Prabhupada pulled a face. "TV, yes."
"How can you enjoy without TV?" Harikesa asked.
"Yes," Srila Prabhupada said sardonically. "How can you waste your time?"
Navayauvana said people say they need TV because they work so hard all day that they need to forget.
"Why should you work? If you have to forget, why should you take such nonsense things that you have to forget again? Why not chant Hare Krsna?" Srila Prabhupada said. He had already called our attention to Aniruddha, who was happily playing by himself and singing Hare Krsna, and he used his example again. "Even the child does not forget. He's chanting. Take such things that you'll enjoy. The more you do not forget, you more enjoy. Why should you take up something that you have to forget? This is rascal."
He told another little anecdote to make his point. "There is a story like this. A man is sitting. His friend came, 'Why you are sitting idly?' 'What shall I do?' 'Work.' 'Why shall I work?' 'You'll get money.' 'What shall I do with the money?' 'Then you'll be able to sit peacefully and eat.' 'I'm doing that. I'm already doing that.'
"If that is the ultimate end," he asked us, "that I shall peacefully sit down and eat, I am doing that. Why shall I go and work?"
When I said that variety was the spice of life, Srila Prabhupada agreed variety was there, but he said it was a question of taste. Some like to eat prasadam and some like to go to the brothel.
"Well," I added, "sometimes we want to sit in a garden like this and sometimes we like to be inside, and other times we like to go out to the movies."
"I don't go out," Prabhupada replied. "We do not go to the movies or to the restaurant. It is different taste. Therefore it is calculated three kinds of men -- sattvic, rajasic, tamasic -- their tendencies are different."
Navayauvana said that the karmis can not understand why a devotee doesn't want to go to the cinema and Prabhupada replied that there were so many items. "They do not smoke, they do not drink, they do not go to cinema."
"We're as good as dead," I said laughing.
And Prabhupada smiled. "Yes."
Harikesa Maharaja, dropping his representation of the materialist, asked a practical question about his own inclinations to serve. He admitted that the natural, simple life in the country did not appeal to him. "What happens with all these people who, like for example, myself, I can't live on a farm?"
"That does not make you unfit," Prabhupada told him.
"I mean I was born in a city, raised in a city, and feel very good when I'm in a city, but when I'm on a farm, I'm very disturbed."
"Rajasic," Prabhupada told him. "You have got rajasic. So that means your mode of nature is rajasic. There are three kinds of -- sattvic, rajasic, tamasic."
"But what are we going to do with all these kind of people?" Harikesa wanted to know.
Prabhupada's reply was interesting. "That is already there, three kinds of propensities. So you belong to the rajasic, that's all. So it can be conquered by sattvic."
I followed his comment to its logical conclusion. "So we should all aim towards leaving the cities? If everyone becomes sattvic..."
And Prabhupada didn't deny it. Referring to our villa with its spacious grounds he said, "That tendency is there, why these bungalows are here? They do not like to live in the city. They are paying so high rent. Why? The inner tendency is to live like this, with trees, with lawn."
- From "A Transcendental Diary Vol 4" by HG Hari Sauri Prabhu
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