"We Are Spoiling Our Lives!"
Prahlad Maharaja instructs his young friends: "My dear friends, material enjoyment involves agitating the senses. You have this material sense enjoyment, my dear friends, and your only thought is how to enjoythese senses. That's all." In possession of a particular body, we have particular senses, and we enjoy. For example, a camel enjoys thorny twigs. Why? Camels are very fond of thorny twigs because when they chew the twigs, blood comes out of the tongue, and they taste their own blood. The camel thinks this is very nice. He eats thorny twigs, the twigs cut his tongue, and blood oozes out. He tastes his own blood, but he thinks, "I am enjoying." This is sense gratification. Sex life is also like that. We taste our own blood, and we think we are enjoying. This is our foolishness.
The living entity who has contacted this material body is a spiritual being, but because he has a tendency to enjoy, to exploit this material energy, he has contacted a body. There are 8,400,000 species of living entities, each with a different body, and according to the body, they have particular senses in order to enjoy a particular type of pleasure. Prahlad Maharaja says that this body and its particular type of enjoyment go together. Suppose you are given thorny grass or twigs: "Ladies and gentlemen, here is very nice food. It is certified by the camels. It is very good." Would you like to take it? "No! What nonsense are you offering me?" Because you have a different body, you have no taste for that. But if you offer it to a camel, because of his particular body, it is a very nice meal.
One man's food is another man's poison. If one is offered something which is not his food, he cannot take it. The stool-eating hog will not accept nice foodstuffs such as cake. Give him stool, and it will be very nice. But if you are offered the stool, because you have a different body you will say, "What are you offering?"
There are different kinds of material enjoyment, but those who are actually intelligent know that such enjoyment is due to the body. Actual happiness, however, is that which is not enjoyed by material senses but by the spiritual senses. Because we are spirit, we have spiritual senses. Now these are covered by matter, and therefore we are entrapped. Therefore, you should not endeavor to achieve material happiness. It will come. The lower animals have no business profession, but still they eat and live. So Prahlad Maharaja says, "You need not endeavor for material pleasure. That will come. Because you have a body, it is predestined that bodily enjoyment--as you are fit to enjoy it--will come. If misery comes without our calling for it, so happiness will come without our calling for it."
Therefore, we should not be very anxious to aggravate our senses to increase material happiness. In any civilization, those who have no spiritual happiness always hanker after sense enjoyment. Prahlad Maharaja says, "Your life is limited. Although it is very valuable, it is also very limited. And our duty is to dovetail ourselves in some way in Krsna consciousness and to act accordingly. You should not try to increase your material sense enjoyment. You cannot increase it. There are so many different kinds of bodies, and they are guided by nature's law: you have to eat like this, you have to live like this, you have to sleep like this. It has already been arranged."
Our higher intelligence comes with this human body. Because we have higher consciousness, we should try for the higher enjoyment in life, which is spiritual enjoyment. And how can that spiritual enjoyment be achieved? You should not waste your time simply hankering for material pleasure. Then, what is to be done? One should absorb himself in serving the Supreme Lord, who gives the pleasure of liberation. We should turnour attention to achieving the lotus feet of Krsna, who can give us liberation from this material world.
How long do we have to engage ourselves? Prahlad Maharaja says, "We are now in material entanglement. Now I have this body, I will quit this body after a few years, and then I will have to accept another body. Once you take up one body and enjoy as your body's senses dictate, you prepare another body by such sense enjoyment, and you get another body as you want it." There is no guarantee that you will get a human body. That will depend on your work. If you worked just like a demigod, you get a demigod's body. And if you worked just like a dog, then you get a dog's body. This is not in your hands; it is in the hand of nature. Our duty is not to speculate on what we are going to get next. At the present moment, let us understand that we have this material body. Now, if we want to develop our spiritual consciousness or Krsna
consciousness, then we should at once engage ourselves in this Krsna activity. That is auspicious for further progress.
