Hayagrīva: He believes there is no reincarnation as punishment. Reincarnation is envisioned as a kind of a punishment. To have to take birth again is a type of punishment, and Augustine rejects this, saying that how can the return to bodies, which are gifts of God, be punishment? He doesn't see how that this is a form of...
Prabhupāda: But does he think that the body of a hog and the body of similar lower creatures eating stool and living in filthy place, is it not punishment? Does he think like that? Why one gets the body of King Indra or Lord Brahmā and why one gets the body of a pig and hog, and living in filthy place and eating stool? Is it not punishment and reward?
Hayagrīva: Well, he would say that, um...
Prabhupāda: How he explains the body of a pig eating stool?
Hayagrīva: I've been putting this off. He wouldn't agree that man could be reincarnated as an animal.
Prabhupāda: Why, why he will not agree? If a body is a gift by God, then body can be a punishment also by God.
Hayagrīva: Yes.
Prabhupāda: This is reasonable. When he is punished, he gets the body of a pig. When he is rewarded, he gets the body of King Indra. So that is punishment and reward.
Hayagrīva: What about the body of a man? Is that punishment or gift?
Prabhupāda: Man, man, there are many men who are very well situated and there are many men who are suffering. So two things are there according, suffering and enjoyment, according to the body. So this has been explained in the Bhagavad-gītā, mātrā-sparśās tu kaunteya śītoṣṇa-sukha-duḥkha-dāḥ (BG 2.14). According to the body the heat and, what is called, cold? Heat or cold?
Hayagrīva: Hm.
Prabhupāda: Sītā uṣṇa. That is perceived. An old man perceives very much cold, and a young child, he does not perceive—according to the body. An animal, naked body, he can walk on the street in severe cold, but a man cannot. So this body is the source of suffering and enjoying. So why not take it as punishment and reward?
Hayagrīva: Well, Augustine believes that each individual man, or each individual soul within man, is not necessarily condemned to earth due to his own personal desire or sin but due to the original sin of Adam, the first man. He writes, "When the first couple," that's Adam and Eve, "were punished by the judgment of God, the whole human race, which was to become Adam's posterity through the first woman, was present in the first man." So that was the origin of sin and death. So man's sin is not personal. The reason I'm in..., conditioned in this human body is not because I personally committed a mistake...
Prabhupāda: Your becoming conditioned is punishment. Why you should be conditioned?
Hayagrīva: For my..., as punishment for my own desire.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Hayagrīva: For my personal desire.
Prabhupāda: Then why does he say there is not punishment?
Hayagrīva: But here he says it's because not for anything I did, but because of the original man, the sin of the original man, that everyone coming from the original man is...
Prabhupāda: Original man was punished. So the next man, he, why he comes to such father, unless he is punished? Sometimes father's disease is inherited by the son. Is it not punishment?
Hayagrīva: Yes. So the very coming into...
Prabhupāda: Body.
Hayagrīva: ...the race is a punishment in itself.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Hayagrīva: He says this on the one hand, and on the other hand he says it's a gift, not a punishment.
Prabhupāda: Yes, gift you can take. If you take it that it is given by God, so it is gift. "God has given me this body for punishment. It is His mercy that undergoing punishment I am becoming purified, making progress towards God." The devotees, they think like that. Although it is punishment, they take it as reward, because by undergoing the punishment he is making progress towards God-realization. In that sense it is a gift. Gift actually means something given by somebody. So when it is given by God for our correction, it can be taken as gift.