Damaghosa Das backyard after harinama
Hare Krsna-below are bits and pieces of a long conversation on a morning walk with Srila Prabhupada in Rome, about how he saw the movement developing from cities to farm life and how we would live there in the near future.
May 27 1974 Rome conversations
Prabhupāda: One book... Suppose we have prepared some small quantity of paper. So you can, if you want that book, you just copy another book.
Bhagavān: By hand.
Prabhupāda: Yes. There is no need of printing books.
Bhagavān: Some people would be engaged in copying books.
Prabhupāda: No, you engage yourself. If you want book, that book, you copy yourself. Why someone should be engaged for you? You have got enough time. You are not going to the factory or hundred miles for your earning livelihood. You are on the local space. You have got enough time. You just take, copy. That's all. Minimize your unnecessary waste of time. Save time. Chant Hare Kṛṣṇa. Go back to home. This is our idea. Instead of chanting twenty-five rounds, you chant hundred rounds. That is utilization of proper time.
Bhagavān: Now they have... the other day in the paper that India exploded its first atomic bomb.
Prabhupāda: Yes, and therefore yet it has become very great.
Yogeśvara: Now its in the top six.
Prabhupāda: But there is no food. Never mind, you starve, but get your atom bomb. That's all. This is civilization. There was a cartoon. Somebody approached some politician, and he said, "Yes, I know there is food problem. So I cannot say what can I do for you, but from next week, you will have television." This is their program, "From next week you will have television." As if television will minimize my hunger. This is the civilization. Hare Kṛṣṇa. So you ask problem, I will answer. Your energy, problems of energy, petrol, it will be automatically solved. If we are localized, there is no question of petrol.
...Prabhupada:..Keep amongst yourself and produce. Produce food grain, produce cotton, mustard seed. Self dependent, no use... And we don't require motorcar. Bullock cart is sufficient. There is no need of going anywhere.
Bhagavān: We can make our own cloth? Khādi.
Prabhupāda: Yes, cotton. From cotton you can make your own cloth.
Dhanañjaya: My wife knows how to spin cloth.
Prabhupāda: Yes. By spinning thread, then you make cloth. Without any price. You grow your cotton and have your cloth. So by machine, they have created so many idle brain, and therefore hippies are coming out, problem. This is the result of this. Because they have created this machine, not everyone is employed, so he must become a hippie. Idle brain is a devil's workshop.
Yogeśvara: Mahatma Gandhi formulated many such programs for producing khādi, for cow protection and so on.
Prabhupāda: No, he did not make any cow protection.
Yogeśvara: No? We know from your teachings that he was missing the point.
Prabhupāda: Missing... The point is God. He was atheist. He did not believe in Kṛṣṇa.
Yogeśvara: But from the level of application of his programs, is there some value?
Prabhupāda: Yes, that is good program, to produce your own necessities of life. That is good idea. But he could not turn the people, because they are godless. Godless man cannot have any good qualification. I requested him to become God conscious and preach Kṛṣṇa consciousness. He thought it ludicrous. Yes. He was such a godless man.
...Yogeśvara: So then we should begin our rural communities like New Vrindaban, and then by training up people in the cities, we can send them gradually...
Prabhupāda: There will be no city. We don't want cities.
Bhagavān: What about our city temples?
Prabhupāda: No, no. For the time it may go on. But as we make progress, there will be no necessity. City means... For the present we have got. Because the city is there, we are there. But suppose the city is closed. We shall be there? If the city is closed, you still will be there?
Yogeśvara: But we can predict that the cities will go on for quite some time.
Prabhupāda: Yes, it will go on, but when they will see that your ideal community is better than city life, people will take to it. Paraṁ dṛṣṭvā nivartate [Bg. 9.59]. When one gets a better standard of life, naturally he will give up the lower standard of life.
Dhanañjaya: But won't the countryside be spoiled if there is an atomic war?
Yogeśvara: The targets will be the cities.
Prabhupāda: Yes. They will be finished first. The bombs are never used at the villages. Downtown, downtown. (laughter) The downtown will be first finished. I have got experience during the last war. The bombs were being thrown in Calcutta and almost all the bombs were thrown in downtown.
Bhagavān: They know they don't want to bomb the countryside or else how can they live?
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Bhagavān: The overpopulation is in the city.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Bhagavān: They think that overpopulation occurs in underdeveloped countries, but actually in every city it is overpopulation, people living on top of each other like rats.
Compiled by Damaghosa Das