How long should you do it? As long as this body does not stop working. We do not know when it will stop functioning. The great saint Pariksit Maharaja got seven days notice: "Your body will fall in a week." But we do not know when our body will fall. As soon as we are on the road, there may immediately be some accident. We should always be prepared. Death is always there. We should not optimistically think,
"Everyone is dying, I shall live." Why will you live if everyone is dying? Your father has died, your mother has died, your sister, your other relatives--why should you live? You will also die. And your children will also die. Therefore, before death comes, as long as we have this human intelligence, let us engage in Krsna consciousness. This is the prescription of Prahlad Maharaja.
This material body is called purusam. Everyone is anxious to enjoy. Purusa means to enjoy, or the enjoyer. There is no one in this material world who does not like to enjoy sense gratification. Therefore, the body may be what it is--either male or female--but the desire, the ambition, is to enjoy material life. So the body is called purusam.
We do not know when this body will stop, but let us immediately engage in Krsna consciousness and act accordingly. "But if I immediately engage myself in Krsna consciousness, what about my living?" That is arranged for. I am very happy to inform you of the confidence of a student in one of our branches. There was a disagreement. One student said, "You are not looking after how to maintain the establishment," and
he replied, "Oh, Krsna will supply."This is a very nice conviction; I was glad to hear it. If cats and dogs and hogs can get food, and if we are going to be Krsna conscious and fully devote our service to Krsna, will He not arrange for our food also? Is Krsna ungracious? No.
In Bhagavad-gita you will find that the Lord says, "My dear Arjuna,I am equal to everyone. No one is the object of My envy, and no one is My special friend, but for one who engages in Krsna consciousness, I have special attention." If a small child is completely dependent on the mercy of his parents, the parents have special attention for that child. Although the parents are equally good to all the children, for the small children who are always crying, "Mother!" they have great concern. "Yes, my dear child? Yes?" This is natural.
If you are completely dependent on Krsna, who is supplying food to the dogs, birds, bees--to 8,400,000 species of life--why should He not supply to you? This conviction is called surrender. But we should notthink, "Because Krsna is supplying my food, I shall now sleep." No, you have to work, but without fear. One should engage himself in Krsna consciousness.
Now calculate our duration of life. In this age it is calculated that we can live at most to a hundred years. Formerly, a human being used to live up to 100,000 years. In the Satya Yuga, or age of Goodness, they used to live 100,000 years. In the next age, Treta Yuga, they used to live for 10,000 years, and in the next, called Dvapara Yuga, they used to live for 1,000 years. Now, in this age, called Kali Yuga, the estimation is for decreases still further. Anyone can understand this.Suppose my grandfather lived 100 years, and my son is going to live for fifty years, and his son is going to live for thirty years. This is the progress of our modern civilization. We are very proud that we are happy and are improving our civilization. The result, however, is that we try to enjoy material life, but the duration of our life is shortened. This is called maya, illusion.
Now, accepting that we live for 100 years, the duration of life is reduced for those who have no information of spiritual life, who have not conquered sense enjoyment, or who are unable to control the mind. The lifetime of those who are too much addicted to sense gratification, according to this calculation, is at the utmost fifty years. Even if one has fifty years, if he has no information of spiritual life, his night is wasted in sleeping and sex life. That's all. He has no other interest. And in the daytime, what is his concern? "Where is money? Where is money? I must maintain this body." And when he has money: "Now let me spend for my wife and children." Then where is his spiritual realization? At night he spends his time in this way, and by day he spends time in that way. Is that his mission in life? How horrible such a life is.
The average person is illusioned in childhood--playing football and sporting. Up to twenty years, easily, you can go on like that. Then when you become old, for another twenty years you cannot do anything. When a man becomes old, his senses cannot function. You have seen many old men; they have nothing to do but rest. Just now we have received a letter from one of our students that his grandmother is paralyzed and has been suffering for the last three and a half years. So, in old age, everything is finished as soon as you are sixty years old. Therefore, from the beginning to twenty years of age, everything is spoiled; and even if you live for a hundred years, another twenty in the last stage of life is also spoiled. So forty years of your life are spoiled in that way. And in the middle age there is a very strong sex appetite, so another twenty years can be lost. Twenty years, twenty years, and twenty years--sixty years gone. How long are you going to live?
This is the analysis of life by Prahlad Maharaja. We are spoiling our life instead of using it.
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