he comes out in different types of bodies. The body is given by material nature, and the life is given by God. This is the sum and substance. And therefore God is one, and He's the father of everyone.
Prabhupāda: ...you should call learned. Arcye viṣṇau śilā-dhīr guruṣu nara-matir vaiṣṇave jāti-buddhiḥ. You take it...
Nitāi: Yes.
Prabhupāda: ...this quotation from Padma Purāṇa, and distribute it by transcribing to all our devotees.
Nitāi: That's the verse that says that one is a resident of hell...
Prabhupāda: Yes. Nārakī.
Nitāi: ...if he considers the Deity...
Prabhupāda: Nārakī.
Prabhupāda: So bhakti school does not very much appreciate the speculative method. They surrender and they try to get knowledge directly from the Supreme Lord, as Bhagavad-gītā is being spoken by the Supreme Lord, or statements of the pure highly elevated devotees, just like Brahmā is speaking. This way. Hearing. The main purpose is hearing, hearing from the right source. That is... Especially in the western world, instead of hearing from the right source, they want to speculate about the Absolute. We have got about twenty books like this, but they are not speculation. They are simply by hearing. I am writing what I have heard, not that I am speculating. Mostly, the philosophers, they write as they speculate. They write their own opinion. But our process is not that. We don't speculate. We present the statements of God and His devotees. There is the whole book. Anywhere you won't find, "I think," "In my opinion," "Perhaps it should be like this way." No. We don't do that. As soon as there is "perhaps" or "maybe," that is not perfect knowledge. That is speculation. Just like in the Padma-Purāṇa, there is statement of different species of life, jalajā nava-lakṣāṇi, statement that "There are 900,000 species of life in the water." It is not written like this, "Perhaps," "it may be." No.
Prabhupāda: Yes, Viṣṇu Purāṇa is Vaiṣṇava literature. There are eighteen Purāṇas. Out of eighteen, six are sāttvika, and six are rājasika, and six are tāmasika. The sāttvika Purāṇas, they are Vaiṣṇava literature. Viṣṇu Purāṇa, Brahmāṇḍa Purāṇa, Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Padma Purāṇa.
Prof. Regamay: The same... Because I understood through... It is that the problem, that Kṛṣṇa is the original person of divine, but in, by Rāmānuja or Viṣṇu Purāṇa it reverse Viṣṇu is the highest.
Prabhupāda: Kṛṣṇa is Viṣṇu.
Prof. Regamay: And Kṛṣṇa is the avatāra of Viṣṇu.
Prabhupāda: No. Kṛṣṇa is avatārī. You have read Bhagavad-gītā?
Prof. Regamay: Yes, of course.
Prabhupāda: Anyway, if one chants Allah or Jesus Christ, we have no objection. We don't say that you stop it. We say that you chant the holy name of God. If that name is of God, you chant.
Yogeśvara: Yesterday, Srila Prabhupāda, you gave the story, I think you said it was from the Padma Purāṇa, about a Muslim who was attacked by a wild boar.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Yogeśvara: He was attacked by a wild boar, and the boars for the Muslims are untouchable. So he was saying haram, haram, which means untouchable. And he was killed by that boar, but it was taken by higher authority that he was chanting "ha rāma," which means "where is Lord Rāma," so he derived liberation. Even unconsciously he was chanting and derived liberation.
Prabhupāda: This Darwin is a rascal. He cannot... He has taken some idea from this Padma Purāṇa, and he has developed in a befooling way. There are different types of human beings, four hundred thousand species. (pause) (break) ...is to conquer over the stringent laws of nature. Is it not?
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Yes.
Prabhupāda: No? What is the purpose of scientific research?
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Yes.
Prabhupāda: To conquer over the laws of nature.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Yes.
Prabhupāda: Two millions? No, 8,400,000.
Śrutakīrti: You were saying the other day that all the species of life are mentioned in the Padma-Purāṇa.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Śrutakīrti:: They're all given account of.
Prabhupāda: They have given separate account or only on the total?
Hari-śauri: Only approximation.
