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Saturday, 24 April 1976

Melbourne's grim weather -- cold and overcast -- did not deter Srila Prabhupada from continuing to take his morning walks. The theme of the conversation conducted on the perimeter road that adjoined the Botanic Gardens was "real happiness versus false happiness".

Everyone in the material world, Prabhupada explained to the devotees, was being punished in different degrees. But by the covering of maya, illusion, they were thinking "We are happy". Prabhupada stopped and pointed to a large, sprawling Queensland lace bark tree. "They are standing for five thousand years, no discomfort. This is punishment." By maya's grace the tree was unable to understand it was suffering. Human beings, on the other hand, couldn't tolerate such discomfort due to their developed consciousness.

"If you are asked to stand here for five hours, you will feel most uncomfortable." This was the difference between humans and those in the lower species. Knowledge, he said, was symptomised by the ability to perceive the evils of birth, death, old age and disease. Therefore, those so-called humans who failed to understand that they were suffering in the material world were simply animals.

Prabhupada gave a couple of examples. "If you think, 'What is the unhappiness in dying?' then you are an animal. The animal is taken to the slaughterhouse. He is not disturbed. He is eating grass very peacefully. That is animal life.

"To remain in an airtight bag for ten months, and risk that your mother will kill you -- is it not unhappiness? Still you say it is not unhappiness. You are so dull that you cannot see that there is unhappiness in birth."

Guru Krpa suggested that such people were "so nonsense" that they would argue that it didn't matter since they couldn't remember being in the womb.

Prabhupada was solemnly dismissive. "Therefore I say animal. Nonsense means animal."


- From "The Great Transcendental Adventure" by HG Kurma Prabhu