Everyone requires possessions such as food grains, clothing, money and other things necessary for maintenance of the body, but one should not collect more than his actual basic needs. If we follow this natural principle there will be no difficulty in maintaining body and soul together.
Everywhere you look there are so many names. Names for packages, names for signposts, names for places, names for plants, names for people. Names are convenient, and maybe a little confusing.
Many observers feel that with corruption so common and scandal nearly standard, society is in a bad way and getting worse. What’s really happening, and what to do? India’s Bhavans Journal interviews His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada.
King Rantideva was always satisfied and depended completely on the Lord’s providence. At the same time, when guests came to his palace the generous king would personally look after their every comfort, as if it all depended not on providence but on him.
“Thou shall not kill” Christians like to misinterpret this instruction. They think the animals have no soul, and therefore they think they can freely kill billions of innocent animals in the slaughterhouses.
Atheist-existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre writes that because man wants to be God but cannot, he is a “useless passion” in a universe that has no purpose—and thus, he is always in anxiety.
The prosperity of humanity does not depend on a demoniac civilization that has no culture and no knowledge but has only gigantic skyscrapers, and huge automobiles always rushing down the highways. The products of nature are sufficient.
Soren Kierkegaard, the father of existentialism, said we have to make the leap of faith and he saw the goal as God. He wrote, “There is a God—His will is made known to me in holy scripture and in my conscience.”
Absolute authority is bad when the authority is wrong. But if the authority is right, then it is good—because you can submit to one authority and receive all knowledge. It’s like going to a supermarket; we can get everything there in one place.
German pessimist philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) thought that nirvana, (freedom from suffering) means becoming desireless—putting an end to our will. But His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada disagrees.
Society is just like a child. If a child wants to go to hell, should the father allow it? Society may want so many nonsensical things, but it is the duty of the government to know how to uplift the citizens.
The species already exist, and the living entity simply transfers himself from one womb to the next, just as a man transfers himself from one apartment to another.
Unfortunately many parents are not satisfied with this movement… However, we have no alternative other than to teach our disciples to free themselves from materialistic life. We must instruct them in the opposite of material life to save them from the repetition of birth and death.
An intelligent person is not supposed to work like an ass. If we are parasites, then a high-court judge is also a parasite. A rascal sees a judge sitting—talking a little and getting a high salary—so he calls the judge a parasite.
Friedrich Nietzsche thought of the “superman” as someone totally self-controlled, unafraid, simple, aware, self-reliant… and nonexistent. But here His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada tells us about real supermen—who they are and how they get that way.
Your so-called science is also belief. If you call your way science, then our way is also science. Your belief is that life comes from chemicals, but you cannot prove it. Therefore you prove yourself to be a rascal.
Thomas Aquinas compiled the entire Church doctrine in Summa Theologica, which constitutes the official philosophy of the Roman Catholic Church. He also systematized a good deal of Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy.
Commentary by His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada on the Vedic Literature of Ancient India.
Today’s scientist has devised a lofty technology but essentially he knows about as much as a dog: how to eat, how to sleep, how to have sex, and how to defend. But what about human technology–How is a living body different from a dead body? Who are we really?
The fool who concocts a scheme for creating living beings from chemicals—he is given all credit, the Nobel Prize. And nature is injecting millions and millions of souls into material bodies at every moment—the arrangement of God—and no one cares. This is rascaldom.