Śrutakīrti:: An estimate. (break)
Hari-śauri: ...a drawing of the so-called missing link between the evolution from ape to man. They have given one drawing of a species looking like a man but hunched like an ape. And they're claiming this is...
Prabhupāda: Where they have got it?
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: But we were wondering whether that is reasonable.
Prabhupāda: Reasonable? Yes. It is given in Upaniṣads and Padma Purāṇa, authorized.
Rūpānuga: It's just that this one ten-thousandth tip of hair has no material quality. It is nonphysical but still can be measured.
Prabhupāda: Nonphysical... Just like axiomatic truth point has no length, no breadth, but it has length and breadth. You cannot measure it.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: But does this not imply—one ten-thousandth the size—does that not imply measurement, that it can be measured?
Bhāgavata: If you want to go out, this way. (break)
Prabhupāda: ...it from Padma Purāṇa, and he has explained in his own imagination. The idea has been taken from Padma Purāṇa because the Padma Purāṇa, it is already there, evolution. Asatiṁ caturaṁś caiva. Eighty-four lakṣa means hundred thousand, 8,400,000. That is also given. Where is that, that Darwin's theory?
Bhāgavata: They have no number of species.
Prabhupāda: Imperfect idea. He wanted to credit himself. He has stolen the idea from Padma Purāṇa and wanted to explain in his own way, imagination, speculation.
Prabhupāda: Yes. Every year, the new batches of students, and you'll have opportunities of selling a new set. If the university professors cooperate—they must; they should—then we'll have every year a large number of books sold to the...
Hari-śauri: If you bring more small books... Like you were going to do Padma Purāṇa...
Prabhupāda: Yes. That we can give.
Hari-śauri: ...and the Upaniṣads, like that. Those will also be very...
Prabhupāda: That will be nice. I was training, but they have not become so expert. As I am doing Bhagavad-gītā, Śrīmad..., they could do Padma Purāṇa, Viṣṇu Purāṇa, Brahma-vaivarta Purāṇa in the same way, but our students are not so expert.
Hari-śauri: And no one can give the purports that you give.
Satsvarūpa: Next we have a question about the BBT. At present, no translation work is to be published without your seeing and approving it. So the question is, is there any system for publishing works in the future that you may not see? For example, we've heard suggested that the Padma Purāṇa or the Ṣaṭ-Sandarbha may be translated. But what would the system be to insure the paramparā if you would not personally see these translations?
Prabhupāda: That you have to examine expertly.
Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: In other words, there's no set principle that only the works which you have already translated can be published by the BBT. If there is some worthy translation of a bona fide Vedic reference, if it's properly done, the BBT could publish it.
Prabhupāda: Full nonsense, this rascal. How much havoc he has done to the human society. A grand rascal, this Darwin. And he is taken as the basic principle of anthropology. The whole world has become... So all scientists, by combined meeting, they should kick out his Darwin theory. All, they should modify... (pause) Long, long ago, before, things were there. Nobody knows how long. In the Padma Purāṇa it is said, bhramyādbhir jīva-jātiṣu. You know this word?
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Yes.
Prabhupāda: Bhramyādbhiḥ. There are different forms of bodies of jīva. That is also stated. Jalajā nava-lakṣānī sthavara lakṣa-vimśati. So first of all, general, from water. That you have got experience. Fish is coming. As soon as there is some reservoir of water, after some day mosquito will come, fish will come, many other bugs and germs will come, jalajā. And their number is also given, nava-lakṣānī. In this way, bhramyādbhir jīva-jāti, the soul, the living entity, is wandering, jīva-jātiṣu. Then he gets a human form of life. The civilization is there. And five thousand years ago Kṛṣṇa said, tathā dehāntara-prāptiḥ (BG 2.13).
| Page Title: | Padma Purana (Conversations) |
| Compiler: | Visnu Murti, RupaManjari |
| Created: | 27 of Jun, 2012 |
| Totals by Section: | BG=0, SB=0, CC=0, OB=0, Lec=0, Con=16, Let=0 |
| No. of Quotes: | 16 |