Tennis

Expressions researched:
"tennis"

SB Canto 3

SB 3.20.35, Translation and Purport:

Whosoever you may be, O beautiful girl, we are fortunate in being able to see you. While playing with a ball, you have agitated the minds of all onlookers.

Demons arrange many kinds of performances to see the glaring beauty of a beautiful woman. Here it is stated that they saw the girl playing with a ball. Sometimes the demoniac arrange for so-called sports, like tennis, with the opposite sex. The purpose of such sporting is to see the bodily construction of the beautiful girl and enjoy a subtle sex mentality. This demoniac sex mentality of material enjoyment is sometimes encouraged by so-called yogīs who encourage the public to enjoy sex life in different varieties and at the same time advertise that if one meditates on a certain manufactured mantra one can become God within six months. The public wants to be cheated, and Kṛṣṇa therefore creates such cheaters to misrepresent and delude. These so-called yogīs are actually enjoyers of the world garbed as yogīs. Bhagavad-gītā, however, recommends that if one wants to enjoy life, then it cannot be with these gross senses. A patient is advised by the experienced physician to refrain from ordinary enjoyment while in the diseased condition. A diseased person cannot enjoy anything; he has to restrain his enjoyment in order to get rid of the disease. Similarly, our material condition is a diseased condition. If one wants to enjoy real sense enjoyment, then one must get free of the entanglement of material existence. In spiritual life we can enjoy sense enjoyment which has no end. The difference between material and spiritual enjoyment is that material enjoyment is limited. Even if a man engages in material sex enjoyment, he cannot enjoy it for long. But when the sex enjoyment is given up, then one can enter spiritual life, which is unending. In the Bhāgavatam (5.5.1) it is stated that brahma-saukhya, spiritual happiness, is ananta, unending. Foolish creatures are enamored by the beauty of matter and think that the enjoyment it offers is real, but actually that is not real enjoyment.

Krsna, The Supreme Personality of Godhead

Krsna Book 90:

It is also said that Kṛṣṇa lived in Dvārakā as the husband of the goddess of fortune. Queen Rukmiṇī is the goddess of fortune, and all the other queens are her expansions. So Kṛṣṇa, the chief of the Vṛṣṇi dynasty, enjoyed with the goddess of fortune in full opulence. The queens of Kṛṣṇa are described as permanently youthful and beautiful. Although Kṛṣṇa had grandchildren and great-grandchildren, neither Kṛṣṇa nor His queens looked older than sixteen or twenty years of age. The young queens were so beautiful that when they moved they appeared like lightning moving in the sky. They were always dressed with excellent ornaments and garments and were always engaged in sportive activities like dancing, singing or playing ball on the roofs of the palaces. The dancing and tennis playing of girls in the material world

Srimad-Bhagavatam Lectures

Lecture on SB 1.14.43 -- New York, April 7, 1973 :

Here is the better engagement: to come before Rādhā Kṛṣṇa and glorify the Lord. Try to understand our relationship. This is our real, real business, but nobody is interested in the real business. They are interested in superfluous engagement whole day work in the office, then come here, go to the club, go to the football club, tennis club. In this way they have invented simply how to waste valuable life of tis human form. They have invented. They have no sense that how this life should be utilized for stopping this, I mean to say, prime problem, janma-mṛtyu-jarā. They do not know.

1973 Conversations and Morning Walks

Morning Walk At Cheviot Hills Golf Course -- May 13, 1973, Los Angeles:

Prabhupāda: (About tennis players) How people are kept into ignorance. Life is so valuable, and they are wasting time in that way. Life is valuable, how life should be utilized, what is the object of life—they do not know anything.

Svarūpa Dāmodara: Without knowing that the soul is eternal, everybody would be acting like this.

Prabhupāda: Yes. That is... Bodily concept of life means animal life. The animal does not know. Sa eva go-kharaḥ (SB 10.84.13). Go-kharaḥ. Go means cows, and kharaḥ means ass. One who is in the, under bodily concept of life, he is no better than animals. So when the animal talks of knowledge, an intelligent man laughs. That is our position. The animals, they are talking of knowledge.

Morning Walk -- December 5, 1973, Los Angeles:

Sudāmā: I don't ever want to stop preaching.

Prabhupāda: Yes. Well, preaching, you cannot manufacture preaching. You must do preaching according to the principles ordered by your spiritual master. You cannot manufacture your own way of preaching. That is required. There must be some leader. Under the leadership. Yasya prasādād bhagavat... Why it is said? Everywhere, in the office, there is some immediate boss. So you have to please him. That is service. Suppose in office, in a department there is office superintendent. And if you do in your own way, "Yes, I'm doing my business," and the office superintendent is not pleased, do you think that kind of service is nice? No. Similarly, we have got, everywhere we have got immediate boss. So we must work. That is systematic. If everyone manufactures, invents his own way of life, then there must be chaos.

Sudāmā: Yeah, that's true.

Prabhupāda: Yes. Now we are world organization. There is spiritual side, and there is material side also. That is not material side. That is also spiritual side, means systematic management. Otherwise how it will be done? Just like Gaurasundara sold the house, and there is no trace of the money. What is this? He did not ask him, anyone. He sold the house, and where is the money, there is no trace. (break) Ah, Hare Kṛṣṇa. What is that badge? Tennis?

Devotee: It's not a badge. It's the only sweater I...

Prabhupāda: Oh, that's nice. Yesterday I received one letter from Rūpānuga Mahārāja. He's preaching very nice. Yes.

1974 Conversations and Morning Walks

Morning Walk -- January 3, 1974, Los Angeles:

Gurukṛpā: It was very spectacular. Something like twenty miles.

Prabhupāda: Twenty miles?

Yaśodānandana: Maybe at least fifty, sixty miles the four, five first flashes, very big. Let's see. From this tree all the way to the end of this tennis court, all over the sky. Big white flashings. Like big huge incredible lightning. Then afterwards it decreased, and then regularly, every thirty, forty-five seconds, there was big lightning. Not lightning, big flashes. Very uncommon.

Jayatīrtha: The scientists say that it's eighty-three million miles long...

Prabhupāda: Eh?

Jayatīrtha: The scientists, they say that it's 83 million miles long, the comet.

Prabhupāda: 83 miles?

Morning Walk -- January 5, 1974, Los Angeles:

Prajāpati: You want us to be drunkards on the holy name, and be like those...

Prabhupāda: Yes, yes. There is eight kinds of transcendental transformation... (pause) (devotees chant japa) (break)

Prajāpati: ...foolish play tennis, and the lazy foolish they play golf. (Prabhupāda laughs) (break)

Prabhupāda: ...less dangerous than the active foolish.

1975 Conversations and Morning Walks

Morning Walk -- June 30, 1975, Denver:

Devotee: (break) In Dvārakā, did Kṛṣṇa's queens play tennis?

Prabhupāda: What is the use of playing tennis? There is mention that Dvārakā they were playing ball on the roof of the palace, the queens. Maybe tennis also there. (break) ...playing this there, on the roof. Kind of exercise for the woman, queens.

Devotee (1): Only for the women?

Prabhupāda: Yes. No men.

Devotee (2): Kṛṣṇa and His friends would play sometimes, catch with fruits in the forest?

Prabhupāda: Fruits?

Devotee (3): Bael fruits.

Prabhupāda: Yes. They are playing in so many ways.