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Veda means knowledge. Knowledge means truth. Unless you come to the knowledge of truth, your knowledge is not perfect

Expressions researched:
"Veda means knowledge. Knowledge means truth. Unless you come to the knowledge of truth, your knowledge is not perfect"

Conversations and Morning Walks

1973 Conversations and Morning Walks

Veda means knowledge. Knowledge means truth. Unless you come to the knowledge of truth, your knowledge is not perfect.
Room Conversation with Father Tanner and other guests -- July 11, 1973, London:

Father Tanner: Would you say there are more sins than those four?

Prabhupāda: Hm? What is that?

Father Tanner: Are there other sins?

Śrutakīrti: Are there other sins beside these four...?

Prabhupāda: These are the basic principle of sinful life. Other sinful activities come out of it. Just like illicit sex life. Illicit relationship of a man and woman, there may be many dangerous things. You see? So the basic principle is the illicit sex life. Now, it can go up to murdering and so many things. So if we avoid the basic principles, the further subsidiary sinful activities automatically stopped.

Father Tanner: But... I haven't remembered the four, but is one of those basic principles concerned with truth?

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Father Tanner: Which one?

Prabhupāda: Because...

Father Tanner: Now, it was told... Now I've forgotten the four.

Prabhupāda: Because Veda, Veda means knowledge. Knowledge means truth. Unless you come to the knowledge of truth, your knowledge is not perfect.

Father Tanner: But do you specifically have a precept against telling a lie, or against hypocrisy?

Prabhupāda: Well, hypocrisy and other things, they are subsidiary. If one is pure from the very beginning, then there is no chance of becoming hypocrite. Why he should be hypocrite? If he is open, clear, why one should become hypocrite? Hypocrisy, when there is sinful activity, then hypocrisy. If there is no sin, where is the possibility of hypocrisy? A sinful man may pose himself a religious man. That is hypocrisy. But if there is no sin, then where is hypocrisy?

Father Tanner: What I didn't understand is how this is covered by your four pillars, the four...

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Father Tanner: Which of these would cover lying?

Prabhupāda: Lying?

Father Tanner: Yes, telling lies.

Prabhupāda: That I have already explained.

Father Tanner: Yes. But which of those four pillars...?

Prabhupāda: All of them. All of them. Just like one is indulging in intoxication. He may say that "I am very pure." But how one can become pure, he's addicted to intoxicants? So I heard from one of my disciples that there is a hospital in U.S.A., and five thousand priests are there for curing their intoxication habit. Do you know that?

Father Tanner: I didn't know that number, but I know that there are hospitals and sanatoriums...

Prabhupāda: So if the priest is going to hospital for curing his intoxication habit, he's hypocrite.

Father Tanner: He would admit that,...

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Father Tanner: ...wouldn't he? I mean, the priest himself.

Prabhupāda: How a priest can be intoxicants?

Father Tanner: He would say, wouldn't he, that was just his weakness.

Prabhupāda: Eh?

Father Tanner: He would say it was his weakness.

Prabhupāda: Weakness is hypocrisy. If you are weak, you cannot become priest. Because you are teacher, religious teacher. You should not take that post. That is hypocrisy.

Father Tanner: But perhaps this is the difference, or one of the differences between western and eastern civilization...

Prabhupāda: No, it is not the question of eastern or western...

Father Tanner: But in the East, your wise man is nearly always an elderly man.

Prabhupāda: Not always.

Father Tanner: Not always.

Prabhupāda: Not always.

Father Tanner: But in the West, you know, your priest is generally made a priest in his early twenties. Then he has thrust upon him the role of the wise man, which he doesn't always seek.

Prabhupāda: Just like these boys, they are very young, twenties, between twenty to thirty. So they are made here brahmacārī, and some of them are sannyāsī, but they are strictly following these principles. Because they are young men, there cannot be any concession that he can become intoxicants, he can indulge in meat-eating. No.

Page Title:Veda means knowledge. Knowledge means truth. Unless you come to the knowledge of truth, your knowledge is not perfect
Compiler:Krsnadas
Created:20 of Nov, 2012
Totals by Section:BG=0, SB=0, CC=0, OB=0, Lec=0, Con=1, Let=0
No. of Quotes:1